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Elon Just Kicked'em Right in Their Balls

11/30/2023

This is going to be a complicated post. It's going to sound like I am defending Elon Musk's concur about the existence of Jewish conspiracies or whatever, while simultaneously defending his remarks in wake of the predictable advertiser boycott that followed. But I'll try to make a clear point.

The media blowback from Elon's "go fuck yourself" remark, in response to questions about the (now likely permanent) boycott, has outraged the mainstream profit media, which found itself offended by such an open rebuke of its corporate advertising model and the control it exerts over freedom of speech. The same model, while also a semblance of a legitimate industry, is also considered the gatekeeping governance that makes sure nothing gets "too out of control."

There has never been and never will be, for example, an NBC-produced documentary on the merit of communism. A thoughtful production that considers maybe we were wrong about all of this. No weekly cartoon for kids that features a scrappy group of teenagers uncovering alternative economic theories of any kind other than the ones that we miraculously know to be the one we happen to live in right out of the box in (and crazily so many other nations don't - weird huh?).

Your (cough) "local" news station's "Action 8 Investigation Report" isn't going to touch the shady practices of your also local new car dealership so long as those dealerships are laundering in payola in the form of local advertisement dollars, despite complaints against them being like a number one actual issue. Not that the "Action 8 Investigation Report" team isn't tough in going after some no-name contractor or some already un-popular local politician it's probably been asked to finish off by community members of the local back channels.

I hope you get the idea.

Screen capture of CNN video.

Desperate attempt by CNN to cover up larger more meaningful point wrought by Elon remark

Big profit media and its control over the discoverability of new perspectives is the only reason the First Amendment has yet to be be repealed in this country. The assumption has always been, if you don't accrue money, or if you pose a threat to those who do, your message and perspective are comfortably handicapped by commercial default.

It's a system that works well enough, because you know, if it didn't, what China does with freedom of speech and online expression wouldn't look so bad.

It's also why the profit MSM is "at war" with social media or the open web, because people being able to talk and argue with each other, is a crack too much in the comfortable system it's taken decades to build. Any chance to point out why people having free access to the thoughts and viewpoints of others, is depressing teens or leading to "dangerous challenges", is taken in a snap.

There is no clearer example of such a blatantly pro-corporate-media-advertising-monopoly propaganda piece than this ridiculous order-up by CNN producers to make sure viewers focus on the triviality of Elon's response than the point he is making. In it a woman described as a CNN contributor and tech journalist -- Kara Swisher -- is invited to take a moment from emptying bathroom hampers or something (as she is breathlessly making her points from home) to pretend that there wasn't a deeper and valid point being made within the orb of all this scuffle-dust flying about.

Calls were evidently made to get this CNN presentation out there. It's absolutely ridiculous to watch, but also, an accidental insight to CNN's panic or "entitlement to narrate away" Elon's point.

Elon has tied one personality, one person, to a service once treading carefully in a sea of unspoken or perhaps more deliberate business rules that once acted as the true captains and the law of order for Twitter. They are gone, and now it is gleefully albeit destructively, him.

And yes he has wrecked quite a bit - I myself am trying to transition away from the service. But like an atom smasher, his actions and controversies have pushed unexpected matter into our view and strung them out for wider examination. Pretty much exactly how he explained his peace in the event that the advertiser boycott does in fact kill X.

I will give him credit for that.

By Dave for Personal Blog.