Extremely Hardcore Audiobook By Zoë Schiffer cover art

Extremely Hardcore

Inside Elon Musk's Twitter

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Extremely Hardcore

By: Zoë Schiffer
Narrated by: Jaime Lamchick
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"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 Business History & Culture Professionals & Academics Technology & Society Funny Heartfelt Witty

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
Engaging Narrative • Detailed Story • Chronological Order
Highly rated for:
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It was so interesting, well researched, and fun to listen to. Recommended. Get this book!

Riveting and engagingly performed

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Like many now former Twitter users, I’ve had enough Elon to last a lifetime. But the author has created such an incredible, engaging narrative.

We saw all of this play out in public, but this fills in so much detail and ties together what may have seemed to be disparate events.

The whole book was like spending a great weekend with a good friend you haven’t seen in a while and kicking it off with “so, have you heard this one…”

I’m genuinely gonna miss it now. Great job Zoe!!

I hesitated…but single I bought this

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A very illuminating listen! This book is worh considerable exploration for anyone else out there still pulling together the more bizzaro pieces of the assymetrical jigsaw puzzle of the last few years on the planet weird many of us have been witnessing and expierencing in our discourses via social media platforms online and the resulting dangers which now almost routinely spill offline in one form or another.
Having come a long way since his ode to chocolate milk tweet daze, mr musks more noxious contributions to this increasingly extreme, toxic enviroment is on full display here in Zoe Schiffers articulate, on point writing, tieing it together with musks very own words, texts, proclamations & decrees, letting him speak for the public record himself. (See also the deffinition of megalomania, Icarus lament, further exploration of terminal Uniqueness, ect. ect. for more on all that.) So it should come as no suprise to any of us, really, that this self proclaimed in house power tweeter and so called business genuis would aquire the site formerly known as Twitter and then promptly go about dismantling it into his very own "special purpose vehicle" (the quotes are his own💩) BUT that he'd do it withsuch publicly spectacular self destructive aplomb often left me marveling in bemused horror as I listened.
EXAMPLE: On a whim still a mystery to many of us, mr musk makes an abrupt u turn in his private jet, already enroute to Christmas holiday in Texas, and instead directs it to Sacremento to then rent a Toyaota Corrola to dismantle and transport Twitters back up servers himself, along with his brother, security detail and a pocket knife, taking up the better part of the holiday is but just one of the many baffling tidbits from Ms. Schiffers book that raise a red flag. There are many many more, just bristling with them really but by all means check them out for yourself in the book.
There's a cautionary tale here somewhere I'm almost certain but I just don't think we've seen it all play out in full just yet to reveal whatever it'd be.
Well crafted piece of journalism here with good narration, often using the business magnates very own megaphone along the way in the tellong. I certainly look forward to reading more of Zoe Schiffers published work as well!
✌️🤠

THE EMPERORS NEW CLOTHES

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I enjoyed this one and it makes a great companion to Hatching Twitter, the only other Twitter book I've listened to/read. It is well researched and moves at a fast pace. Would recommend to anyone who is not a Elonstan.

A snapshot of a moment in time without any real conclusion. And that's great!

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There are few important details that Zoe misses and it is engagingly written and well read.

Excellent synopsis of what Musk has done to Twitter

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The narration is excellent. The book lays out what happened to kill Twiier and birth X. Listening to every detail, in chronological order is helpful.

when teaching a class on the business disaster, this should be the text book.

Essential to Understand What Happened to Twitter

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Don’t waste your credit. Just buy Isaacson’s book on Elon instead. Twitter is extensively covered. Hard pass on this one.

Almost word for word rehashing of Walter Isaacson’s book.

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With full understanding that the author is telling the story from the perspective of the tweeps and not Musk, she is extremely biased at every turn. By the end of it I feel it lacks any journalistic integrity as she refuses to portray Elon as anything but evil. Not saying she needed to paint rosy picture where one wasn’t, but to essentially portray every event as old Twitter was great and Elon and the “Goons” screwed it all up makes this nothing more than a hit piece. If you love Elon, you’ll hate the book. If you hate Elon, you’ll love the book. But if you want an unbiased accounting of what happened inside of Twitter post Elon acquisition you won’t really get it here. It’s unfortunate as the author has good insights and contacts to have told the story well, but she chose to do nothing but attack on virtually every page.

Extremely biased

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The author makes it obvious she can't stand Musk through snide comments, criticism and her choice to tell only negative stories. A biography should be balanced and impartial.

And there is no such thing as "hate speech." That's a concept created to silence people. It's OK to mock, criticize and insult people, places, religions, or ideas. Musk allows free speech and X is one of the very few places left that does.

Not impartial

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If you’ve already read Walter Isaacson’s biography on Elon Musk, you won’t find much new here. The stories are the same, without any deeper insights or fresh revelations to make it stand out

Recycled Insights: A Familiar Take on Elon Musk

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