He’s also faced criticism from Tesla’s shareholders that he is spending too much time on Twitter, then The Guardian ran a story suggesting that Musk was going to “turn into the same sort of joke that Trump has become,” and GQ joined the pile-on from the fashion perspective. As the Twitter Files continue to drop, Musk has been cast as a manipulator of narratives who handpicked a team of outcast journalists to drop “nothingburgers.”
Of course, he still has his defenders. But there are a whole lot of people suddenly eager for any chance to attack him.
Musk is now as polarizing a figure as Trump; either he’s the savior come to rescue free speech and unlock conservatives from the shackles of leftist oppression, or he’s an authoritarian figure who’s turned into a narcissistic, rabid right-winger who shuts down the free speech of his critics.
No doubt some of the drama around Musk can be attributed to political roots: Musk is seen as having switched “sides,” allowing the Right to embrace him as their freedom fighter while the Left feels betrayed. But in some ways, Musk is a proxy for a larger question that’s central to American life right now: Who gets to control the narrative?
With Musk’s acquisition, the Left lost its control of one of the most important platforms in the country—perhaps even in the world. The Twitter Files revealed how, in lock step with the FBI, Twitter controlled what was allowed to spread, ruling in favor of the Democratic Party again and again.
When Musk acquired Twitter, he took over what he had described as a “crime scene” due to the way conservatives were silenced, so his takeover came with expectations—for a more fair, open and transparent Twitter 2.0, where rules are applied equally. It’s fair to say that there have been some growing pains.
Musk is a disruptor, but his disruptions are happening in real-time, in public view. Musk is navigating a system he didn’t create—and it’s a messy procedure of trial of error to get where he’s going.
I’m not sure where that is yet. I’m not even entirely sure if he’s sure. And perhaps that’s part of what’s missing: People on a rocky ship want to know that the captain knows what he’s doing. They want to know they aren’t going to drown.
But experimentation can lead to unexpected outcomes. Mistakes are how we learn and grow—and, in his defense, Musk did warn us all that he was going to make a lot of them. On November 9, he tweeted, “Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t.”
In some ways, Musk’s Twitter is holding a mirror to ourselves about our own expectations of perfection and how hostile we can become towards that which we deem imperfect.
The truth is that Elon Musk is just a human. He’s imperfect. He’s messy. He gets things wrong sometimes. He’s also brilliant, dedicated, and innovative. He dreams far beyond the now.
Musk may have ambitions to build a colony on Mars, but for the time being he’s just a human, here, stuck on earth with the rest of us. Sometimes, as a society, we forget that.
Right now, Musk has at least $44B reasons motivating him to succeed.
Katherine Brodsky is a freelance writer who has contributed to publications such as WIRED, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Variety, Esquire, CNN Travel, The Indepdent, and many others. She has interviewed a diverse range of ‘intriguing’ personalities including Oscar, Pulitzer, and Nobel Prize winners—even spies. Find her on Twitter @mysteriouskat or Substack: randomminds.substack.com.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
