Contributor “Are you saying no to Elon Musk?” asked Gracias at one point. In the end, the funds were not needed—Musk came up with all of the funds on his own. In another scene, engineers met with what Twitter employees called the Musk “goons” to discuss their future at the social media company and watched them stomp around the office. Most of his accomplices in the purchase were from Tesla and SpaceX, most of them to facilitate the sale. According to the book, Musk’s goons “meandered through the halls as they awaited instructions, the glares of Twitter workers burning into the back of their necks. Some of them, engineers who came from Musk’s other companies including Tesla and SpaceX, felt awkward invading Twitter, but they knew they served the whims of one man. In a brief meeting with the billionaire that morning, some of the engineers received a clear directive from their boss. ‘Make sure the site doesn’t go down,” Musk said. “Make sure no one does anything.’” Character Limit is a page turner because it’s filled with anecdotes like this, but doesn’t quite descend into soap opera territory. Jack Dorsey is presented as a gothic figure, a sage who seems to glide through the proceedings but, at the same time, seems disconnected. Musk eventually emerges as the real goon, however. The authors, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, both technology reporters for The New York Times, don’t hold back. In one telling scene, they describe how Musk entered a room and appears bigger than you would imagine him to be—after all, he’s 6-foot-2. He has a presence, which becomes obvious in the book. But the presence is not exactly warm and friendly. It’s more like a whisper in the dark. I’m still reading the book and will report on my findings, but so far—the main takeaway is that Musk and his team used hardball tactics in their purchase. The narrative seems to be circling the drain of failure at the moment, describing the future of X in bleak terms. Twitter was one of the icons of social media, the one platform I used more than any other. The authors are filling in a lot of the gaps in the story, and from what I can tell so far—the ending is going to be something like a Shakespearean lament. Oh, what could have been. Follow me on