Tom Nichols: The Childish Drama of Elon Musk

[highplainsdem]

Tweet from The Atlantic minutes ago, then the direct link to the article and an excerpt:

Link to tweet

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/the-childish-drama-of-elon-musk/672496/

Now, unless you’re Very Online—and I am, for both personal and professional reasons—none of this matters very much at the moment. But Musk’s weird rampage does have an impact on the way the world around you exchanges information. Twitter has many levels; for some people, it’s a place to talk about oddball hobbies and exchange pet pictures. (Have you met my cat?) But it’s also an extremely valuable conduit for news, information, culture, and argument. Twitter doesn’t control the news, but it helps to shape public debate about many issues. Indeed, Musk’s entire public rationale for taking over Twitter was to preserve an important venue for free speech.

Musk’s defense of free speech is nonsense. One of the world’s richest men—who is not shy about his politics or his contempt for the free press—has reinstated Donald Trump, white supremacists, and any number of dangerous malefactors to Twitter, but he has made it clear that Donie O’Sullivan is beyond the pale. He has purchased an important and influential piece of the public square not to enhance public debate, but to punish people who annoy him. As if to underscore this point, Musk joined a Twitter Spaces live audio chat with journalists who asked him to explain what he was doing. He abruptly left the meeting—and then Twitter Spaces itself was shut down. (This was, he tweeted, to fix a “Legacy bug.” He announced on Friday evening that Spaces had been restored.)

I actually don’t subscribe to some of the more nefarious theories about Musk’s motivations (nor will I share them). I think he lost his cool because for more than a month, he’s been in way over his head with an impulsive purchase, his fortunes are plunging, and he got booed by a crowd of thousands of people at a Dave Chappelle performance—which, for a guy like Musk, is probably an unforgivable injury from what should be an adoring public.

But we can at least shelve all of Musk’s blather about free speech. Twitter is an important part of how we disseminate and process news, and it’s now in the hands of an irritable and unpredictable child. This is one more step in the infantilization of American life, in which we must accommodate and work around the behavior of grown men and women who not so long ago would have been pushed out of public life either by our collective political disgust or by responsible shareholders who would insist that their corporate leaders get back to work instead of making a spectacle of themselves.

[Emrys]

1. Glad to see Tom wading in

For anyone who missed it, here are his earlier thoughts about the Twitter clusterfuck:

Hi, Twitter liberals, it’s time for us to have a talk. About Twitter. And about you not being insufferable about Twitter. Which many of you have become. /1

There is no doubt at all that Elon Musk buying this platform was a bad thing, and his ownership makes it worse. Creepy freaks and bargain basement ads. Musk himself has become a giant adolescent troll. So stipulated. /2

But many of you seem absolutely determined to find every one of these creepy freaks, and to engage Musk, and to wallow in the mud with every terrible account. This is childish. Ignore those accounts. /3

Set your notifications to Latest, not Home. Block a lot. Set notifications so that you don’t see tweets from people who don’t follow you. Refuse to engage with five-follower accounts that went active last week. /4

But if you really hate it here that much, leave. Stop posting constantly about how much hatred you see and how terrible it is. If it’s that painful to you, go. But stop posting what amounts to “I wanna leave, but come with me.” Be a grownup. Stay or go. /5

I have all of those settings in place, I block with the flick of a finger, and my Twitter experience really hasn’t changed that much since Musk arrived. Yours needn’t either, but many of you seem almost eager for it. /6

If you really want to piss off Musk, stay here and ignore him and the trolls. Make some popcorn and get comfortable as he burns down billions of dollars in value and drives off advertisers. The rest of the time, just talk to the people you always talked to. /7

But if your Twitter existence is going to be nothing but arguing with teenage dumbasees and Musk fanboys, and then bitching about how terrible Twitter is, better for you and for all of us that you just leave. /8

Because right now, the only people that are really polluting my timeline are clueless people who keep dragging trolls into my timeline so they can argue with them. This is inane. Musk is going to do many more terrible things before this is over. But it will end. /9

Until then, in the name of creating a more copacetic Twitter environment for myself, I really am going to start blocking people who do nothing but argue with trolls or bitch about Twitter. Be adults. Stay or go. But stop whining to me and yelling at every mook you find./10x

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1602492422688309249.html

Originally posted as an OP here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217459067