In Defense of Recreational Flamethrowers
Elon Musk: Making Science Great Again
It’s hard to argue that flamethrowers are an actual necessity. The same could be said about grenade launchers for civilian use, street legal cars that can travel 270 MPH, or a 12 foot tall bi-pedal exoskeleton weighing a literal ton. All of these things are legal and can be purchased in the US. But this is not a defense of the ability of Americans to purchase virtually anything they want — more specifically, it is a defense of the scientific awareness and that Elon Musk has prompted through his unconventional and well-publicized ideas.
“I want to be clear that a flamethrower is a super terrible idea. Definitely don’t buy one. Unless you like fun.”
— Elon Musk
Last December, Elon Musk tweeted:
Musk often says things that sound like jokes but are not — especially on Twitter. On Christmas Eve, he’d evidently sold enough $20 hats, bringing in about $1 million for the company. The flamethrower went up for sale on January 27th and by February 1st, the flamethrowers were sold out. Twenty thousand flamethrowers at $500 a unit meant about $10 million in revenue in about 100 hours.
With every outlandish company announcement or tweet, Musk grabs news headlines and prompts discussion on a vast array of scientific and futuristic topics that include terraforming Mars; converting automobiles, households and as much industry as possible from fossil fuels to sustainable energy; implementing a new form of high-speed city-to-city transportation via vacuum tube; relieving traffic congestion with the tunnels created by his Boring Company; creating a mind-computer interface to enhance human health and brainpower; and saving humanity from the future threat of an artificial intelligence that can potentially eliminate the human species.
Musk’s ideas and projects are irresistible, largely because they tap into the public’s science fiction fantasies. For decades, sci-fi has shaped our very conception of what the future should be like. At a moment in which technology seems to be leading us toward a dystopia, Musk offers an alternative future, where science and technology is utilized for the betterment of mankind.
Americus Reed, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, studies the way that personal identity shapes purchasing behavior. In Musk’s case, consumers feel like they’re investing in their future selves by buying his products, matching who they are now with who they expect to be in a fantastical future. At the same time, they can vicariously become a little more like Musk, the visionary. Musk’s name has become synonymous with — if not bigger than — his companies. To buy into SpaceX, Tesla or The Boring Company is to trust that Musk will make good on his vision of the future.
Musk’s appeal as entrepreneur and technologist is not about what he does but who he is. He is not only trying to remold the entrenched industries of automotive, energy and interplanetary travel but also, as writer Neil Strauss points out, to disrupt our very relationship with distance and time. He is, essentially, a geek icon.
“The decision to move from selling hats to flamethrowers to financing a massive tunnel-boring operation is such a preposterous proposition that it’s hard not to be charmed by it,” said Dan Casey, senior editor at Nerdist.
In an age in which all tech entrepreneurs promise they have the keys to the future, Musk also offers something else: a “meaningful worldview.” This was the conclusion of Ashlee Vance, author of the biography Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future and a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. “Where Mark Zuckerberg wants to help you share baby photos, Musk wants you to … well … save the human race from self-imposed or accidental annihilation,” Vance writes. Creating a sustainable ecosystem beyond our planet is Musk’s organizing purpose, giving each of his projects an almost moral clarity.
“[Musk] appeals to the futurist in all of us, as we dream of what might be. And he’s savvy enough to ask us to pay up front, thereby getting his customers to provide the funding for his dreams,” said John Mullins, an associate professor of management practice at London Business School.
While Musk’s sci-fi indulgences could easily be interpreted as pure marketing stunts, Vance, the biographer who spent a year with Musk for his book, said the entrepreneur believes in his grand concepts.
“When he says, ‘I want to go to Mars and create a multi-planetary species,’ to me, there is no gimmick behind that at all. That is his honest-to-God driving principle of life. It’s the only thing that really explains why he was willing to risk all of his money and his time and his marriages and time with his children to do all of this stuff.”
Ultimately, it’s easy to criticize someone with such ambitious ideas (and one who probably should stop tweeting his every single thought). But say what you want about the guy — he dreams big, is tackling problems few others would, and he is making science interesting to the average person in a way that few people besides Bill Nye, Carl Sagan, or Neil deGrasse Tyson have done.
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Casey Botticello is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of Blogging Guide, an online community of writers with an award-winning newsletter. He is also the creator of the popular Medium Writing Course and the Substack Newsletter Course.
Casey previously worked at several tech startups, a lobbying & strategic communications firm, and has created several businesses of his own. He is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. in Urban Studies.
You can connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, follow his Medium publications, Digital Marketing Lab and Medium Blogging Guide, or reach out to him directly on his personal website.