Recently, Elon Musk decided to rebrand Twitter: a sane enough idea. However, a quality rebranding has to be goal-oriented and maintain continuity with the past; unless your brand is recovering from a scandal, it is a mistake to make a complete break. A quality example would be the rebranding of Kentucky Fried Chicken as KFC. Some consumers had already started referring to the franchise as KFC—and the rebranding avoided the negative connotations associated with poor, rural Kentucky and fried food. This rebranding made sense.
Elon Musk’s rebranding, however, is completely incoherent. For starters, X—esp. in the context of the internet—has some seriously negative connotations: It is inextricably linked with pornography. Even typing it will risk bringing up things on a person’s search history they might rather not have others. I imagine some wives have already yelled at their husbands when they saw Twitter’s giant X on their browser tab—we can only hope it hasn’t caused any unnecessary divorces. Second, it does not tie into Twitter’s prior branding at all. What relationship does X have with Twitter? None at all. Imagine what would have happened to KFC if they chose to rebrand their restaurant as X. They would be out of business.
The fact that Elon is completely unaware of these negative connotations is further evidence of just how severe his autism is. Any socially conscious person would know that, well, X has a meaning on the internet that cannot be erased.
Instead, I believe Musk—if he is going to insist upon this single letter rebranding—should use the letter T. T maintains continuity with the previous Twitter brand. It also will serve to remind Twitter owners of the Tesla brand, allowing cross-promotion between two of Elon’s largest companies. Of course, rebranding SpaceX might be tough if he really wants to use X in all his companies, but this would still be easier than rebranding Tesla—it is easier to rebrand the company that is not consumer facing.