If other media companies thought about brand equity the way Musk does

HBOMax<>Max is an excellent addition.

That said, I think all of these give too much credit to the Twitter<>X transition. It wasn't because Elon thought about Twitter and conjured 'X'. It's a reuse of something old he had. Seems like there was 0 Twitter specific related thoughts.

My favourite _real_ example (at least until now; this may be even sillier) was the Royal Mail (the UK post office) which briefly changed its name to Consignia(!) Everyone sensibly ignored this, and it quietly changed it back after a while. The early noughties were a strange time.

Google, Alphabet, Facebook, Meta, etc., mostly the same hubris.

It's like if Dunder Mifflin wanted to become Walmart.

They should have put HBOMax/Max as the punchline of the joke.