King Elon, the Owner of the Ball
Football occupied most of my childhood. Not just as a spectator but as a player. We rarely played on a football pitch, or donned full kit as children do this side of the pond, but we’d spend our days kicking a ball around — as long as there was a ball and enough people to form two teams they’d be a football game of some kind. The problem is that balls didn’t grow from a tree back then, just as they don’t now. And back then (and back there) leather balls were quite expensive, and because we’d play in the streets, they’d have a short life. We were always short of round things to kick – enter the Owner of the Ball.
The Owner of the Ball was always the best off in the group but the worst at sports. The kind of kid who was so bad at football he’d normally be picked last when we chose players for the teams, to be sent to play on goal, a position where he sucked too. But because this kid was the Owner of the Ball, instead of being consigned to where he belonged, he’d get to pick boys for the two different teams with the best player among us1. He’d still be rubbish but we’d have to pretend he was Maradona, all decisions would come on his favour and everyone would pass the ball to him, so that he could miss over and over, lest he took offence and went home with the ball. Sometimes we’d let him score a goal too, so that he’d return the next day, with the ball, of course. I can’t think of a better example of people falling upwards than the Owner of the Ball.
I’ve been returning to this character of my childhood quite a lot these days, as one of the richest men on earth, Elon Musk, continues to sink the blue bird app like a steel turd. The “hellsite” — as those addicted to Twitter like call it, on Twitter — has been a force of misinformation and toxicity for a long time, whether owned by liberals or right-wing libertarians, and I’m not going to miss it when it’s gone2. But there’s something very much the Owner of the Ball about the way in which Musk is overseeing its demise — the SDE is amazing. And yet, the Owner of the Ball of my childhood was wise enough to take care of the ball; knowing that it was the ball that conferred him his power he’d go home and grease it, make sure it was properly pumped, that the stitches held together well, and so on. Elon Musk in his Owner of the ball role takes pleasure in stabbing it with a knitting needle — and this is a ball that cost him US$44BN.
Since he took over the blue bird app advertisers have been avoiding the app as if it was the plague and Twitter is now allegedly valued at half the buying price, while according to TechCrunch Twitter Blue has only made him US$11M in the first three months. Whereas King Midas turned everything he touched into gold King Elon has shown an incredible talent for turning everything he touches into shit — it’s quite astonishing to watch someone supposedly so clever that he’ll take us to Mars fail so resoundingly. Now unable to force his Twitter Blue on anyone but the validation-hungry (who claim to enjoy paying their US$8 a month because of the supposed advantages of the subscription service, yeah right…) he destroyed the whole purpose of verification, by making it impossible to tell apart legacy checks from those of Twitter Blue subscribers. There were clearly problems with the old verification process — why would a no one like me be verified, for example? — but it did serve the purpose of driving engagement on a site that depends on verborreic attention-thirsty celebrities generating content for free and their minions (fans) engaging with it, knowing who they were actually engaging with. This is the kind of content that sells clicks and for this to happen there needs to be a hierarchy of users on the platform, whether we like it or not. Pay-for-validation equalitarianism might sound appealing to the not very bright but it’s far from a get-rich-soon marketing ploy. No one gives a fuck what @MAGA12982 from Wichita has to say about anything, whether he has a blue tick by his name or not.
Some users still operate under the illusion that it’s possible to use Twitter against its grain or that it is good to promote stuff, and not just brainfart into the void. In my opinion, a quick look at its algorithm suggests otherwise: Twitter is an app that rewards shitposting within the app and that actually penalises those who post links outside of the Twitter ecosystem — this makes it useless with anyone with anything to offer but half-thoughts. I’m no marketing expert but I don’t see how advertisers could possibly be seduced or won back by this. How long the app has to live I don’t know but the prognosis doesn’t look very good to me.
Maybe the whole point of Musk’s investment was running Twitter into the ground? Maybe this is K Foundation Burn a Million Quid on steroids. If so, maybe Elon Musk isn’t a moron who failed upwards all his life but the world’s most committed performance artist. In any case, as the Owner of the Ball of my childhood would eventually learn much to his despair: there are always other games to play.
Perhaps it’s about time we start playing them.
Normally, the two best players of the group would lead a team each and pick other boys.
Yes, Twitter — just like any social media platform — can be used against its purposes. I have already written about this topic, and suggested that this “appropriate” and “appropriative” use of social media for activism still demands boots on the ground, that most of those who think they are doing politics on Twitter are just shouting into the void, justifying their addiction to shitposting by claiming to be doing activism. I’m not going to write the same again.