Elon Musk holds out the promise of restoring “free speech” to Twitter. Yesterday the Tesla CEO offered $43 billion dollars to buy the social media platform outright. Conservatives are intoxicated by the idea. If by some miracle the shareholders take the offer, Musk promises to relax speech-policing and make the algorithms open source.
Presumably, he’ll continue shitposting from his toilet.
If we take Musk at his word, his intention is to open real debate and save our democracy. Then again, he also told us “China rocks,” robot slaves will replace every worker, universal basic income will soon be necessary, all vehicles will be autonomous, AI will achieve a god-like status, brain implants will connect us to that god, and ultimately, there’s a billion-to-one chance our universe is just a computer simulation.
A cynical listener might suspect this cyborg car-dealer is taking the public for a ride.
Even so, in the case of Twitter, the excitement is understandable. Starting with the Great Meme War that led up to Trump’s 2016 election, the platform laid waste to the funniest dudes on Frog Twitter—from Ricky Vaughn to Kantbot2000—and eventually, the cyber-Stasi banned the sitting President of the United States.
Throughout the pandemic, Twitter squashed valid medical information, promoted lockdown and vaxx propaganda, suppressed Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell, and scrubbed any evidence of election fraud, all while allowing tranny activists to groom children. However, their worst offense—starting with the first tweet ever sent—was to reduce public discourse to byte-sized quips and goofy memes. (By the way, you can follow me @JOEBOTxyz.)
There was a time, not long ago, when intelligent people understood that social media as a “de facto town square” was a symptom of serious cultural and intellectual decay. Today, they’d do anything for more likes and retweets, even if getting an algo boost means endorsing the world’s wealthiest transhumanist.
So yeah, fuck Twitter—and their little bird, too. They deserve to get crushed. But only a fool would trust Musk, even if he manages to crush the censors.
Yesterday, at the TED 2022 Conference in Vancouver, the interviewer asked Musk why he launched this hostile takeover. Musk told the soy latte elite he’s saving Twitter because:
It’s important to the function of democracy. It’s important to the function of the United States as a free country, and many other countries. And to actually help freedom in the world, more broadly to the US.
How broadly? When Musk was asked about his views on China last December, he told the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit:
Now, we’re heading towards a situation where China is going to be probably having an economy two to three times the size of the United States. And so that’s just a different world. … Other countries are not really a threat to you if you’re by far the biggest kid on the block.
Imagine what Chinese dominance means for “freedom in the world.”
Aside from a quick disclaimer that he doesn’t “endorse everything China does”—or, equivocally, “everything the US does”—Musk has less to say about China’s totalitarian lockdowns and re-education camps than an NBA star in a fresh pair of Nikes. If Musk has anything like a moral compass, an attentive listener would be hard-pressed to say which way the needle’s pointing.
At the TED conference yesterday, Musk laughed that it’s “probably inevitable” his Optimus “buddy robot” will be used as a quasi-sentient sex slave. When confronted with the possibility these lanky droids will rapidly replace human labor, he reassured the working class:
I wouldn’t worry about the, sort of, “putting people out of a job” thing. … This really will be a world of abundance. Any goods and services will be available to anyone who wants them. It’ll be so cheap to have goods and services, it’ll be ridiculous.
Indeed, nothing could be more ridiculous. Back in August of 2019, Musk warned the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai that automation would wipe human labor out of existence:
AI will make jobs kind of pointless. Probably the last jobs that will remain will be writing AI software. Then eventually the AI will just write its own software.
Last summer, at Tesla’s “AI Day” in Texas—where the Optimus design was first unveiled—Musk proposed a socialist solution to his cheering employees:
Essentially, in the future, physical work will be a choice. … This, I think, will be quite profound because if you say, “What is the economy?” It is, at the foundation it’s labor. So—what happens when there is no shortage of labor?
That’s why I think, long-term, there will need to be universal basic income.
Yesterday, when the TED interviewer asked Musk if he really believes in his “heart of hearts” that he’s creating an exciting future for children, Musk switched from robot mode to earnest humanoid mode:
I try my hardest to do so. … I love humanity and I think that we should fight for a good future for humanity and I think we should be optimistic about the future and fight to make that optimistic future happen.
