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SundayStyle's avatar

It's absolutely true that Musk is trying to wrap himself in the mantle of the Common Man, embracing all the conservative assumptions about what the Common Man wants: “Fuck your universal healthcare and access to the polls, I want to watch Tom Cruise blow things up while I die of a treatable disease, Wokesters.”

But I find the most tragi-comic – and maddening -- thing about Musk to be his fans. When I look at what’s happening at Twitter, I’m reminded of the tried and true comedic premise of the protagonist who can never admit he made a mistake: he never course-corrects, his every new blunder generates an accelerating level of chaos, until finally he’s standing in the street after setting his own house on fire, loudly proclaiming “I meant to do that.”

Except in Musk’s case it’s his fanbois who are saying it *FOR* him. In a month, if the only things remaining at Twitter are Elon himself and a mainframe computer the size of a bowling alley, and he has to run an extension cord to a neighboring building because nobody paid the electric bill, his fanbois will STILL be saying “he meant to do that.”

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DrBDH's avatar

I’m already tired of Musk. He’s so predictable, as if a TV series writers’ room was told their show needed a rich, unselfaware asshole character and they decided to toss in every cliche they could think of. To me the more interesting part of Roy’s essay is the question, “What is the right standard for good art?” How many people get to see a movie depends on a lot more than its quality, like the luck of the draw of opening weekend, or how much PR was pushed early on, so that’s not a reliable measure. I’m reminded of a back and forth in high school art class, where we were exposed to representative examples from centuries of painting in the hope we would take away a lifetime of appreciation for how art (or artists) work. To a student’s objection that he already knew what he liked, our teacher replied, “You know what you like, but do you know why you like it?” I haven’t looked at a painting, watched a movie, read a book or listened to music since then without hearing that question in the back of my mind. I doubt Musk has any idea why he likes “Top Gun” more than “Coda,” and why the latter has more to say to him than the former ever could.

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