Character Limit

Reading Character Limit is like watching a man repeatedly punch himself in the face and then blame the people around him for his nose hurting. It is an utterly embarrassing portrait of a narcissistic egotist who believes that he is a genius because he has often been lucky. Musk's purchase of Twitter was a tragedy, in both the literary and dramatic senses. Conger and Mac tell it gently with minimal editorial — why would they need to: these facts are absolutely the worst. RIP Twitter. I could not put this book down.

In some ways this is a parallel companion piece to Nick Bilton’s Hatching Twitter, and the authors actively consulted that book while writing this one. I was expecting Musk to come off incredibly badly, and he does; I was not necessarily expecting the wider cast of sycophants and narcissists, up to and including the biographer Walter Isaacson. There’s no pretense of objectivity here - Musk’s associates are repeatedly referred to as “goons” - and in a way that’s a detraction. The unadorned facts themselves are already an indictment. But this is grippingly told - and takes on a new meaning given Musk’s involvement in the second Trump administration. Someone please stage an intervention.