The rapid growth of his wealth has coincided with his embrace of the platform as a chaotic communication tool, making the acquisition almost painfully recursive - his billions are tied up with his eccentric persona, and now he is using the billions to wholly own the arena that allows him to bring his unvarnished self to the masses. And yet, if you turned the clock back to just 2018, $21 billion would represent 100 percent of Musk’s net worth. If he took that money and set it on fire, he would still be the richest person on the planet. According to filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk will personally supply as much as $21 billion in cash to close out the deal, representing about 8 percent of his net worth. It’s surprising that Musk would stake so much of his wealth on a site that so many of its users profess to hate. He also thinks the number 420 is so funny that he seems to have determined the final value of his offer ($54.20 per share) to accommodate its inclusion. No one in the history of the modern world has ever been as wealthy as he is. He has more followers than Narendra Modi, the prime minister of the largest democracy on Earth, and fewer than Taylor Swift. Thanks to the flattening effects of Twitter, the only real difference between the site’s median user and Musk is about $257 billion and 85.4 million followers. He likes to joke around, but isn’t as funny as he thinks he is he overshares and loves memes he occasionally goes too far, and gets himself in trouble he seems to think the platform is unfairly suppressing the views of people with whom he identifies. In many ways, Elon Musk uses Twitter like the rest of us.