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Extremely Hardcore

Inside Elon Musk's Twitter

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Extremely Hardcore

By: Zoë Schiffer
Narrated by: Jaime Lamchick
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About this listen

"Schiffer offers a detailed look under the smoke-filled hood... deploying a crisp, matter-of-fact style to excellent effect."—The New York Times

"A sharp and deeply sourced fly-on-the-wall account... packed with original reporting."—Financial Times

Before he conceived of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk flexed his control and influence during his unprecedented, $44 billion buyout of Twitter. This is the stunning true story of how Musk managed to upend the world's largest free speech platform through sheer, unilateral force—and what that means for the protection of power in the modern age.

When Elon wrested the app formerly known as Twitter out of the hands of its investors in 2023, his goals for what was previously known as the world’s digital town square were rooted in his fervent belief in the necessity of making Twitter friendlier to free speech. "I didn’t do it to make more money,” Musk insisted. “I did it to try and help humanity, whom I love.”

Extremely Hardcore is the true story of how Musk reshaped the world’s online public square into his own personal megaphone in an unprecedented, unsolicited, and unilateral buyout. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with more than sixty employees and thousands of pages of internal documents and Slack messages, WIRED journalist Zoë Schiffer delivers the singularly gripping, blow-by-blow saga of the infighting, mass layoffs, and culture wars that followed.

More than just a corporate saga, Extremely Hardcore is a high-stakes story of power, obsession, and ego—an unfiltered look at what happens when the world’s richest man buys one of its most influential platforms and bends it to his will.

©2024 Zoë Schiffer (P)2024 Penguin Audio
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Critic reviews

"Schiffer offers a detailed look under the smoke-filled hood... deploying a crisp, matter-of-fact style to excellent effect." — The New York Times

“Schiffer … has become one of the most indispensable chroniclers of the chaos inside [Twitter].” The Washington Post

"Extremely Hardcore by Zoë Schiffer, is a sharp and deeply sourced fly-on-the-wall account...It’s also packed with original reporting; Schiffer single-handedly broke a great deal of news on Twitter’s inner workings herself." — Financial Times

All stars
Most relevant  
Really well sourced and damning in its telling.

The “great man” theory that leads people to justify Elon’s actions is really outdated; think this book makes the case for this more than any I have read recently.

Anyone who was an engineer, would have treated the people who actually created the company with so much more respect.

Informative and interesting.

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Well written book, albeit about half of it was already in the public domain. Narrator was great. Does not reflect well on Musk, who comes across as a narcissistic, thin-skinned man-baby who surrounds himself with yes-men.

Chronicle of a slow motion car crash

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How can one man unravel a platform that changed social media. Twitter has played a huge role in culture and somehow one man flipped the platform to just play a huge role in his own main character energy need to feel liked. A brutal and engaging takedown of the story and one that's likely to "sink in" to the history books of this bizarre chapter of the digital world.

A fantastic look at the fall of Twitter

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Reads like a hit-piece on Musk. Don’t think it mentioned one positive thing he’s done… very biased book… probably a good read if you’re a liberal snowflake.

Very biased

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