BF2S Forums Freedom of Speech, the Internet, and You

If it weren't for these STEM-superhero billionaires their companies wouldn't exist and their employees would have no income at all.

I thought taking drugs, ranting on social media and banging elfin chicks was your thing, very strange that you're criticising someone else for it now.

I am not someone who thinks "billionaires shouldn't exist" but I think they should be few and far between. I also believe that to have that extreme amount of wealth should come some form of civic responsibility. Noblesse oblige and all that. Musk has shown zero interest in any of that. He has shown himself to instead be a petty asshole and internet troll. Which is why internet nerds and MAGA people like him so much. He is cut from the same cloth as Trump.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

I am not someone who thinks "billionaires shouldn't exist" but I think they should be few and far between. I also believe that to have that extreme amount of wealth should come some form of civic responsibility. Noblesse oblige and all that. Musk has shown zero interest in any of that. He has shown himself to instead be a petty asshole and internet troll. Which is why internet nerds and MAGA people like him so much. He is cut from the same cloth as Trump.

i really do just think of him as the apotheosis of awkward nerd energy. he is literally the projected fantasy figure for every thwarted STEM nerd in the world. all those people who were bullied or didn't fit in at school and who harboured desires of 'showing you all one day'. that's musk's whole energy. jeff bezos is similar too, of course. both of them have heavily gone for cosmetic makeovers and transplanted themselves into very different social worlds/milieux since coming into wealth.

musk is the avatar of self-righteous nerd fury.





the fact the whole world looks up to these guys is mystifying to me. utterly mystifying.

Re: yesterday's posts, mac's comic book post in the movie thread made me look up Flash vs. Superman races to see if there was anything definitive there.

Apparently, Lex Luthor did some math and bet 1 billion dollars for an orphanage that Superman would lose. Superman overheard with his ear hax, and won.

Lex Luthor honored the bet and now has a massive orphanage named after him.

Point is, one of the most notorious comic book gajillionaire supervillains has more honor than Elon Musk.



Even Doctor Doom cares about his people or something. Musk puts video cameras in break rooms.

Instead of just writing all billionaires off as class enemies, I think it is better to judge them by the totality of their actions. Musk looks even worse when judged against his class equals.

The totality of their actions includes becoming billionaires. There's a certain amount of not philanthropic thought that goes into such an enterprise. Musk's latest goodwill project that can get a nod, supporting Ukraine against Russia, not really going against the grain there.

uziq wrote:

i really do just think of him as the apotheosis of awkward nerd energy. he is literally the projected fantasy figure for every thwarted STEM nerd in the world. all those people who were bullied or didn't fit in at school and who harboured desires of 'showing you all one day'. that's musk's whole energy. jeff bezos is similar too, of course. both of them have heavily gone for cosmetic makeovers and transplanted themselves into very different social worlds/milieux since coming into wealth.

musk is the avatar of self-righteous nerd fury.





the fact the whole world looks up to these guys is mystifying to me. utterly mystifying.

Why do you hate nerds so much?
Were you bullied by nerds as a child?
Do you want to fuck Elon Musk?

Its technologists who have changed the world for the last 200 years, Musk is a successful technologist.

Cults are made of sociopathic narcissists all the time, singers, actors, footballers etc. who do nothing productive.

Why single out a nerd, and make a thing of it?

lol

Fox host Tucker Carlson back on Twitter after monthlong suspension
First tweet since March 22 comes on same day Twitter announces Elon Musk's purchase
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 … uspended-/

erm, salman rushdie ... where are you pulling these names from? jesus christ did you check out of human affairs literally in the blair era? benefit cheats/free council houses ... and the satanic verses controversy? mate, it's 2022. nobody is getting in a pother over salman rushdie. is he even still writing books? and ... of all the people to accuse of 'wanting adoration', you choose the guy who purposefully wrote a book that earned him a fatwah? you couldn't make less sense if you tried, could you?

elon musk isn't just some errant tech-bro. he courts political controversy and his actions have real-world consequences for thousands of people. he's 'trolled' on twitter before about regime change in latin america; his workers are treated abominably according to some accounts, including workplace and racist abuse; his pump-and-dump crypto trolling has adversely affected any number of investors; his erratic and drug-addled behaviour has wiped vast amounts of value off tesla (et al) stock on numerous occasions.

plus, on the tax-dodging thing: he's actively scammed and misappropriated state-level funding for several of his harebrained schemes. tunnels and solar panel roofs in california come to mind. he is actively wasting hundreds of millions of dollars of public funding with his tax write-offs and state legislature noodling.

tell me a hollywood actor or transgressive writer who does that? oh, meryl streep made a grandstanding speech at the oscars three years ago? yeah, it's the same as elon musk. get a grip you nerd. loudmouthed culture warriors making a song-and-dance at awards shows or in the media have nowhere near the real-world power as narcissistic billionaire CEOs.

Last edited by uziq (2022-04-28 04:39:35)

why do you over-identify with people you're not?

you're a lot closer to the rest of us here on bf2s than you are to elon musk. hate to break it to you, buddy.

Serious post for a moment: the more serious political commentators made two interesting points about the purchase of Twitter.

(A) Musk bought an expensive headache. Twitter doesn't make money and has to deal with issues related to terrorism and violence. The E.U., ever willing knock U.S. tech companies down a peg, will be a hassle to deal with. Musk will now have to answer every question about what goes on on that awful platform.

(B) The conservatives cheering and the liberals howling are both overreacting. Musk will probably end up disappointing the former and not do too much that will change the cultural balance against the latter. He wants to be be famous and acknowledged by mainstream media as being the "cool billionaire". He isn't going to go all in on the people who want to tear down society to reform it into Jesus land. He probably isn't going to encourage anything that could upset his green energy subsidies. He could let Trump back but why would he want to share the limelight with the guy who is loyal to no one?

i honestly don't know how anyone recycles his weak-piss rhetoric about 'twitter being our society's public forum', whilst at the very same time trying to buy the whole thing out for his own private ownershp? um, hello, brainiacs? the public fora of ancient greece/rome weren't, erm, private property?

Normally when people are banned there will be the usual, (incorrect) invocation of free speech "muh rights have been violated," and then they move on. Who the hell scrapes up 40 billion dollars internationally to buy out a platform in response to that stuff.

Won't own up to his world hunger boast, buys Twitter for even more than he pledged for the world hunger thing. Putting the platform in the hands of absurdly wealthy interests, invoking free speech. lol

I have quite the limited stake in this whole thing since I'm not an active user of the platform, but it's still irritating to see. Hopefully the shareholder suit gets somewhere.

donald trump poisoned public discourse for years with his impulsive, late-night ‘presidential’ tweeting. threatening nuclear war with DPRK in 140 characters. spreading so many lies and misinformation that the NYT had to employ a full-time staff to fact check all of his inanities.

‘free speech’.

elon musk literally just went on his knees to a bunch of shady investors from the right-wing and bought out a relatively sane, balanced platform. now he’s going to unban trump and welcome back the hyper-paranoid, shouty shouty MAGA gang.

remember how peaceful it was on twitter when putin blocked access to western social media? suddenly a lot of bots and no-avatar accounts went quiet. funny that, isn’t it.

but remember, noble iron man/emerald man musk wants to ban bots!   it’s just so terribly unfair that the far-right were banned from his free speech platform after insurrecting political and physical violence. ask the apartheid trust-fund baby. he has a good perspective on terribly unfair treatment.