Stop Treating Elon Musk Like Trump
He’s not the President. Stop treating him like one.
Sunday afternoon, Twitter/Tesla/SpaceX/your own head CEO Elon Musk posted a Tweet from Qatar, where he was attending the World Cup Final with Jared Kushner.
Putting aside the fact that I cannot think of a least fun person to watch a World Cup Final with than Jared Kushner, Musk’s subsequent Tweets were as normal and straightforward and dull as you’d expect anyone’s to be from a World Cup Final: There is something depressing about the world’s richest person spending his time at such a glorious event staring at his phone. It didn’t strike me as that big of a deal: Rich guy goes to rich guy event.
But later that day on CNN — before Musk posted his should-I-step-down-at-Twitter poll — the network ran a long segment asking very serious questions about whether it was hypocritical of Musk to post a Tweet revealing his real-time location after spending the last couple of days defending his (very dumb) suspension of several journalists for (supposedly) revealing his “assassination coordinates” by linking to a site that tracks (via public information) Musk’s private jet. And while it probably is a little hypocritical, sure, it was hard to miss the subtext of what CNN was doing: It was covering Musk as Twitter CEO the way it covered Donald Trump at President. “LEADER SAYS X, THEN ACTS LIKE Y” was the fundamental construction of just about every Trump story when he was President. Trump would do something horrible, lie about it, then claim it was fine, then blast a political enemy who would do the same thing, be called hypocritical, and the whole process would repeat itself. It kept on like that for, seriously, four years. It was pretty exhausting.
It did make sense, though, because Trump absolutely had to be called out for all of it: He was the President of the United States. It is the job of the press to be a relentless chronicler and questioner of the President of the United States: One could argue it’s our central purpose.
But — and it feels weird to have to say this out loud — Twitter is not, in fact, the United States. Elon Musk does not run a country. He runs a (money-losing, not nearly as powerful as journalists claim it is) social media website that he mostly uses as a way to troll and mock people he doesn’t like. Treating him like Trump, acting as if it’s as important to keep Musk accountable as it was to keep Trump accountable, reveals a rather stunning lack of perspective. It’s almost as if some journalists consider Twitter as important as the country itself.
I actually don’t doubt some journalists feel that way: Certainly, the obsessive, desperately thirsty way many use the platform would seem to suggest as much. But for all the talk of Twitter being the “town square,” that’s not what it is. It is, at its core, more than it is anything else, a place for obsessives to come and talk to one another. Journalists can claim they’re doing it to break news. They can claim it’s essential to their careers. They can argue all they want that it’s some sort of public utility. But it isn’t. It’s just a place they go to chatter on all day because they’re lonely and want someone to talk to. This is what Twitter is. This is how journalists use it, this is how Trump used it, this is how Musk uses it. Acting as if it has some sort of larger purpose, as if it will be impossible to break news without it, as if the republic is in some sort of danger because of what Musk is doing with it, is ridiculous. Only 23 percent of Americans are even on Twitter, and of that 23 percent, 25 percent are responsible for 97 percent of the Tweets. I’d argue a massive number of that 25 percent are journalists (or information and attention addicts — pretty much the same thing) just talking to other journalists and attention addicts. Because these people are unusually loud, it makes it feel like Twitter is more important than it is. But it isn’t. It’s just a dumb website in a long line of them. They were there before Twitter; they will be there after Twitter. It’s just a website. We can all get off it if we want. Most of us aren’t even on it in the first place.
And Musk is just a guy who runs a website. He is not a world leader. He does not have to be “held accountable,” at least not in the same way that Trump had to be held accountable. Musk is the main character of cable news now because Trump isn’t anymore (at least for now). But being the main character of cable news does not, in fact, make you as important as being the President of the United States. Elon Musk isn’t as important as we’re all pretending he is, and Twitter isn’t even close to important as the media is acting like it is. Twitter is just a dumb website, Elon Musk is just a rich guy going through a midlife crisis and cable news is being lazy because the people run it wrongly convinced themselves that the entire world could be found on Twitter and are now freaking out that their little playground is being disrupted.
I’ve said before that you need to leave Twitter, now. But even if you’re still on it, we need to stop pretending it matters more than it does. It’s a site for lonely attention addicts, from the man who runs it to the journalists who can’t let go of it. It’s not a town square. It’s not a country. It’s not even a successful website. Let’s stop pretending any of it’s real. It’s not.
Will Leitch writes multiple pieces a week for Medium. Make sure to follow him right here. He lives in Athens, Georgia, with his family and is the author of five books, including the Edgar-nominated novel How Lucky, now out from Harper Books. He also writes a free weekly newsletter that you might enjoy.
