Enlightened Gatekeeping and Elon Musk (Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back)
Let's check in with the latest adventures of... The Elon Ranger! Hi yo, Silver, away!
Last episode, we ended on a cliffhanger with the Twitter bird tied to the railroad tracks, a runaway locomotive bearing down on it as The Elon Ranger raced to its rescue! What fate awaited them? Would he secure the deal and save the bound bird in time?
Well, loyal reader, we now know that Elon did indeed swoop in and buy Twitter in the nick of time, but as you may have heard, it hasn’t exactly gone smoothly.
In fact, after a few action-packed weeks, Elon posted a poll asking everyone if he should step down from his position as head of Twitter. The results came in, and the people (and bots! Bots are people too!) have spoken: Elon must retire from his role as Head Twit. “Vox populi, vox dei!” The timeline for that transition, however, is still up in the air.
Since then, Elon has also found himself embattled over his decision to suppress links to Substack. A vast majority of people feigning outrage at this purported violation of free speech were lugubriously lamenting the prospect of Musk allowing free speech up to that point.
These people are disingenuous grifters and ignorami, so there’s no need to address them. However, there were a few notable voices, such as Musk’s Twitter File collaborator and beacon of journalism
, who made actually thoughtful pronouncements concerning this development.As I see it, the situation is nuanced: the bane of modern discourse. I don’t think Elon is perfect, and I think he has made missteps during his relatively short time as “Chief Twit.” He has certainly not fully assumed the “Enlightened Gatekeeper” role I had proposed in my previous article on this topic.
That said, I was never expecting him to singlehandedly right all the world’s wrongs, nor do I care if he is a paragon of virtue in his personal life. I am just looking at this small, single skirmish in the larger (figurative!) war against authoritarianism. And for the sake of my trademark brevity, I am putting aside any discussion about his greater machinations or allegiances, which I concur are very open to speculation…
However, the banshees shrieking that Elon has done a terrible job and has destroyed Twitter are clearly either woefully or willfully ignorant.
Excoriating Elon (sounds like a prequel to Finding Forrester) for the state of Twitter is like saying you have this rundown bus station bathroom that is covered floor-to-ceiling in feces, urine, blood, flies, vermin, used condoms, needles, and God knows what else—like a worse version of Silent Hill or a Hunter Biden motel room—then a new janitor shows up with a bucket and mop to try and clean it, promptly wretches because of the disgusting sight and putrid odor, and then you yell at him for making a huge mess of things because he got a little vomit on the floor!
Elon has basically just gotten there and has already done amazing work by lifting bans, rolling back censorship, firing useless or megalomaniacal staff, ramping up child-porn countermeasures, exposing corruption, exploring various verification and monetization options... and he is still just one eccentric, imperfect autist rummaging through the closets there in between running several other companies, saving the planet with electric cars (at least that was the Dem standard until Elon blasphemed), resurrecting space travel, singlehandedly trying to restore population-above-replacement with his small village of bizarrely named offspring, and facing incessant attacks from all sides—including the vapid, shrieking Twitterati and a mutiny from his own deranged "workers" hellbent on actually making things a huge mess. Yet, in that short time he has proven waaaay better than the vast, treasonous, anti-science, fascist monolith of effete hipsters, deep-state stooges, political hacks, and petty tyrants populating and piloting the Borg Cube of Twitter before he arrived.
Maybe I am biased because I know people who have been crippled and had their lives ruined as a result of the “Safe and Effective!™” gene therapy that Twitter helped to foist onto an unsuspecting and panicked population under false pretenses by promoting government and big pharma’s narrative while suppressing any data and experts that went against the Sacred Sacrament of Injection. So, forgive me if I’m not as rankled about the temporary suppression of links to a perceived industry rival or some minor UI quibbles. For me, anyone who cannot grasp this disparity in transgression is completely lacking in perspective or suffering from a severe case of TDS MDS.
Plus, thanks to Elon we get treated to the spectacle of lagoon creatures like Taylor Lorenz scrambling to "defend free speech" after a lifetime of literally crying to silence opposition, since now someone might actually consider transparent, impartial ToS enforcement and curtail their unilateral doxing campaigns. We even got to watch the the apparatchiks at state-funded media NPR rage quit Twitter when they were correctly labeled state-funded media! It's like Christmas came early!
As for putting his “resignation” poll on Twitter, it was kind of like asking a Lord of the Flies room of children who are running around shrieking, eating candy all day, bullying, throwing poo, destroying everything in sight, and setting fires if they want their "strict" new teacher to go away or not... and with botting to boot!
Personally—and this I'm less sure of—I suspect Elon wants, and had always planned, to step down from that role so he could tend to his aforementioned bevy of companies and small village of android and/or android-named children, and this was his carnival barker way of doing so by shouting "Vox populi, Vox dei!" while continuing to guide the company behind the scenes, placating scared advertisers and Loony Lefties alike with an illusory "win" at having deposed their new boogieman arch-vile.
Even with his mistakes and machinations, Elon has still done enormous good in seizing control of Twitter away from its fascist controllers and exposing at least some part of the larger psyop iceberg that we have careened into. From here, whether he charts a course toward even more hopeful horizons or steers the ship into a world-ending whirlpool remains to be seen, but I remain grateful for his time at the helm.
[Click here to read the thrilling conclusion to The Elon Trilogy!]
I probably agree with 98% of what CJ writes... but he most definitely has a bee in his bonnet about Elon M. As he does with Prof. M Desmet. The way I see it... Twitter is slightly better under Musk, than not under Musk... which isn't really saying much anyway. The whole social media pond is pretty much chockablock full of corporate billionaire mucky-muck!