Topic of the week: The inaugural Musk salute
Topic of the week the inaugural Musk salute. Oh, the delicious irony of it all. The world’s richest attention seeker has finally jumped the shark, and we’re all pretending to be shocked. About as shocking as a celebrity’s “candid” paparazzi shot. Pure performance, darling, and not even a good one.
Look, I’ve spent decades watching the publicity machine chew up and spit out the great and the good, but Musk’s latest performance is something else. It’s like watching a tech genius have a midlife crisis in real time, played out in 280-character bursts of increasingly desperate look-at-me syndrome.
Remember when he was actually disrupting things? Proper disruption, mind you, not this dreary pantomime of provocation that reads like a masterclass in reputation suicide. These days he’s like those fading celebrities who ring the tabloids to tell them which beach they’ll be photogenically jogging on. Except his beach is Twitter, and instead of jogging, he’s doing the dance of the desperate attention seeker.
The whole spectacle reminds me of every Silicon Valley boy wonder who started believing their own press. First comes the innovation, then the adulation, then the inevitable descent into what I call ‘founder’s syndrome’ – where every random thought seems worthy of a global announcement. At least Steve Jobs had the turtleneck. Musk’s got… what exactly? A Twitter feed that reads like a teenager’s diary left open on purpose.
Here’s the thing about publicity: it’s like Tabasco sauce. A drop of it makes a bland meal interesting. Pour the whole bottle on, and you’ve ruined the dinner and made yourself look like a proper plonker in the process. Our Elon’s not just emptied the bottle – he’s bought the factory.
The real tragedy? He’s actually got something worth shouting about. Electric cars. Space rockets. The stuff of proper headlines. But no, apparently it’s more fun playing the professional provocateur, serving up daily doses of outrage to an audience that’s becoming increasingly harder to shock.
You know what’s next, don’t you? This is the bit where the narrative turns. Where the ‘misunderstood genius’ storyline starts wearing thin. Trust me, I’ve seen this show before. It never ends with a standing ovation.
Welcome to the modern attention economy, where even the richest man in the world is desperate for attention. If it weren’t so tragic, it’d be hilarious. Actually, scratch that – it is hilarious. Just not for the reasons he thinks.