For those who do not know about the recent news, Elon Musk – or his full name, according to a tweet, “Elongated Muskrat” – bought the social media site Twitter-dot-com. He paid a totally reasonable $44 billion. Because why not? When you have the money burning a hole in your pocket, what else are you supposed to do?

The students of Pullman were keen to comment on the situation.

“The man makes enough money, I think that if he has the power to do it, I think that it makes sense for him to do it,” freshman psychology major Alainn Fitzgerald said. “I don’t really see an issue with it necessarily though, it’s just if he wanted to he could, and he did.” 

Musk was caught up in the consequences of his own actions when he tried to back out in early July. This might be the first time that someone with this amount of money and power has ever been blindsided by the reality of their actions!

“He’s rich, he has the power. He can basically do what he wants to when he wants to. I think that was more of a ‘Look at me, in your face.’ Instead of actually wanting to own Twitter, he wanted to do it for the social recognition,” freshman broadcast news major Macy Hardin said.

Freshman psychology major Alex Arriola said they think it is just another white man buying things for the sake of buying things. However, they cannot declare it a good or bad thing yet, because people with that much power are so far removed from normal people, they do not even have the awareness to exist on the platform, let alone run it.

“There are so many people on that app, and that platform in general, that they don’t really have the social awareness that is needed to run that sort of application,” Arriola said.

This was one of the biggest purchases in the last year, and yet it was seemingly insignificant to many people, especially those who do not use Twitter. Junior pre-nursing major Anna Wyrobek does not even know why he bought it.

“It’s a bit of a controversial move, to be honest,” data analytics major Omar Mostafa said. “But I don’t think it’s that bad of a thing, to be fair, because Twitter on its own was already not doing too well. I mean, he is trying to promote freedom, so technically it could be … something positive if he tries to promote more freedom, but he could also take advantage of Twitter and promote more evil things. It all depends on his moves.”

If you are a fan of watching the world burn, you can join junior pre-law major Tyler Nielsen, who said he kind of likes the chaos and thinks it is fun to watch Musk troll the entirety of social media.

Others are unimpressed with the changes he plans to make on the app.

“I don’t really know much on the topic, but good for him. I think it’s kind of interesting that he is making people pay for it now though,” freshman business major Brynn Bombino said.

For those who do not know, Musk is not making people pay to use the app; he is making people pay eight dollars a month for the blue check mark – which is equally stupid. 

Having this feature means that anyone can get the blue check mark just by paying eight bucks for it. So technically anyone can impersonate anyone because the blue checkmark has lost its credibility.

“Honestly I didn’t know he did,” freshman criminal justice major Maddie Latourelle said. “Elon Musk is kind of weird though.”

Freshman biology major Olivia Sloma says that it feels scary to have such a drastic change.

Sophomore kinesiology major Carmen Hernandez concurs with Sloma, emphasizing the concerning intentions that Musk might hold.

”I feel like he has kind of that god complex, which could be damaging to a platform like Twitter,” she said.

Sophomore marketing and sports management major Olivia Bush says that she thinks it is just too early to tell, and we should take a wait-and-see approach before there can be any fully developed thoughts on the subject.

The Pullman students always have strong opinions. However, it is interesting to see how many people are simply unaware of the situation. It feels like Twitter used to be a huge and important platform, but now it just feels like the site has turned into a joke.