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They weren’t going to make everyone happy. They want vastly more money, and every way of squeezing money out of a thing makes the thing suck more. They certainly could have fucked the PR aspect less severely, but no business in history has ever had anyone enjoy the part where VC investors try to get their returns.
If I recall correctly, he had the x.com domain and tried to rebrand PayPal to X. The board went, “are you a fucking idiot?” and replace him with Peter Thiel.
He’s been trying to call stuff “X” since he was an edgy teenager. He just never had the good sense to grow out of it, and he fell ass backward into enough money that we all get to watch him go all “Star Wars kid” over and over again in public.