Men Have No One To Aspire To Anymore

Trust me, you don’t want a future full of Elon Musks

Tesla’s Elon Musk wants to be called “Technoking of Tesla,” according to recent regulatory filings. His second-in-command, financial head Zachary Kirkhorn, was also given a presumably tongue-in-cheek Game of Thrones-style name, “Master of Coin.”

There was no formal reason given by the electric-car maker why Musk and Kirkhorn have these very silly official new titles, since they will both still be CEO and CFO, respectively. But I’ll go ahead and hazard a guess: the wealthiest man in the world wants to be a clown when he grows up.

Elon Musk has it all and it’s not enough. He wants more and what he wants is fundamentally worthless, which is applause. High-fives from bros. Chuckles. The man who owns SpaceX wishes he were an alpha troll instead of who he is, a brilliant businessman. Let that sink in.

Musk’s ‘Technoking of Tesla’ in-joke isn’t just an adolescent middle-finger to the SEC, the Federal agency that has fined him in the past for his antics. It’s also him showing off to his dudes, an unimaginably powerful brat who wants everyone to know he doesn’t answer to anyone.

There are men who look up to Musk and why not? The dude is not only living the dream, he’s building the future. But I’m beginning to think the pressure is getting to him. It’s not easy being a legend — he is the closest thing America has to a real-life Tony Stark. Musk is a role model, whether he likes it or not, and he’s teaching men to value retweets over responsibility.

Musk has a long history of writing inflammatory Tweets. He smokes pot on podcasts and shares hateful little memes and begs for attention, even though he doesn’t have to beg for anything, ever.

Musk should be inspiring people for the right reasons. Instead, he’s performing for dipshits. It does depress me to think Earth’s first Mars colony could be a frat house full of farts and giggles. He is a deeply unserious man.

I will now preemptively answer an inevitable comment: I’m a nobody with a blog, my dude. Thank you for reading.

There is a part of me that wants to think Elon Musk’s entire wiseass shtick is a way to short-circuit legitimate criticism. Like Donald Trump, you cannot parody a person who insists on parodying themselves. He is his own jester. Also, the press will always choose to write about his high jinks instead of the safety of his cars, the health of his businesses, or the wisdom of his space-travel plans. I hope this is the method to his madness because if it isn’t then that means Musk is just in it for the lulz.

Maybe he thinks history will remember him for his pranks? Jesus, that’s a pathetic thought to entertain. I don’t mean to offend any comedians out there but there are plenty of amazing funny people in the world and not nearly enough visionaries dreaming of manned spaceflight.

And yet, time and time again, there he is in the news because he made an awkward joke like an unemployed uncle day-drunk on cheap flavored vodka.

Musk is worshipped by the “fuck your feelings” crowd, which is a phrase I have completely misunderstood. The catchphrase, popularized by conservative podcast host Ben Shapiro, is actually a command. He means, literally, make love to your inarticulate rage and envy, your many superficial feelings about gender and vaccines and woke this and that. Afterward, spoon your feelings and whisper sweet nothings to them.

The “fuck your feelings” crowd all have one thing in common and that’s a fear of responsibility. They want to be able to shout prejudiced hot takes in a crowded movie theater and be met with cheers and when that doesn’t happen, their eyes well up with hot tears.

Being called out or questioned or held accountable is a buzzkill. It’s “adulting.” There’s an entire generation of men who don’t want it.

He followed that crowd (or they followed him?) away from California. In his case, he moseyed down to Texas, a state that used to prize strong, silent men but has since settled for loudmouth, two-faced shit talkers. The Lone Star State can have them.

Men have no one to aspire to anymore — Elon Musk clearly doesn’t want the burden. And maybe it’s for the best. What I worry about is a generation of men who have been told virtue is poison, that caring about and being accountable to others — existing outside of the safety of one’s own asshole — is weakness.

There are men online happy to explain to other men that path. I’m not one of them. The only way that I know how to live a happy life is to accept responsibility for my words and actions — I own very little in this world except for what I say and what I do.

This is basic wisdom, right? This is what young men should be taught, early, because it’s the only way to prepare them for what’s coming, which is heartbreak and disappointment but also joy and love if you’re smart enough to cultivate honest relationships with other people.

Or you can hide behind screens and make fun of people who are different from you. You can hoot when a billionaire says “I’m just like you” when he is not like you at all.

I had a few role models growing up. My old man, for one. He was a proud Texan. A couple of high school teachers taught me to trust my instincts. My mom and I watched old movies about men who were resigned to doing the right thing, no matter what. I have had mentors who I looked up to, and they weren’t Musk successful but they didn’t shirk their duties. This life is full of mundane tasks you don’t want to do and difficult choices you don’t want to make, but in the end, you’ll be glad you did what you had to do with an open heart.

There is so much disappointment in modern life, and being a man — or person — of your word is the only cure. Not everyone can grow up to be president but everyone can grow up to post bullshit on the internet. That is a goal that can easily be attained by anyone, it is a sweatless achievement.

I wonder if social media is capitalism’s consolation prize, a serotonin-boosting puzzle designed to soothe the anxieties of masses who think they live in a meritocracy but do not. For generations, American men have been told that if they work hard they will make money and the system is too broken to fulfill that promise. There are plenty of people who toil and cannot pay the rent.

So I understand why shit posting is addictive. You get the rush of joining a mob without having to put on pants. You get to heckle politicians and mock the rich and harass people who have committed the crime of existing without your permission. To true online chuds, the only true happiness is making the happy unhappy by any virtual means possible. Cruel replies, creepy DMs, threatening emails. This is not real power but it gets the juices flowing, it’s like smelling a neighbor’s cooking when you’re hungry, and then your mouth watering.

Perhaps I’m underestimating Musk’s ambitions here. He has real power but he wants to rule the internet, the lord of all memelords. What a strange thing to want especially when you have everything already. It’s disappointing there are anonymous dudes lurking in the shadows living consequence-free lives who look up to Musk but now that I think about it, maybe it’s the other way around?