The TED crowd spit out their lattes and erupted in cheers. Either they’re optimistic about a Chinese-led globalist future—which sounds about right—or, like all Musk fanboys, they suffer from selective amnesia.
Musk talks a good game about freedom, and in theory, he may be sincere. But he also signals loyalty to his biggest customer. This time last year, he told the communists at the China Development Forum:
I’m very confident about Tesla’s future in China. The Chinese economy’s going to do extremely well over the next decade and will become the biggest economy in the world. … China, I think long-term, will be our biggest market, but both where we make the most number of vehicles, and where we have the most number of customers.
How does this double-talkin’ jive fly under the radar?
Even our beloved Tucker Carlson—who alone has been rock solid in his opposition to China, Covid hysteria, and the predations of Conservative, Inc—is getting so drunk on liberal tears, he’s staggering a bit. Tucker will sober up, surely, but what about his corporate counterparts?
At least Conservative, Inc is consistent. They’ve overseen the normalization of mass immigration, the sexual revolution, on-demand abortion, gay marriage, trans teens, and now, transhumanism.
They lay spread-eagle athwart history, yelling, “Don’t. Stop!”
Of all the pliable R-droids throwing palm fronds in Musk’s path—and the list is so long now, it’s hard to think of an exception—the most ridiculous is Glenn Beck. One minute, Beck is raising the alarm on evil Great Reset-brand transhumanism. The next, he’s tweeting out, “Elon Musk is the anti-ESG Tony Stark America needs.”
Who the hell is this Tony Stark guy, anyway? Some cartoon character?
You probably wonder what universe these people are living in. Well, according to their cyborg savior, it’s one of a billion computer simulations, most likely programmed by ancient aliens writing code in an extradimensional celestial sphere.
As Musk explained to the Arab royalty at the 2017 World Government Summit in Dubai, chances are life is but a dream:
Now, you can see a video game that’s photo-realistic, and millions of people playing simultaneously. And you see where things are going with virtual reality and augmented reality. And if you extrapolate that out into the future, with any rate of progress at all, then eventually those games will be indistinguishable from reality.
They’ll be so realistic, you will not be able to tell the difference between that game and the reality as we know it.
Well, how do we know that didn’t happen in the past, and that we’re not in one of those games ourselves?
Dunno, bro, but I’ll tell ya what I do know. Simulation theory is a great metaphor for the memetic mind-warp that is social media. If the world’s wealthiest transhumanist succeeds in capturing Twitter, he’ll have a billion minds to play with in his very own simulated reality—not to mention an ocean of data to train his artificial intelligence.
Look, I don’t wanna get too judgy here. My own cosmology is at least as weird as Musk’s.
And I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, either. The prospect of Twitter getting bought out and gutted is hilarious. The rainbow cohort is freaking out, and that should bring joy to every man, woman, and child.
In fact, let’s pause a moment to lap up a few Twitter twink tears.
You taste that? Ahh…
Refreshing.
Now, let me slip this scrawled note into the Conservative, Inc suggestion box. Maybe, just maybe, stubborn reactionaries still have the power and influence to conserve our most precious asset—our humanity.
Let’s say you really do take Musk seriously.
If you’re open to the possibility that tech corporations are creating AI Computer Gods, and that Musk’s brain chips will keep us competitive with these digital deities, and robots are gonna take over every job on Earth, and chipped humans will live on UBI, and we’ll just kick back and spend our brief lives exploring vapid virtual realities, or maybe Mars—and anyway, we all live in a computer simulation, so it hardly matters either way—then for the love of God, come clean with the public about our dire situation so we may proceed accordingly.
Or, if you think Musk is delusional about everything except the things that benefit you, ask yourself why.
Or, if you actually think Musk is just a con artist spinning yarns to play the crowd and pump stocks, then stand up and call him out.
The madness, we can handle. The selective sanctimony? Not so much.
By Joe Allen
