For some perspective on what’s happening with Elon Musk and Twitter, I suggest spending a few minutes familiarizing yourself with one of Twitter’s sillier episodes from the past, a fight that erupted almost a year ago between the “shape rotators” of Silicon Valley and the “wordcels” (aspersion intended) of journalism and related professions. Many of the combatants were, at first, merely fighting over which group should have higher social status (theirs), but the episode also highlighted real divisions between West Coast and East — math and verbal, free-speech culture and safety culture, people who make things happen and people who talk about them afterward.
For years now, conflict between the two groups has been boiling over onto social media, into courtrooms and onto the pages of major news outlets. Team Shape Rotator believes Team Wordcel is parasitic and dangerous, ballyragging institutions into curbing both free speech and innovation in the name of safety. Team “Stop calling me a Wordcel” sees its opponents as self-centered and reckless, disrupting and mean-meming their way toward some vaguely imagined doom.
You can think of Musk’s acquisition of Twitter as the latest sortie, a takeover of the ultimate wordcel site by the world’s most successful shape rotator. It’s a flanking maneuver almost Napoleonic in its audacity, and it doubtless seemed brilliant back in April when Musk thought of it. But now, his audacity seems to be backfiring, as of course did Napoleon’s eventually.
Tesla stock has lost about 70 percent of its value, in part because shareholders worry that the company’s visionary leader has been distracted by his new toy. Musk has lost much of his personal value, too, and with it the title of “richest man in the world.” Naturally, this raises a question: why, if shape rotation is so great, is Musk risking it all to rule the wordcels?
In fairness, Twitter isn’t Tesla’s only problem. The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates since March, and that hasn’t been great for the stock market or for automobile makers, who often sell on credit. And it might be double-especially not great for makers of luxury cars such as Teslas, because one way to ease the bite from higher interest rates is to buy cheaper things. Meanwhile, a company that practically had the electric car market to itself now faces much stiffer competition, and covid-induced supply-chain problems in China. All this trouble would have happened with or without the Twitter acquisition — but it certainly doesn’t help to have Musk off tweaking moderation policies and arranging oppo dumps on Twitter’s prior management.
Musk seems at risk of handing his opponents a deliciously ironic victory. In fact, one could say that by neglecting Tesla in favor of the Twitter word factory, he already has effectively confessed that even the world’s most successful shape rotator believes wordceling matters more.
Now, really, that argument isn’t quite fair, because Musk never seemed entirely serious about buying Twitter, and would have pulled out if a judge hadn’t made him go through with it. But it’s not exactly unfair either, because why was he obsessed enough to make even a half-joking offer for Twitter? And why, after he bought it, didn’t he just install a new management team and go back to the important work of making cars?
Possibly he was seduced by the fallacy that having genius in one domain means you are probably good at everything else, too. You see it in doctors who fancy themselves stock gurus, journalists who confidently offer management advice to chief executives, and Silicon Valley shape rotators who think they could easily out-wordcel anyone if only they weren’t so busy with more important things.
But more likely, he fell prey to a different delusion, one in which the shape rotators and the wordcels are united: thinking of Twitter in terms of words and arguments, as a “digital public square” where vital questions are hashed out. It is that, sometimes, but that’s not what it’s designed for. It’s designed to maximize engagement, which is to say, it’s an addiction machine for the highly verbal.
Both groups theoretically understand what the machine is doing — the wordcels write endless articles about bad algorithms, and the shape rotators build them. But both nonetheless talk as though they’re saving the world even as they compulsively follow the programming. The shape rotators bait the wordcels because that’s what makes the machine spit out more rewarding likes and retweets. We wordcels return the favor for the same reason.
Musk could theoretically rework Twitter’s architecture to downrank provocation and make it less addictive. But of course, that would make it a less profitable business. More to the point, the reason he bought it is that he, like his critics, is hooked on it the way it is now. Unfortunately for Tesla shareholders, Musk has now put himself in the position of a dealer who can spend all day getting high on his own supply.
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