Opinion | Not another column about Elon Musk – Ads, Trends, News
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Opinion | Not another column about Elon Musk

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In “The Insanity of King George,” there are a number of scenes the place very discovered docs dedicate appreciable effort and time to squinting on the contents of the king’s chamber pot. Watching the film, you suppose, “Properly, at the very least we’re at a stage of civilization the place we don’t have to try this! We don’t dwell in a world that hinges so fully on the situation of 1 or two highly effective males that it’s price our whereas to spend hours each day inspecting their stools in minute element and making an attempt to attract conclusions from them.” However then Elon Musk buys Twitter, and — I can consider no higher analogy for what has ensued.

Some of the appropriate tweets about Twitter is that each day it has a brand new predominant character and the purpose is to not be it. However now Musk is the primary character each day, and along with encouraging a few of Twitter’s worst voices, he’s astoundingly boring. Here’s a pattern of his tweets: “The woke thoughts virus is both defeated or nothing else issues.” “Thanksgiving delicacies is such a pleasant symphony of taste!” At one level he tweeted a mildly amusing AI-generated dialog, solely to disclose he hadn’t even crafted the immediate himself. To not point out all of the memes about psyops, though I suppose that counts as a point out.

Most just lately, he suspended journalists who had been reporting on him and his efforts to ban an account that tweeted the situation of his jet, saying that their reporting amounted to sharing “assassination coordinates.” Columns and columns have been poured into the abyss: Why take this step? What about all his protestations about free speech? Will we ever know what his politics are? (May it merely be that they’re what they seem? That he needs to deliver creepy, far-right voices again on Twitter not from an summary, principled dedication to free speech however as a result of these are voices he enjoys listening to, and ban journalists and critics as a result of they’re ones he doesn’t?)

I’ve complained about this earlier than. However one of many minor, within the scheme of issues, but persistent frustrations of the Trump period was the sheer quantity of brainpower that every one varieties of individuals — good, busy, even witty — needed to spend staring into the unfathomable abyss of his phrases and actions and making an attempt to extract that means from them. What was covfefe? People spent hours on that! The sheer quantity of study and jokes and grunting, straining effort to make sense of what made Donald Trump tick — and what made his head open up and a screaming fowl shoot out of it at common intervals — was debilitating.

There are such a lot of folks to learn about on this planet. A few of them are nice and others are sensible and plenty of of them are type and some of them are humorous and well mannered to waiters. A few of them possess exceptional expertise and others are great listeners and nonetheless others know what to do for those who spill sure sorts of issues on sure forms of surfaces. Tons and plenty of them personal cats, and once they log on, all they do is put up photos of these cats doing cute and attention-grabbing issues. There are such a lot of people who find themselves attention-grabbing. And as an alternative we’ve got to observe Elon Musk and Donald Trump. We have now to look at them host SNL, and skim their inane tweets, and know exactly what they’re going via always, as a result of their whims can value folks jobs and damage lives.

There’s something desperately boring about despots and plutocrats. And one of many irritating penalties of an unequal society is that the remainder of us must care what’s going on with them. Now Trump may be gone, however we nonetheless have a predominant character we don’t need. Not that this can be a new phenomenon. The traditional historian Suetonius could not have been essentially the most correct supply, however seeing folks like Musk and Trump in motion, I really feel extra sympathetic to his accounts of what boring folks, given energy answerable to their whims, wind up doing. I assumed it was ridiculous when he stated Nero, actually the emperor of Rome, determined that, truly, what he wished to be was an actor — however right here is Musk, one of many richest males on the planet, who has determined for no motive in any respect that what he needs to be is a Twitter troll! And never even a humorous one; simply as transphobic and anti-vax and terrible because the bathroom normal. I’m sorry I doubted you, Suetonius! Perhaps if we’re fortunate Musk will begin doing extra of the enjoyable caesar issues, reminiscent of making an attempt to get a horse into the Senate, and can cease his mission to show Twitter right into a hateful cesspool! However someway I doubt it.

I hate that we’ve got to concentrate. Our lives can be impacted if Trump is once more elected president, say, or the roads are immediately crammed with exploding automobiles, or if the place the place journalists go to water-cooler about breaking information will get seized up and its guidelines rewritten, seemingly arbitrarily, on the fly. Mark Zuckerberg adjustments an algorithm, and livelihoods within the content material economic system shudder in terror. I would really like nothing higher than to not must know or care about these folks. With the period of time I pour into them, I might have invented Narnia twice. However as an alternative we’re sitting there squinting into the king’s stool.

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