Twitter Watch: Vol.9
Is Elon Musk going to save the world as well as Twitter?
Is Elon Musk going to save the world as well as Twitter?
Longer term readers of my column here from the Twitter Watch desk will be well aware of the burgeoning unrequited love affair between myself and Elon Musk. For new readers: Elon is just another in a long line of love affairs I have with the rich and famous on Twitter. I go a little weak at the knees whenever I see Cristiano Ronaldo and if I wasn’t so fiercely heterosexual I’d sweep the Liverpool midfielder Thiago Alcantara off his feet and into my loving arms forever. Politically, I’m a little out of touch and out of the loop as Angela Merkel seems to have taken somewhat of a backseat in Germany in recent years, but our torrid love affair and the secrets disclosed during our post orgasmic pillow talk will stay with me for as long as I admire celebrities who adopt ridiculously masculine beards.
Envy is indeed my sin.
Longer term readers will also attest to my concern as to the world’s newest saviour. Star Link and Neuralink both sound and seem incredibly beneficial but both of these concepts run against my twisted thinking as well as my human soul. We may not see the electrical soup we currently live within but it’s getting ever more enveloping as is the quickening to move everyone from a tangible, knock on wood real life to another life where wood isn’t required, and you can be a spaceman without ever leaving the comfort of your favourite armchair. Fitted with a Neuralink microchip you could stretch out in that armchair and barely lift a finger as you wander through The Matrix that requires less and less of your actual human participation. If this seems in any way far fetched, take a look at the digital world that has sprung forth since the commencement of the first lockdown alone, let alone the decades that came before it. Where once there were hushed tone conversations about microchips, invasive and all encompassing Digital ID’s and the science fiction of transhumanism, you now have Elon’s brain microchip company, the constant transmogrification of both the physical human body and its self identity and if you still need evidence: can I see your Vaccine Passport/Digital Pass/Green Pass and please scan your QR code until the machine goes “ping”.
Barcoded humans in a QR Coded world.
Lovely.
Elon Musk to join Twitter board after taking $2.9bn stake
Twitter has announced it is appointing Elon Musk to its board the day after the world's richest person was revealed to…www.theguardian.com
As a “free speech absolutist” I’m sure Elon won’t mind me airing my concerns and we will discuss all of these when finally he returns my phone call to set up our date to watch True Romance together. We’ll go and get some pie together and stare longingly into each other’s eyes as we talk gun fights and Dr Zhivago before driving off into the sunset listening to Elvis Presley. But all this is for the future and when my love finally sees the multitude of my missed calls. I’m sure Elon won’t mind my nagging doubts in the meantime that he has to be (simply has to be) in the “Big Club” that George Carlin warned us about and so why defend free speech, liberty or even the Canadian truckers so vigorously? This goes against the grain of the maniacs and lunatics in that particular club.
So why is Elon different? Is he indeed different? Or is he the friendly face to the full absorption into the Matrix Metaverse? What if Elon flies too close to the Moon and the lunatics adopt the John F Kennedy protocols and find yet more patsies with grudges and “magic bullets”? What happens if Elon Musk’s technologies and patents, ala James Bond, fall into the wrong hands?
So a believer in the absolute of free speech is now the majority shareholder of Twitter and soon to be anointed onto the board of directors at the time of writing. The breaking of this news has melted The Matrix to its very numeric core with the jubilant hoards screaming for the reinstatement of so many accounts unfairly censored as despite what you may believe, the freedom of speech and first amendment human rights we all so cherish no longer exist. Will the advocate of free speech absolutism clamour for the reinstatement of former President Donald Trump? The Matrix can’t seem to get enough of the barbed sarcasms of an ex Game Show Host and, lest we forget, an ex US President.
Let we forget too that, whatever your opinions of Donald Trump, a former President of the USA was simply deleted from social media. Hilarious wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? Well maybe until they banned any and everyone posting material that well, the One Party State didn’t agree with. How long before your political opinions are swept into the whirlpool of The Matrix and you’re given a “community strike” or whatever Orwellian language these lunatics use these days?
Flying your nation’s flag upside down on your Twitter profile as an act of political defiance?
We’ll be keeping an eye on you sonny.
Is Elon Musk going to save the world? Of course not, and nor is the censored and banned 45th President of the USA, despite what his obsessive supporters on Twitter would have you believe. But I want to believe in the man who loves True Romance! I want to believe his technology is going to be beneficial for the good of humanity and not just another cog in the wheels of a tightening matrix of control. I want to believe in the man who said as recently as December 2021 “if people don’t have more children, civilisation will crumble” and in direct opposition of the feelings of his friends in George Carlin’s “Big Club” and their outward zeal for a dramatic depopulation of the earth. I also want to take seriously a man who states his open opposition to tyranny, oppression and support for the working class roots of a Canadian trucker or the absolute of free speech. Musk states in a December 2021 interview with the satirical platform The Babylon Bee that the current so called “woke” culture is humourless and “rife with condemnation and hate” before this perfect summation:
“It’s divisive. Exclusionary. And hateful. It basically gives mean people a reason, it gives them a shield, to be mean and cruel, armoured in false virtue”.
Freedom of speech and freedom of thought allows us all to decide how we interpret that quote. Here’s another, from a year earlier, and the CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal:
“Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of the things we believe lead to a healthier public conversation. The kinds of things that we do to work about this is to focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed. One of the changes today that we see is speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak but our role which is particularly emphasised is who can be heard”.
*my italics above*
So who’s doing the emphasising? Twitter? Those who really control Twitter?
Read that last sentence again:
“Most people can speak but our role which is particularly emphasised is who can be heard”.
“Who can be heard?”
Over to you Mr “Free Speech Absolutist”. I’m sure we’d all like a little guidance as to who’s deemed worthy enough to be heard.
And call me sometime you handsome devil!
Let’s go watch True Romance together.
Twitter Watch: Vol.7
The Good, The Bad and The Unpopular.medium.com
Twitter Watch: Vol.3
Canadian Truckers dancing to “We Are The World”, Censorship, Unhinged Politicians. And Lenny Bruce is not afraid.medium.com