These past few weeks, I’ve been watching with endless fascination the antics of two wildly wealthy men: Kanye West (or the artist formerly known as Kanye West or whatever is an appropriate iteration of his ever-changing favorite moniker) and Elon Musk. Since the beginning of this year, West has been sharing details of his personal life on social media and has been obsessing over his ex-wife. He then posted a bunch of bizarre anti-Semitic opinions, confusing freedom of speech with hate speech. Various brands associated with him walked out, and within a few weeks, he managed to successfully reduce his net worth in half, down from an earlier estimated $1.5 billion to around $400 million.
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West was making headlines when Elon Musk’s half-hearted attempt to take over Twitter became a reality. Over the past few weeks, Musk has paid off a massive $44 billion plus taken home the Blue Bird and had several meltdowns when things didn’t go his way. First, they said they would charge $20 a month for verification badges, then engaged in Mumbai street-level negotiations with author Stephen King to bring it down to $8, then fired half the staff, then Said he was a free speech evangelist therefore would reduce content moderation on the platform, a move that saw an immediate surge in hate speech, which led to advertisers fleeing the platform, further hurting business. Through it all, Musk continued to tweet conspiracy theories and post crude memes, blaming everyone else for all his problems without, seemingly, spending a minute introspecting his own actions. .
Kanye West’s anti-Semitic views have caused brands to cut him off Photo Credit: AP
social media endorphins
In both their cases, the deep spiral was fueled by social media validation. In a world where celebrity is the biggest currency, it is conceivable that being rich and famous means a free pass. There are fans for all situations. When thousands of people are clapping and cheering you for posting something bad, then it feels like posting something bad. This vicious cycle of pushing the envelope and being recognized in it will inevitably take that one step too far. A moderate narrative is unlikely to go viral. In this sense, celebrities are also normal people because being boring means being unloved.
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When Kasturi accidentally thought of taking over Twitter for the first time, her legions of fans cheered her on. It would be unreasonable to think that his last actions were not inspired by the endorphins derived from it. Like a young boy who jokingly rolled up his shirt sleeve and then sat on the shoulders of his cheering friends in a boxing ring, West and Musk found themselves in the middle of a battle that had neither the skills nor the Advice. De-escalate from. While West’s actions were self-destructive, Musk would have a major impact on the world. People are already paying for it in lost jobs and stalled careers. In the near future, unregulated and unverified speech on Twitter is likely to harm whistleblowers and activists in all parts of the world.
Kasturi’s actions will have a big impact on the world. Photo Credit: Reuters
new rules, new mistakes
More significantly, it is clear that now more than ever, the world is only a rich man’s toy. That Musk could so easily buy and break something that millions of people use would have been shocking at any other time. But now, we just shrug and move on. We have already begun to forget the antics of Donald Trump, the disruptor, who threw away the rule book and did as he pleased while occupying the most powerful office in the world.
The past few decades have seen the glorification of “disruption”. Move fast and break things, they said. Shoot first and aim later, he said. The old rules are irrelevant, he said, they have been holding us back. Well… it looks like the new rules aren’t much better. It has been a small hope from disruption to devastation. For now, the cautionary tales are steeped in the myth of their still-charismatic hero, but sometime in the near future we’ll have to face the reality that maybe breaking things isn’t the best way to make them better.
Until then though, we have no choice but to become accustomed to these upheavals, in this technology-fuelled world where things start, move and end very quickly – cataclysms are the only constants. But hey, thanks to the fact that all the mudslinging is now public, we’ll at least be totally entertained. Have popcorn ready. Always.
Veena Venugopal is authored by Independence Day: A People’s History.