> There's a word for this: "Plausible deniability".
There's a word for _this_: "self-sealing" [0].
A believer in a conspiracy theory, when presented with evidence contrary to the conspiracy theory, will often "reinterpret it as originating from the conspiracy" [1], or otherwise treat it "as further evidence for the conspiracy" [1].
The simplest explanation for elmu acting like an uninformed, out-of-touch narcissist is that is who he is. Many narcissists genuinely believe they are pro-free-speech even while they attack speech they dislike. Toss him on the pile.
At this point it's pretty clear that when Elon Musk talks about "free speech" he means the freedom to spread right-wing speech without consequence. I honestly believe a lot of what he's doing is, in his mind, liberating the site from the "woke mind virus" he believes turned his daughter trans. Most of the rest is boredom, because I also don't believe he really cares about the platform. He didn't even really want it, but he's stuck with it, so he's mostly just screwing around.
If you interrogate Musk's action from the point of view of the bored, redpilled sociopath behind the mask of a brilliant entrepreneur playboy genius engineer, a lot of his decisions make sense.
There's a word for _this_: "self-sealing" [0].
A believer in a conspiracy theory, when presented with evidence contrary to the conspiracy theory, will often "reinterpret it as originating from the conspiracy" [1], or otherwise treat it "as further evidence for the conspiracy" [1].
The simplest explanation for elmu acting like an uninformed, out-of-touch narcissist is that is who he is. Many narcissists genuinely believe they are pro-free-speech even while they attack speech they dislike. Toss him on the pile.
0: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585
1: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/246/