Elon Musk Gave a Fascinating Answer to Joe Rogan Asking Him Why He Bought Twitter

I'm like any other working stiff out there in that I get a kick out of it any time the World's Richest Man and the World's Most Influential Podcaster casually name drop the guy I work for while eating pineapple and anchovy pizza. (I kid you not; that's what they ordered and I'm definitely experimenting with it next time I'm making some.) One of them is about to launch the Cybertruck and is working on getting a Mars colony started. The other is someone I opened for a few times back in the day, which I mention because it's the only thing I've ever done that my son's were even remotely impressed with. So why wouldn't they be chatting up someone who I've worked with for 20 years? 

That aside, there was a part of their discussion that was almost as compelling as Pizza Reviews and loud chewing. When Rogan asked Musk why he'd spend $44 billion on a social media platform that couldn't have ever been worth nearly that much money:

In case you don't have 14 minutes to invest in watching the clip:

Daily Mail - Musk said that he bought the platform because he wanted to save 'civilization'.

'This is going to sound melodramatic but I was worried that it was having a corrosive effect on civilization,' he told Rogan.

'Just having a bad impact.'

He said part of the problem was that the company was located in hyper liberal San Francisco, and the flawed policies of the city 'infected' the staff.

'I think part of it is where it's located - which is downtown San Francisco,' he said.

'While I think San Francisco is a beautiful city and we should fight really hard to right the ship of San Francisco.

'But if you walk around downtown San Francisco, right near the X headquarters, it's the zombie apocalypse. It's really rough.' …

'And you have to say: what philosophy led to that outcome.

'And that philosophy is one which was being piped to earth.

'So - a philosophy that would ordinarily be quite niche, and quite restrained, so the fallout area was limited, was effectively given as an information weapon.

'Information technology weapon to propagate what is essentially a mind virus to earth.

'And the mind virus is very clear if you walk the streets of downtown San Francisco.

'It is the end of civilization.'

And if you agree he is being melodramatic, he then goes on to cite examples. Like a guy who was on the front page of the NY Times as part of "The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement," who was quoted as saying "There are 8 billion people in the world, but it would be better if there were none." 

Think about that. Imagine you're a guy who's investing his accumulated fortune ushering the human race into our next step of becoming an interplanetary species, landing reusable rockets onto landing pads, trying to evolve the motor vehicle beyond the internal combustion engine, putting entire solar roofs on homes, and innovating new and easier ways to build tunnels in urban areas. Now your "meat computer" (Musk's term for it) has to process the idea that there's an actual movement arguing the answer to all our problems is an extinction level event. For all 8 billion of us to croak so that the critters can inherit the Earth. So deer and the antelope can play. How the fuck can any of us process the existence of such a worldview? Much less a self made bazillionaire who's spearheading so many world-changing endeavors in an attempt to make things better in a sustainable way?

Of course this Extinctionist Movement is nothing new. It just used to be about overpopulation, and these clowns have taken it to its illogical extreme. The late, great PJ O'Rourke has a brilliant chapter in one of his books in which he makes the same case Musk does, which is, if this maniac thinks we'd all be better of dead, why doesn't he start with himself? The chapter is called "Just the Right Amount of Me, Way Too Much of You." And he goes on to make the point that when these nagging busybodies decry overpopulation, they always talk about foreign places where poor folks live. That no one ever complains about the overcrowding in the infield at Churchhill Downs on Kentucky Derby Day. And the key to poverty isn't the poor dying in bigger numbers; it's economic opportunity. The chance to work and earn, feed their families and lift themselves out of poverty. Which isn't going to happen if we all just decide to off ourselves at the same time.

But I digress. Back to Musk buying Twitter. I repeat what I've said before: That his willingness to make the bad business decision to take over that platform is one of the most selfless, patriotic things in the history of the republic. And it's not about right or left, red state or blue state. Musk himself is a proud leftist. This is about the extremes on either end of the spectrum. The outermost edge of the fringe. Which he explains is prevalent in a very small area of San Francisco, which Twitter HQ just happens to be located in. So the very people who buy into this crazy, extremist ideology had what he calls "a megaphone to the world" thanks to the company they worked for. So anyone that was more to the center was regarded as a danger who had to be silenced. Or quieted, at the very least. Had they been on the other extreme of the spectrum, it would've been the same problem. But as it was, there was no balance to the silencing and muting. Even when experts in medicine were saying confirmably true things about Covid and Covid treatments, they were being deplatformed and outright banned. With the backing of the federal government, which is even more chilling. Not because they weren't 100% correct, but because they weren't going along with the approved narrative. And that kind of censorship in the long run is much, much more dangerous than any opinion someone could express online. 

Still, I urge anyone to invest the time and listen to what Musk and Rogan talked about. Because it's one of the most important topics of our life and times. Or, just order a pineapple and anchovy pizza and watch them try to fuck shit up by shooting an arrow at a Cybertruck: