Enlightened Gatekeeping and Elon Musk (Episode IV: A New Hope)

The Elon Ranger rides again! Yet, what do we really want from those who take the reins of power? Hi yo, Silver, away!

One million Internet Years ago—on April 14, 2022—the Dogefather Elon Musk offered to purchase American social media company Twitter, Inc. for $43 billion.

As you may have heard, it hasn’t exactly gone smoothly.

Various hijinks ensued, leaving Musk and Twitter gearing up for a legal showdown in October, which promises to serve as the Grand Guignol to this ongoing drama. While all the shenanigans and memes may make it easy to downplay the importance of the outcome, in actuality that importance can scarcely be overstated.

If all goes well in court this October, either Musk seizes control of Twitter, or he backs out of the deal, causing Twitter stock to collapse in on itself like dying star, the last shrieking vestiges of the platform disintegrated in the black hole that ensues.

Either way, it would be an improvement. Twitter has served as a de facto digital public square for years now. Unfortunately, its gatekeepers have nefariously wielded this role to usher in and amplify groups they favor, while slamming the door on those they do not. Suppressing the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story, purging heretics who dare defy the The Church of The Science©, banishing to the Shadow Realm any believers in the Old Gods Sciences (like—Dear Heavens!—biology)… the list goes on and on. Oh, and they booted the sitting President of the United States via a “somewhat tortured analysis” of “seemingly anodyne tweets.”

In short, Twitter is melting people’s brains and destroying society. It’s time to give Elon a go at it.

“But, why?” Some may ask. “What will he do differently?” Well, to answer that I spent some time pondering an age-old quandary.

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“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

Juvenal posed this timeless question in his Satires almost two millennia ago. In current parlance, it asks “who watches the watchmen?” Much like his pithy observation about “panem et circenses” (“bread and circuses”), also found in Satires, Juvenal’s insightful admonition about the catch-22 of vested authority is just as relevant in our modern age as it was in his.

(Sure, he was focused on whether men could be trusted to watch over sexy ladies without falling for their feminine wiles—how mature do you expect someone named Juvenal to be?—but the broader interpretation and application still holds.)

Ever since Alan Moore’s Watchmen introduced me to the phrase, I have spent a lot of time over the years pondering it. One offshoot of all that pondering was a recent rumination on “gatekeepers.” In media, people often wax (and wane) philosophical about the problems posed by gatekeepers: individuals or institutions who control the flow of information or content.

“We must eliminate these gatekeepers!” many exhorted.

I tended to agree with them.

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Back in high school, when I was rocking out to groups like Machines of Loving Grace and The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets on a Discman© that skipped in a gentle breeze, I lamented that the gatekeepers at radio stations and MTV (Yes, the “M” really did stand for “Music” at one point, I swear.) didn’t feature the kind of obscure metal bands that I liked. Surely, I wasn’t alone in this sentiment.

It seemed unfair that “they” could decide what we saw and heard. I’m reminded of the MTV interview with David Bowie and Mark Goodman back in 1983 where Bowie maneuvers a stumbling Goodman around like an Aikido master, leading him to reveal the network’s racial biases and content curation before Bowie shoots him a glance so piercing that I still hide behind the couch whenever I see it. It is the closest thing to Ghost Rider’s Penance Stare that I have ever seen in real life.

No wonder he was afraid of Americans.

To be fair, there were oases. MTV, for example, carved out time for lesser-known artists and less mainstream genres on Headbangers Ball, 120 Minutes, and Yo! MTV Raps. And—to their infinite credit—they aired the transcendent, psychedelic animation showcase Liquid TV, which brought us instant classics like Aeon Flux and Beavis and Butthead. Still, I used to dream of a day when we wouldn’t have to rely on the capricious benevolence of corporate archons.

That day arrived with the advent of the Internet. With it, came sites that allowed anyone across the world to upload art, writings, music, and videos: the weird, the quirky, the iconoclastic, the dangerous, the artistic, the mad, the counterculture, the counter-counterculture. There were no more gatekeepers! The doors were thrown wide open, and it was glorious. For a while.

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In time, digital empires rose and fell. What emerged from the rubble, though it often hid behind the façade of our fleeting freedom, was once again a kingdom of keys and guarded gates.

Now, the new Checkpoint Charlies generally fall into two categories:

1) Mirror Gatekeepers: This type often bemoans the injustice of gatekeeping… until they wrest control of the keys and the baton. Then, they get an unsettling gleam in their eye. Once they wield the power, they revel in regulating the flow of people and ideas just as zealously and arbitrarily as those they once reviled. Lately, this mentality can be found in “Social Vengeance Warriors” and the type of “Vengeance Equity” fueling the euphemistically branded “anti-racist” movement or the radical “trans” lobby.

2) Shadow Gatekeepers: This type operates out of sight… if they exist at all in a conventional sense. Perhaps they are just some algorithm, an Ultron-like AI surreptitiously excising concepts and content creators in the blink of the public eye, the victims disappearing as if Skynet had plucked them from the timeline. Perhaps they are an unholy melding of man and machine, all watched over by machines of loving grace, some Allied Mastercomputer spreading fear, hate, and confusion: “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream Appeal My Ban.”

Regardless of which form they took, the gatekeepers had returned.

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It turns out the old adage is true: nature abhors a vacuum. Much like warlords coalescing power around themselves in some anarchic Mad Max, Fist of the North Star wasteland, a world without gatekeepers would—in one way or another—manifest them. Thus, we ended up with their Mirror and Shadow variants. Ordo ab chao.

It was then I realized the solution to my corollary to Juvenal’s millennia-old quandary: who would keep the gatekeepers honest?

I had been trapped in an antiquated view of gatekeepers, which made me think we must either abolish them or install some paragon of discernment—akin to Plato’s philosopher-king or some 18th century enlightened despot. But, it was not such an open-and-shut case, after all.

We did need someone to man the gates, but their new role should be solely to keep the gate open.

We just need someone strong and stalwart enough to “plant themselves like a tree” next to that gate and tell everyone to keep their hands to themselves and to keep it moving. All manner of ideology and intent will compel individuals to reach for the gate—drawn like a sailor to a siren’s song or a wizard to a ring—and our sentry will deter them all in kind.

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Enter the Doge.

Elon Musk may have his eccentricities (don’t we all?), but on the issue of free speech he has evinced an admirable adherence to absolutism.

Though noting, in practice, that local laws would likely have to dictate users’ experiences to some degree, Musk’s takes regarding the various Twitter controversies over the years seem in line with his overall ideology. He also has shown no compunction pissing off people across the board, from his mockery of Tesla-lovin’ Dems and Wokesters to his tiff with Trump, Musk has shown he has the cajones (and the capital) to tell any would-be censors to go kick rocks.

For the brainwashed Borg who fear this means they will now be damned to eternal bombardment of unwelcome content, like our humble narrator in A Clockwork Orange, this is a learning opportunity. They have been conditioned to believe they have no agency and must rely on the benevolent, just hand of Big Brother to tell them—nay, the very world!—what is safe and good… and what is dangerous and evil. If control is wrested from that all-loving, all-knowing hand, these individuals will hopefully realize that they had the ability to mute, block, and engage with content as they see fit, individually, all along. As we all should.

Indeed, one of the many great ironies here is the mainstream and social media apparatchiks playing Chicken Little as they stare down the Musk-ocalypse with growing panic. Stern faces and concerned tones tell us of the latest “existential threat to our Democracy!™️” This time they warn of a motivated individual or group wielding the Narrative Control Machine to mold the minds of millions—yet, they seem blithely unaware that they are clearly describing their own manipulative tactics. After all, they are supposed to be the ones doing the controlling, you see! We have even seen the rise and fall (and I fear furtive resurrection) of an actual Orwellian Ministry of Truth, all since Elon dared suggest keeping the gates open on the public square. It is possible that some of the MSM and Big Tech tyrants truly cannot fathom anyone getting the gatekeeper gig and then not immediately abusing that power to silence dissidents.

By contrast, Elon claims to welcome all his critics.

I hope he gets his chance to prove it.

[Click here to read the next thrilling episode of The Elon Trilogy!]

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(Footnote 1: Yes, I know Checkpoint Charlie was not a person, but slang for “Checkpoint C” on the Berlin Wall. Sometimes you have to take literary liberties : )

(Footnote 2: As I was poring over Elon tweets toward the end of this article, it reminded me of how the reliance on Twitter quotes has devastated journalism. I hope to revisit that in an article someday….)