Thread by @brosandprose

I haven't fully formulated this thought because I'm ripping mad, but all this week I've been unable to stop thinking of the 5 years I worked at TED Talks and how the wealthiest members of this society pump up the egos of men like Elon Musk and empower them to wreak havoc. twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Elon Musk is not a genius. He passes off the work of others as his own, he treats his employees like garbage, and he has the impulse control of a teenager. He will thoughtlessly chase his whims until Twitter is a burning shell of what it once was and it'll only take a few weeks.

I call out TED directly for lionizing Musk because I worked there and I was complicit in it. I helped script the social media videos of his four (four!) TED Talks during which he made ridiculous false claims of his "inventions." Remember his tunnels that would end traffic?

TED continued to uphold and celebrate Musk long after he started engaging in batshit public behavior, from calling people "pedophiles" to peddling transphobic jokes. TED ignored the stories of racial and gender discrimination coming out of Tesla and SpaceX.

I am embarrassed that I once celebrated Elon Musk replying to a tweet I posted from the TED account during one of the conferences as a personal career highlight. When you're in your 20s and you work for an org that treats men like Musk like a god, you get swept up in the cult.

Only a few weeks ago, TED's owner (and a friend of Musk's) wrote a thread defending Musk's purchase of Twitter. That thread aged like milk.

https://twitter.com/TEDchris/status/1577695044202635265

I'm just so disgusted. In a matter of days Elon Musk has sewn chaos online. And we warned you! We fucking warned you!

I've been so scared to talk about my experiences working at TED because I worry about retaliation, and TED as a brand has become so irrelevant that it hardly matters anymore. But that organization has been careless since its inception about who it platforms.

Every time I had to write a headline for a talk by some rich white guy who decided he was going to cure all the diseases in Africa after he took one trip there, I wanted to gouge my eyes out.

https://twitter.com/TheZaneSimon/status/1590847227878313984

Here's TED uncritically helping Elon Musk whitewash his reputation in spring 2022.

https://twitter.com/TEDTalks/status/1524120843139391491

Honestly all you really need to know about TED is that one year they had a lounge for the VIP attendees and it was decorated with an actual photo of Versailles.

If you want to know more about TED and how it regurgitates the same ideas over and over again in service of the wealthy status quo, read @AnandWrites's book Winners Take All. bookshop.org/a/56317/978110…

I really did work at TED for five years, here are some badges as proof.

I'm also gonna leave this here. TED made a lot of noise about how it's now trying to protect conference attendees from sexual harassment, but there was never a real conversation about sexual harassment within the company. washingtonpost.com/business/econo…

When I and several other TED community members came forward about being harassed by TED speaker Adam Foss, I was told that a member of senior leadership at the organization said we were leading a "witch hunt" and a "lynch mob." Adam Foss was later charged with rape.

I was treated well, relatively speaking, at TED. I had a lot of career opportunities and mentors. I am still close with my co-workers. But my privilege as an upper class white woman shielded me. That place deserves a documentary.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.