Bored, Mad, and Posting Like Your Great-Uncle

Charlie Warzel: Elon Musk Is an Honorary Facebook Boomer

I’d like to talk about Elon Musk’s obsession with bots and how it actually illustrates the ways he is an extremely shallow thinker when it comes to online dynamics.

Instead of facing the reality that many people dislike him as a result of his personality, behavior, politics, or shitty management style, he blames bots. Rather than try to understand the gnarly mechanics and hard-to-solve problems of democratized speech, he sorts them into overly simplified boxes like censorship and spam and then casts himself as the crusading hero who can fix it all. But he can’t and won’t, because he doesn’t care enough to find the answers.

This resonated with me because I've seen numerous Musk fans say something like, "man, this guy is revolutionizing electric cars and rockets and you don't like him?" Yeah, you can appreciate the work someone does, but dislike them for their personality. Is this a surprise?

The cult of personality that surrounds Musk sees him as a giant, pulsating brain, playing chess against 10 of his unwitting foes at once, always two steps ahead. But Musk isn’t playing chess or even checkers. He’s just the richest man in the world, bored, mad, and posting like your great-uncle.

Just read the whole thing, it's great.