Maeve Higgins: In reality, Elon Musk is just another idiot with too much money

Being stupid is one thing; being stupid and powerful is another, much worse, scenario

The Twitter social media app running on a mobile phone in London, as Twitter has accepted billionaire Elon Musk's bid to buy the company.

Now, more than ever, we need heroes.

We are lost. We need the most brilliant people to step up and solve the biggest problems. We could really do with a genius at the helm of this crazy old world. One person, a true legend. The type who could invent the electric car while casually being a rocket scientist, a champion who would revolutionise online life and make real-life traffic vanish.

I’m talking about an individual who could majestically shift the trajectory of climate chaos from terrible to just fine. If such a person existed, they would undoubtedly be helpful today, but sadly they don’t.

Instead, we have Elon Musk masquerading as such a hero. A tech millionaire, Musk founded Tesla and, with help from taxpayers’ money, has sold plenty of electric cars and became a billionaire. He’s the richest man in the world and employs lots of rocket scientists to indulge his obsession with space travel.

Elon Musk thinks, incorrectly, devastatingly, that travelling to Mars is a solution to the destruction of our own planet. Now, he is set to buy Twitter in some misguided attempt to protect “free speech”. He’s about to become embroiled in content moderation on a platform he inexplicably bought for too much money.

Doesn’t that seem stupid to you? It seems stupid to me. Yet all I hear is how smart Musk is.

Most people, even his detractors, think Elon Musk is brilliant, but I’ve been paying attention, and the man has so many stupid ideas and does so many stupid things... I suspect he could be stupid.

You might think that name-calling is beneath me, and you might be right. But remember, you might be stupid too. I could be stupid for all you know. I mean, it’s pretty stupid of me to call Elon Musk an idiot, even though it’s true.

One of Musk's many Tweets.

Musk has an army of devotees that see him as a God-like father figure. They marvel at his every pronouncement and attack those who speak against him. Musk fans do not understand what their hero is saying or doing most of the time, but they respect him because he is rich and noisy. They parrot his incoherence and hope that will be enough to save them from their drudgery. 

Musk fans think he’s operating on a level far above them, making moves they could only dream of. They believe they must protect him so that he can save them one day. The reality is that Musk is just another idiot with too much money.

The irony is that the richer Musk gets, the stupider he gets, but people think Musk is brilliant because he is rich. People revere him for that — how pathetic.

Imagine respecting someone just because they’re good at collecting money. I reject the idea that wealth equals intelligence. Elon Musk came from a wealthy family, and then he multiplied that advantage by spotting gaps in markets and filling them with varying degrees of success.

He worked hard — so what? Most of us do. He also made his profits from government grants and loans and, obviously, from other people’s labour and time. He’s rich — so what? Beneath the bluster, it’s perfectly obvious what he is doing daily, speculating and disrupting and spending, just like any other businessman. 

Musk is all the stupidest parts of the internet wrapped into a human, with his snark and slander, but the only sanctioned way to think of him is as brilliant?

It’s not just Musk fans that fail to see how stupid he is. Reporters, writers, and editors watch him so closely that they miss the more significant, stupider picture.

Time Magazine made Musk their ‘person of the year’ last year in typically overblown fashion, calling him a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman”. This week, the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner interviewed Matt Levine, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist who has been closely following and analysing Musk’s Twitter bid for weeks. Despite Levine stating that he doesn’t quite follow the deal’s logic, he still believes Musk is clever.

“It’s not obvious to me how, if he bought Twitter, he would then be better able to get his message out or better able to tell a story in a way that is good for Tesla and good for his economic interests. But it’s not obvious that it wouldn’t be. And he’s a really smart guy.”

Later in the interview, despite again saying that he doesn’t understand why Musk is dropping billions of dollars on Twitter, Levine reminds us once more that Musk is smart.

An intelligent person would not do what he does. They would not bloviate and bully; they would not stifle free speech at the same time as claiming to be its champion. 

Not being funny is, sadly, yet another symptom of stupidity. A red flag of idiocy is how Musk likes his jokes, of which he makes plenty. He makes crude, odd jokes, he famously communicates with memes, and trolls a lot. His fans like that, but the man remains deeply unfunny for all his tricks, memes, and trolling.

He is desperate to be perceived as funny, but nobody has ever honestly, full-throatedly laughed at an Elon Musk joke. He pays comedy writers and bombs on comedy shows, which nobody forces him to do. Like any idiot, he chooses that.

Elon Musk: Stifles free speech while pretending to be its champion. Picture: AP Photo/Susan Walsh

So is this Twitter deal a joke? What is he even buying? What can he hope to control? His little world? It’s patently stupid of Musk to try to manipulate and control everything in his world because that is not possible.

I don’t blame him for expecting his stupid ideas to work out, though; he’s convinced much more intelligent people than himself of stupider ideas before. Much of his fortune is based on people believing him to be a genius, but that doesn’t make him one.

Elon Musk is stupid. It’s vital to state that in the simplest of terms so that in this frenzied moment, we can hold onto this most pared-down truth. He lacks wit and behaves in ways that can only be explained by that truth. Again, plenty of us are stupid. We lack common sense, expertise, and imagination; we act without understanding, making things more difficult for the people we impact and for us. In general, being stupid is harmless enough; it affects us and a small circle of people around us.

The worst thing stupid people do most of the time is getting in their own way. Potentially, an idiot might mess up their family’s day or irritate a co-worker. Being stupid is one thing; being stupid and powerful is another, much worse, thing.

Unfortunately, Elon Musk is one of the biggest idiots on the planet, and he continues to amass wealth and influence. Now, in one of his stupidest moves yet, he will buy Twitter. Elon Musk is demonstrably and repeatedly stupid, despite what most people think.

The man is an idiot; I’m using my freedom of speech to say that right now, see?