Elon MuskPhoto: CARINA JOHANSEN/NTB/AFP via Getty Images
Earlier this week – and after trying to wriggle out of it for months – Elon Musk became the new owner of Twitter, promising the kind of bold new take on free speech that can only come from a very wealthy person who once got very angry with someone had an account where he made fun of him with a cartoonishly fake Italian accent. Amid some high-profile layoffs among Twitter’s top employees, Musk issued a statement earlier this week saying he bought the service — after being legally forced to do so — because he wanted to “help humanity.”
In other entirely unrelated news, reports from Bloomberg show that racial slurs, references to the deworming drug Ivermectin, and conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic all surged on Twitter this weekend immediately after Musk’s purchase was finalized. It’s a strange coincidence, and we’ll be in danger if we can make heads or tails out of it!
The Bloomberg report, for example, notes that an unspecified “racial slur” — which we’ll just assume is the N-word, since we’ve seen many tweets where people are very proud to use the N- Word was shouted on Twitter this weekend — usage up 1,300 percent after Musk’s takeover of the service was completed. Meanwhile, ivermectin — which Musk’s old pal Joe Rogan openly touted as an effective treatment for COVID-19 despite medical claims to the contrary — skyrocketed 2,900 percent to peak at 358 mentions every five minutes. Oh, and anti-Semitism too, since the Anti-Defamation League said Friday it had identified a coordinated plan to spread anti-Semitic memes on the service.
Some of this, of course, is the very same idiot internet contrarianism that’s fueled so much online discourse for the last decade — plus: “You said I can’t say that, mother, so I’m going to say it; Isn’t it funny mom how obsessed you feel?” etc. But the thing about this shit is that it mixes with real racism and hate speech pretty easily to the point where it generally doesn’t make sense to draw any lines, because “ironic” racism is really just racism with an added layer of self-righteous mockery attached.
So the real questions are a) will this settle down once the naughty kids realize mom won’t give them the spanking they crave, and b) will Musk be forced to actually commit to stricter moderation, so he doesn’t have to deal with advertisers who openly object to their sponsored tweets being sandwiched between tweets promoting hate speech and horse medicine? Truly an exciting time to be alive online; On behalf of humanity, we just want to thank Musk for the help.