Appropriately for Twitter, the arrival of Elon Musk has been regarded by some as the coming of the antichrist and by others as the apotheosis of the messiah. I think both sides may be getting a little overexcited. This is not a person whose movements can be anticipated with any accuracy.
Musk’s defining characteristic is that he is erratic, as his hokey cokey-style acquisition of the social media platform itself displayed. This added to previous oddities such as insinuating that a cave rescuer in Thailand was a paedophile. There’s ample evidence that ‘Chief Twit’ Musk has the social skills, interests and humour of a 14-year-old boy. His sink gag as he entered the Twitter building was a Beano-level pun worthy of The Fast Show’s ker-raaazy Colin Hunt.
All this does not inspire faith in his reliability. ‘What crazy stunt will he pull next?’ has a limited appeal and can quickly become ‘What has he done now?’, accompanied by a heavy sigh. It is a quality appreciated as light relief – not what people look for, or need, in a general.
This maverick, unpredictable spirit is necessary to make breakthroughs and open doors – the nerve to ask: ‘Who says we can’t land rockets vertically like in 1950s B movies?’ Very strange creative people are attractive, and I take delight in Musk’s defiance of the pettifogging dog-in-the-manger dullards who populate public life across the world. He is a shining light through the fog of a grey culture, of dreary pop stars and faded, jaded ‘content’.
The notoriously litigious and humourless American establishment, both political and cultural, is now lined up against him
His closest peers Zuckerberg and Bezos are just grey. Musk is the shitposter ne plus ultra. But this is the most double-edged of all swords. The kind of extreme, immature, under-socialised personality that gets things done can just as likely blow up in its owner’s (and maybe everybody else’s) face.
For Musk’s enemies are ranged, and they have formidable weapons at their disposal. The notoriously litigious and humourless American establishment, both political and cultural, is now lined up against him. The EU delivered a direct threat – ‘In Europe the bird will fly by our rules,’ said the commissioner for the internal market, in the vernacular of a Bond villain. Standing up to these people will require iron discipline, forethought and careful consideration. Such virtues surely must be useful when launching spaceships. Musk would do well to spread them across his portfolio.
He has announced a new Twitter moderation council of all viewpoints. But how far will it really shift the rules? Can even Musk go against the Californian grain and unpick the bizarre concept of ‘gender identity’ (the Twitter report function currently states with a straight face that ‘gender is often assigned at birth based on infant genitalia’) from the ‘harassment’ T&Cs?
Questions have been raised about ad revenue and whether advertisers will want to be associated with a more open platform. I find this peculiar. In this supposed high-tech age of data harvesting and targeted content I don’t think I’ve ever seen a useful ad on twitter. I find out about things like a new flavour of Quavers by seeing them in the shops. Surely I should’ve been bombarded with laser-focused temptations? But no, all I get are invitations to invest in things I don’t understand with peculiar sci fi names like Amegron or Zerinzi.
You can also block an advertiser on Twitter and never see them again which, for an industry based on forced exposure and repetition, seems odd. If that option were available on TV, none of us would’ve heard the Autoglass or GoCompare jingles more than once. I don’t want to put ideas into Elon’s head, but that seems a pretty big back door to leave open.
But the biggest problem for Musk is that sane people hear ‘misinformation’ or ‘hate speech’ and think of Holocaust denial and blatant racial slurs. Others think it means saying people can’t change sex, and that perhaps the earth isn’t going to be consumed in flames by Wednesday week. Returning the second group – much smaller but infinitely more powerful – to a state of accepting other people’s firmer grip on reality will be a mammoth task. This ideology runs through every western cultural product from cat treats to the FBI. Its enablers and enforcers are not going to give it up without an almighty scrap. Does Elon Musk really have the stomach for that fight?
We often hear comparisons of the advent of the internet – and social media in particular – to the coming of the printing press. The big advantage we 21st-century Britons have over that time is that most of us just could not be bothered to defenestrate a priest or pillage a village. This is perhaps a weakness in that we don’t defend things, but is a balancing strength (maybe a bigger one) in that it takes a lot to crank our chains beyond pressing send on a salty tweet. The most the frantically rabid FBPE Twitter faction can muster up in real life is some choreography. There is only one Steve Bray, God be thanked. Eighteenth-century London had streets and streets of them. (America is another case entirely, obviously.)
However, there is a small but growing sense that the internet discourse is slowly, falteringly, edging towards – possibly – not being quite so barking mad. If it takes a madman to help that process along, even very slightly, then so be it.
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