Why was Elon Musk forced to buy Twitter?

The “they” who forced him to buy Twitter was the previous management of Twitter, when he attempted to back out of a legally binding agreement to buy Twitter that he had signed.

The “they” who are now criticising him for the way he’s running Twitter, are different people.

Elon signed a binding agreement to acquire Twitter as a joke. His legal attempts to back out of it failed.

We're all trying to find the guy who did this.

"Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon....

The only thing that forced Musk to buy Twitter was his own bloody-mindedness. The agreement he signed was to protect the value of Twitter as negotiations for its sale proceeded. Musk could have paid a $1B penalty and backed out, but he treated the agreement as a joke and got nailed. Musk is not the victim here.

He bought it in order to rage quit the litigation to enforce his previous contractual commitment to buy Twitter. Nobody forced Elon to do anything. It was an incredibly unwise and impulsive move.

“Ask HN: Why can cats fly?”

I mean, you’re starting from a false premise; Naughty Old Mr Car was not forced to buy Twitter.

Who is ‘they’ supposed to be here?

nobody forced him to submit a real, ridiculous offer for twitter when he was clearly not serious

nobody forced him to take direct control of it and proceed to run it into the ground

nobody forced him to do a costly rebrand that added no value and made it look like a porn site

nobody forced him to besmirch his reputation by conducting a scorched earth cull of twitter staff, having numerous public brawls and spats, making him look like a bad leader

nobody forced him to pick a fight with city councils and the owners of buildings he was renting over nonsense, cementing his reputation as erratic, untrustworthy and belligerent

nobody forced him to be repeatedly, vociferously transphobic, to complain bitterly about leftism, or to talk about how pizzagate was real and scare away all the wealthy twitter sponsors

nobody forced him to promote conspiracy theories

nobody forced him to openly court the alt-right

nobody forced him to do anything. He has been messing around and finding out for a while now, and now that he bought his own kool-aid and the stakes are so high that even a skilled team of people managing his numerous, constant screw-ups are not able to help save his image. This man went from seemingly a beloved Tony Stark like figure to a ranting lunatic all of his own accord.

Sure. He was completely minding his own business when suddenly, out of nowhere, a judge forced him to buy Twitter for no reason. Poor guy.

Musk is an attention seeking narcissist. He is absolutely determined to turn himself into a clown show. He is succeeding.

No one has done this to him. He did it to himself.