Twitter continues to fall deeper and deeper into a twisted pit of right-wing despair. This past weekend saw Elon Musk announce that the block button would be phased out because as a straight white man with loads of money and loud opinions, he doesn’t believe it has a point.
He’s a man who has had everything handed to him from a young age and built his success off his parent’s emerald mines. Now, instead of going to therapy, he is tearing down Twitter with mass lay-offs, nonsensical new features, and right-wing rhetoric that has advertisers running for the hills. Turns out nobody wants anything to do with a platform largely catering for bigots. Without a block button they’re now free to run amok and make it so much worse.
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As a queer woman working in video games, I tend to block idiots telling me to kill myself or sending me pictures of mutilated corpses on a daily basis. Twitter doesn’t bother doing that much about them when I file reports, probably because its modern ambitions feel catered to people like this who wish to be loud and hostile with little substance. Pay for a blue tick and you’ll be propelled to the top of the algorithm, whether you have anything worthwhile to say or not.
I’m sorry you have to hear it from me, but Elon Musk isn’t going to fuck you because you are giving him some pocket change once a month. If anything, it speaks to how foolish you have to be in order to worship a man who has repeatedly shown himself to have bad intentions for not only trans people, but global politics and the planet he consistently promises us he wants to prosper a positive future before despite tweeting about Elden Ring even if his build is as basic as they come. I cannot figure out this man, except that he’s a dirtbag and a gamer.
While in Tokyo this past weekend he appeared to have one of his patented meltdowns that are commonplace for someone as clinically online as Musk, in between tweeting about Twitter representing the world’s public consciousness and a wish for Tokyo Drift 2, he came out with a take about Elden Ring having some of the most beautiful art ever created. He ain’t wrong, but why is one of the richest and most powerful men in the world talking about games he isn’t even any good at when he should be fixing Twitter or actually being productive with a life he seems to be wasting by spending billions on buying random companies because none of his jokes are funny. The things rich white men will do to feel less insecure always astounds.
Elden Ring is a gorgeous game, and one of the most accomplished virtual worlds we’ve ever had the pleasure to explore, but Musk believing it to be the height of artistic human creation also speaks to his own ignorance, and how he likely engages with video games which aren’t going to deliver a political message or tell him how to behave because that would simply be too much for him to take in. He isn’t going to read an educational book or engage with a film carrying a startling political message if it results in him having to think outside his pompous box. Elden Ring is beautiful, but to put it on such a pedestal speaks to Musk’s clear inability to engage with media that stands a chance at making him much less of a giant shithead.
Elon Musk probably doesn’t know how to block or parry in Elden Ring, so it makes twisted sense that he’d remove the feature from Twitter so we’re all in the same sinking boat. He describes it as not serving a purpose, but to believe that you need to come from a place of ingrained privilege in the first place. You either never experience harassment, or you’ve grown up with so much money and so much status that necessary sanctuaries like this have ceased to exist, and thus you think taking them away from those in need of them is not selfish or consequential, but some sort of worthwhile business decision.
Git gud, Elon. Or at least consider, for once in your life, going to therapy instead of making the internet a worse place to be with every passing day.
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