Last week — in the ever-growing sector of the news cycle called “did I dream it?” — Twitter owner Elon Musk suggested to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that they settle their, essentially trifling, differences in a cage fight.
Zuckerberg, rather than saying: “Elon, that’s insane, you’re 51 years old and the richest person in human history, and I’m not far behind,” ostensibly replied: “Sure. Where and when?”
For those of us old enough to remember, the circus rivaled the one that accompanied the 2002, celebrity-adjacent, boxing-adjacent contest between Ricky Gervais and Grant Bovey.
Dana White, the bombastic president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, revealing a surprising ignorance of the historic beef between the animal-loving comedian and Anthea Turner’s wrong’un ex-husband, predicted that the Musk-Zuckerberg clash would break all records.
“This would be the biggest fight ever in the history of the world,” he said.
Fighting used to be regarded as a way out of poverty. Manny Pacquiao, an all-time boxing great, grew up in extreme destitution in the Philippines (last year, he ran for president). So, how to explain why two men with a combined wealth of US$340 billion would choose to step into the octagon in Las Vegas and bash seven shades out of each other?
White talked of the “hundreds of millions of dollars” they would raise for charity, but no one was buying that. If Musk and Zuckerberg were really interested in philanthropy, they could drop billions without getting a black eye and a busted ego.
More persuasive is the theory that the fight was an extreme case of a pair of tech bros going rogue. In many ways, this made sense: Musk and Zuckerberg have amassed unimaginable riches and both have, presumably, had to stare down the question of what a meaningful life entails.
For Zuckerberg, this led to a year of eating wild boars that he killed with a bow and arrow. Recently, he has become obsessed with Brazilian jujutsu, winning a couple of medals at a competition in California.
He is not alone among high-profile men in testing himself this way. The actor Tom Hardy made a surprise appearance in a Brazilian jujutsu tournament in Milton Keynes, England, last year, winning all his bouts.
There is also a simpler explanation for what has happened: Musk was clearly joking and whoosh, it flew straight over Zuckerberg’s head. You might expect the men who between them control Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to know better, but social media is an atrocious place to have any kind of discussion, which is why it so often descends into a trash fire.
Sarcasm is the first casualty of digital conversations. Musk even put “lol” at the end of his initial response to the idea of a cage fight.
The Musk-Zuckerberg spat mainly shows how far social media has fallen from its original ideals. In 2010, Zuckerberg was named Time’s Person of the Year and praised for his efforts to “tame the howling mob and turn the lonely, antisocial world of random chance into a friendly world.”
Alternatively, you can just settle your disagreements with a fight in a cage.
Tim Lewis is an Observer columnist.
On Sept. 3 in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled out a parade of new weapons in PLA service that threaten Taiwan — some of that Taiwan is addressing with added and new military investments and some of which it cannot, having to rely on the initiative of allies like the United States. The CCP’s goal of replacing US leadership on the global stage was advanced by the military parade, but also by China hosting in Tianjin an August 31-Sept. 1 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which since 2001 has specialized
In an article published by the Harvard Kennedy School, renowned historian of modern China Rana Mitter used a structured question-and-answer format to deepen the understanding of the relationship between Taiwan and China. Mitter highlights the differences between the repressive and authoritarian People’s Republic of China and the vibrant democracy that exists in Taiwan, saying that Taiwan and China “have had an interconnected relationship that has been both close and contentious at times.” However, his description of the history — before and after 1945 — contains significant flaws. First, he writes that “Taiwan was always broadly regarded by the imperial dynasties of
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will stop at nothing to weaken Taiwan’s sovereignty, going as far as to create complete falsehoods. That the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never ruled Taiwan is an objective fact. To refute this, Beijing has tried to assert “jurisdiction” over Taiwan, pointing to its military exercises around the nation as “proof.” That is an outright lie: If the PRC had jurisdiction over Taiwan, it could simply have issued decrees. Instead, it needs to perform a show of force around the nation to demonstrate its fantasy. Its actions prove the exact opposite of its assertions. A
A large part of the discourse about Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation has centered on conventions of international law and international agreements between outside powers — such as between the US, UK, Russia, the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan at the end of World War II, and between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China at the UN. Internationally, the narrative on the PRC and Taiwan has changed considerably since the days of the first term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic
RSS