{"id":773,"date":"2024-11-11T16:53:23","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T16:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/?page_id=773"},"modified":"2024-11-19T15:47:35","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T15:47:35","slug":"were-all-playing-elon-musks-game-now","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-1-democracy-at-stake\/were-all-playing-elon-musks-game-now\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re all playing Elon Musk\u2019s game now"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Dr. Adrienne L. Massanari<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Associate Professor in the School of Communication at American University. Her research focuses on platform politics, digital cultures, games, and gender and race online. She is the author of two books: Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right<\/em> (2024, MIT Press) and Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit<\/em> (2014, Peter Lang).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mastodon: @adriennemassanari@aoir.social<\/a>
Email: adrienne@american.edu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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U.S. Election 2024<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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1. Trump\u2019s imagined reality is America\u2019s new reality<\/a> (Prof Sarah Oates)
2. Trump\u2019s threat to American democracy<\/a> (Prof Pippa Norris)
3. Why does Donald Trump tell so many lies?<\/a> (Prof Geoff Beattie)
4. Strategic (in)civility in the campaign and beyond<\/a> (Dr Emily Sydnor)
5. Can America\u2019s democratic institutions hold?<\/a> (Prof Rita Kirk)
6. How broad is presidential immunity in the United States?<\/a> (Dr Jennifer L. Selin)
7. Election fraud myths require activation: Evidence from a natural experiment<\/a> (Dr David E. Silva)
8. What ever happened to baby Q?<\/a> (Harrison J. LeJeune)
9. We\u2019re all playing Elon Musk\u2019s game now<\/a> (Dr Adrienne L. Massanari)
10. Peak woke? The end of identity politics?<\/a> (Prof Timothy J. Lynch)
11. Teaching the 2024 election<\/a> (Dr Whitney Phillips)<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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This election cycle has finally put to bed a long-standing and frustrating myth: that Silicon Valley is both nerdy and liberal<\/em>. While it\u2019s easy for the media and public to view the ubiquitous hoodies and casual demeanor of tech industry bros as a sign that these companies are less staid and conservative than their predecessors, the reality is that the White men who run Big Tech are not progressives. Really, how could they be? They\u2019re billionaires. And the culture of \u201cgeek masculinity\u201d that permeates much of tech bristles at attempts to diversify these spaces, citing the inherent meritocracy of Silicon Valley. But it\u2019s funny that clinging to this problematic principle also works to create hidden structural barriers that prevent BIPOC<\/a>, women, and other marginalized groups from success in tech fields. This, in turn reinforces an often unspoken narrative: that marginalized communities and women are just not suited for success in tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, the quiet part of this logic was spoken out loud by a Google engineer who published a deeply troubling memo about why Google had become an \u201cideological echo chamber.\u201d Grounded in bad, discredited \u201crace science\u201d<\/a> and biological essentialist arguments, the screed also bristled at Google\u2019s DEI initiatives, suggesting that the real diversity issue in tech was that conservatives were not welcomed. This despite evidence that Silicon Valley from the beginning has been dominated by a deeply libertarian ethos \u2013 one that is only superficially liberal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following George Floyd\u2019s murder and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Big Tech seemed to finally take diversity issues seriously. At the very least, new initiatives were launched across the industry (Google, for example, promised that by 2025 it would increase underrepresented groups in top leadership positions by 30%<\/a>). This mirrored the changes that many social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) had made to combat mis\/disinformation in the wake of the 2016 election and the COVID pandemic. Trust and Safety teams in Silicon Valley grew to address these concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cut to 2023. These same programs were gutted<\/a>. Not because they\u2019d been particularly effective, but because the tech industry contracted and was hemorrhaging jobs. But as I argue in my new book,<\/a> Silicon Valley (and other geek-friendly spaces like gaming) have increasingly taken a rightward turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta) recently suggested that he\u2019d gone too far in taking the blame for how social media might be damaging<\/a> to democracy and young people\u2019s health (not to mention it being a key factor in genocide in Myanmar and elsewhere), and declared he was moving away from liberal fundraising. Just two weeks ago, former Amazon CEO and owner of the Washington Post<\/em> Jeff Bezos quashed an effort by the paper to make an endorsement<\/a> in the US Presidential race. And, Elon Musk has used his billions to fund a massive PAC for Trump, has appeared with the president-elect regularly (which from the photographs of these events seems to be mostly Musk jumping around on stage trying and failing to make his body into the shape of an X), and has flouted election laws by creating a lottery to give money to voters who sign a pledge<\/a> supporting the First and Second Amendments (oh, and voting for his candidate). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s Musk, in particular, who troubles me. His rise as Trump champion in recent years has probably shocked many who aren\u2019t as plugged in to the culture of tech. But for those of us who have been tracking Musk\u2019s career long before his disastrous tenure at Twitter\/X, it\u2019s hardly surprising. He is deeply steeped in a particular corner of toxic geek masculinity, continuing to embrace the idea that sowing chaos at whatever company he\u2019s running is a good thing for anyone but him (spoiler alert: it\u2019s not) and that the rest of us should be forever impressed with his ability to fund multiple companies crafting our collective future, even if it\u2019s one that seems to be lacking any moral or ethical clarity. The early ethos of most internet companies (\u201cMove fast and break things\u201d) may have been abandoned by others, but not Musk. Instead, he\u2019s fixated on proving that his vision of the future is \u201ccool\u201d regardless of whether or not it works for anyone else who is not a privileged billionaire. See, for example, how quickly he destroyed Twitter\/X just because he wanted to make a playground for himself, and how terribly the launch of Tesla\u2019s Cybertruck has gone<\/a>, just because he sacrificed critical functionality and safety features so it could fit with his retro-futuristic aesthetic<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worst part: the bet worked. Trump won, and Musk (and the rest of tech) will reap the rewards. And they will celebrate by continuing to move fast and break things, including democracy. For Elon Musk (and Trump), the world is a videogame, and empathy is not an asset<\/a>. The rest of us are just NPCs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Adrienne L. Massanari Associate Professor in the School of Communication at American University. Her research focuses on platform politics, digital cultures, games, and gender and race online. She is the author of two books: Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right (2024, MIT Press) and Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit (2014, Peter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1004,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-773","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nWe\u2019re all playing Elon Musk\u2019s game now - Election Analysis - United States<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-1-democracy-at-stake\/were-all-playing-elon-musks-game-now\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We\u2019re all playing Elon Musk\u2019s game now - Election Analysis - United States\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dr. Adrienne L. Massanari Associate Professor in the School of Communication at American University. Her research focuses on platform politics, digital cultures, games, and gender and race online. 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