The Worst People You Know Will Be Streaming On X

Elon Musk is a special kind of billionaire, not in the sense that he uses his money to better the world or other people nor in the sense that he has a goal in mind beyond hegemony but in the sense that despite having an amount of money that many would agree is aspirational, he is the least aspirational person to have that much money. This is by no means a novel observation, but Musk stands as indelible proof that wealth does not make you a smarter or better person. Throw a rock in the network of walled gardens we call the internet and you’ll find no end of examples: Musk has opened the doors to Nazis, Musk has tanked the value of the company, Musk publicly validates antisemitic conspiracy theories and then has a tantrum when advertisers flee.

In a way similar to how low-rise jeans are back, Musk refuses to learn from lessons already taught and makes obvious mistakes when the outcomes are rather plain to see. He welcomed Alex Jones back despite deplatforming him for antagonizing the families of children killed in school shootings, and he regularly kowtows to white nationalists and anti-woke causes. All of these are self-evidently foolish and bad things to do, and yet the man lauded as a genius does them anyway.

So what unhelpful bullsh** is Musk passing off as 4D business chess this time? Why, a pivot to video! Remember when Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook pushed a pivot to video nearly 10 years ago and it led to the destruction of a ton of media orgs because it was a bad idea? Musk doesn’t! The PTV boondoggle was so significant that it’s become a euphemism for false prophecies of where things are going. But we all know learning from mistakes or even paying basic attention to the developments in your field is for plebs!

X has signed a deal to produce 10 new streaming shows starring the likes of pet-gay-for-hire Don Lemon, cursed sock-puppet Tulsi Gabbard, and shock-jock wannabe Jim Rome among others. Just to remind everyone, Lemon lost his job at CNN for being a misogynistic asshole with a long history of bullsh**, Gabbard is a cackling super-villain who hates queer people and loves Russia, and Rome is not familiar to me, but he sounds like an asshole. What a brain trust Musk has assembled in what might be a bid to compete with other braindead MAGA media that moved into streaming like the Daily Wire. Finally, a place for white nationalists who love the Daily Wire but hate that Ben Shapiro is Jewish. X: where the discerning Nazi is welcome.

This all comes as X booted several prominent leftwing accounts before quickly reversing course and re-instating them. Not that I want free speech martyr Musk to ban activists and journalists who oppose his smooth-brained bigotry, but it’s fascinating how inconstant Musk is and how inconsistent his values are. It goes to show that Musk’s actual political beliefs are a blank line with a bracket reading, “insert thing that will make cool internet people like me here.” To be clear, this doesn’t diminish the danger and harm of Musk promoting white nationalism and Nazism but rather underscores how there is no cause for him beyond his own glory.

While I don’t have a crystal ball and can’t predict the success of these new shows from the worst and least imaginative thinkers I can think of, there is a recent example of a TV personality relocating their show to X when they were booted from their network. When Tucker Carlson found himself out of the gig at Fox News, he scooted to X where the troglodytes cheered and sang songs to exalt him. Just kidding! His viewership was anemic from the jump, and Carlson quickly moved to his own site where he charges $9 a month to absorb his brain farts. Perhaps Musk is unable to learn the pivot-to-video lesson of 2015, but surely he’d remember something that occurred only last year? No? Ah well. Despite Carlson commanding a significant audience that simply didn’t materialize on X, I’m sure trying the same thing with 10 more shows will definitely pay off. It’s Elon Musk the business genius we’re talking about!

(Pajiba substitutes images of Elon Musk with those of Lee Pace for aesthetic reasons and with apologies to Lee Pace.)