Ooooooooh! Elon Musk! Elon Muuuuuuuuusk! He comes like a towering Godzilla of Capitalism, like the old Sim City game punishing you for your economy running too hot.
It’s like if you took every evil adjective of every Bond villain, ran it through a Warner Brothers’ cartoon filter, had Mel Brooks direct, and… fudge, there’s no use comparing this self-digesting multimedia fireball of midlife crisis frenzy. YOU explain Elon Musk? I dunno, “lovechild of Cthulhu and Mammon?” “The business news world’s equivalent of ___ye West?”
Here it is, Halloween 2022, and the scariest recent event that anyone can think of is that the Musk-Twitter deal went through. People bailing, mass panic. Yet it has been a few days, and Twitter is not, to me, noticeably worse than it has been over the 13 years I’ve been there.
This is precisely what I predicted would happen up to now. And now, speaking from my experience in media science studies in the context of eCommerce marketing, I will walk you through the logic of How I Knew That – and how I know the ways this social media storm is likely to abate.
I don’t blame anybody for bailing right now. Yes, the big stomping global gazillianaire muppet monster towering down Fifth Avenue is an impressive public spectacle which the media likes to follow around like puppies being fed a trail of breadcrumb treats. Join me after the jump, I promise you that once again, it’s not the end of the world…
Elon Musk is not an all-powerful god.
Just thought I’d say that out loud once. lest we forget…
Elon just got bullied into buying Twitter. They came after him in court. He had to pay the $44 B.s, that’s how the rules are written in the global economy’s Monte Carlo casino, capitalism’s baccarat table. How much of a media circus clown is Elon?
and his “massive mechazilla tower,” their words, not mine.
Elon Musk is so bored, he’s been to space.
THAT is how trivially he’s playing his cards right now. He just got through posting some outrageous social media tweet, everybody cried about it, he deleted it. Ha ha Trick or Treat! This Twitter fiasco is a modern media passion play. The closest historic precedent to the current Twitter ownership crisis that I can think of as a pop off the top, would be William Randolph Hearst.
Here’s the wiki rabbit hole for those who want to refresh their research on Mr. Hearst of 1890’s fame, his newspaper ownership at the time, and the dawn of the term “yellow journalism.” Fascinating situation then. Just as Hearst dictated public opinion with his newspaper monopoly, Musk sees the stranglehold that Twitter has on the global conversation and figures if he controls that, he controls the media.
Elon Musk is another fascinating freak of nature, like every dystopian sci-fi author of the 1980s writing a corporate cyberpunk villain. But Muskie boy is no Eldon Tyrell. He knows this.
Say it with me: Elon Musk is just bored, and a monster built by the rules of American capitalism. In a twist Rod Serling (or Black Mirror (or Philip K. Dick et al)) should have seen coming, Musk is psychologically afflicted with a special kind of stress. For some reason, this man can’t be satisfied reclining on the sundeck of his yacht getting blown by coke whores all day.
Like a Twilight Zone episode with a heavy Socialist moral, Musk is following in Howard Hughes‘ footsteps in the path of world-tier billionaires slowly going crazy. Call it “money madness,” when technology-minded people (which Elon only pretends to be) have more money than they know what to do with and their ego builds up into a supernova before inevitably collapsing into ashes. Hughes ended his years a paranoid, germ-o-phobic, reclusive maniac. After such stunts as the Spruce Goose.
That was Hughes’ version of Elon’s space shot. He built the Spruce Goose just to fly it once. For a mile. That’s Elon Musk buying Twitter right now.
I Agree That Elon Musk is an Irresponsible Manchild
Just to say it out loud. History is FULL of these jokers! You wanna know why they built the pyramids? That is because some bored, rich pharaoh got bored with being fanned with palm fronds, fed peeled figs, and blown by temple sluts all day. He grew so bored, and had nothing to do with his enslaved nation, so he made everybody build him a monument.
Never underestimate the power of capitalism to reveal the core flaws of mankind.
But let’s get back to “capitalism” for a minute. Just to map out a few more proof points for you eCommerce marketing guys about to panic and call up your humble consultant, me, to yank a social media campaign off Twitter. Hear me out:
- Elon will not own Twitter forever
- Twitter is a business. It has to make money or it goes the way of MySpace.
- Elon may very well tank Twitter and sell it off. If so, don’t worry, it’ll bounce back.
- Twitter is an integral slice of global commerce; not only businesses, but governments rely on Twitter as a communication platform. They have contracts with ad companies. The stockholders know whence side their bread is buttered.
Remember, Elon Musk just got sued into buying Twitter; and if he wrecks it too much before he sells it off, he’ll be sued again.
But seriously, that’s how we construct this stupid anthill of a society. The only reward we allow people at the top with all their money is to manipulate society like an apathetic cat. Toying with society as a cat with a mouse.
Musk Will Either Sell Twitter Or Be Forced to Appoint Staff
If he chooses the latter, it will become one of his neglected shadow companies. Did you know Musk makes solar power equipment? Did you know his Neuralink Corporation proposes to make tech stuff for the medical, prosthetics, military, and robotics industries?
If We Lose Twitter, There’s Platform Alternatives Already
So far, I see no great mass exodus of the business world from Twitter. Mainly because there are corporations that are ready to sue before they would break years-long business contracts.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying there’s no reason that I would leave Twitter. I left my account mostly dormant for years except to post updates on my webcomic. It’s only now that “Social Media Manager” exists as a job title, that Twitter has become a major eCommerce marketing juggernaut that it is.
Honestly, a global communications platform that weathered four years of president ShitCannon Mouth can withstand its CEO playing with it, before the adults in the room clear their throats and suggest that he give the toy back to the nice business managers and be on his way.
Twitter Alternatives Include…
Tumblr, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, but most of these are laughably inadequate to replace the big T feature-for-feature. Giant media companies like Twitter are partially a public utility. You can’t just pull the plug on a major commercial telecommunications channel like this and not get repercussions. There’s a Twitter engineer currently coding a replacement as we speak: Bluesky, sign up for the release there.
But hey, you kids get tired of Elon Musk (AND Facebook’s Zuckerberg, AND Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and whomever else is playing Snidely Whiplash in your personal passion theater today), all you have to do is vote. 60% of you aren’t even saying you’re voting this US Midterm 2022. You can throw Democrats at big business, they’ll regulate it sensibly.
VOTE! That’s how you use government to reign in corporations and tycoons and robber barons. Please, if you could just trouble yourself to check some boxes on a piece of paper for five minutes.
This tells me that 60% of 18-29-year-olds need an ass whuppin'. Fucking abandon your democracy, then don't complain later when it abandons you! https://t.co/ySoIGjbHDt
— Penguin Pete 🐧| writer elite 📰🎙️🎥🎨 (@Penguin_Pete) October 30, 2022
Can we relax now? Don’t Panic!
Drink your Ovaltine and watch your cartoons now.
Just to land a final point, we got more than one wacky tech bazillionaire out there, some of them dead now. Remind me to tell you about John McCafe sometime.
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BONUS CONTENT!: Audio Drama Halloween Scares
Surely you recall (on one of the four occasions I’ve had to blog this year so far) our audio drama podcast project, where I teased season 5 of Average joe Travels the California Inscape. I said season five would end, after eleven grueling episodes, on Halloween day. Well here it is, and the final episode of the “killer pumpkins” season is ready to post any second now, so brush up on the prior ten eps here and catch up with the funniest and spookiest (and slimiest) podcast drama crew to ever sail the social media seas!
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