I made a post on Threads that was vaguely positive about Elon Musk bringing his kid to public/professional events. I started it by saying “I do not like Elon Musk” just to be clear.
Still, I got a remarkable, semi-viral response. In social media, it’s not big, but for me, it was by far the biggest reaction I’ve gotten on a social media post. And it was “a ratio” meaning the response was hugely negative — the ratio of comments versus likes was very high (3.4k v 230). Not big in social media terms, but by far the biggest ratio I’ve ever experienced.
I’m bemused by it. Most of the comments were hating on Musk. A big fraction als hated on me for saying sometime positive about Musk.
Several things can be true at the same time:
- Elon Musk can be bad.
- Elon Musk can still do good things.
- Elon Musk is a very big culture figure and what he does matters, for better or worse.
- Making space for kids in public is important and valuable.
- Modeling good parent behavior is good for society and helps makes space for other parents.
- In particular, modeling good Dad behavior is valuable to undermine patriarchal norms and prejudice.
Among my comments were a lot of people who questioned whether there was a need to “normalize being a dad in public.”
- Some noted that women do this all the time. I, agree, which is why it’s valuable for men to do it, as a matter of gender equality.
- Some think this isn’t an issue and they see Dads do this all the time. That’s great, but I don’t think it’s true.
- Some said this is such a bare minimum that it’s stupid to give credit. Yes, it’s the bare minimum, but it’s still rare and worth noting — maybe even praising.
There are some things that I didn’t know or expect.
- Elon Musk may be giving this particular kid a lot of time while ignoring his other children. So this is demonstration of parental bias and part of intra-familial conflict. Need to research this.
- I’m aware that Elon Musk is an extremely shitty dad to his trans daughter. Does this invalidate him as a parent to other kids? Maybe. I actually think this is a valid point.
- Elon Musk may be sex-selecting for male children, as he uses IVF for some (most?) of them. That’s pretty bad. Need to research this.
- A LOT of people think Elon Musk is using this child as a “human shield” for security (the CEO assassination happened within a day of this event). Not sure why people think this. So many said it that I feel like this must be a thing on the internet — rather that the individual observation of hundreds (thousands?) of people.
- A lot of people think Elon Musk uses his children as public relations devices to make him more relatable and sympathetic.
There is a lot of information about Elon Musk out there, but it’s hard to know what is true — especially when it comes to her personal life.
Delete it?
Some people suggested that I delete the post.
But why? I still think what I said is true — although I see more nuance in it and can totally understand people reacting negatively.
I’m not really bothered by a lot of response — mostly negative. In fact, it was kind of interesting to see how something goes viral and how the software behaves. I don’t really understand Threads and it’s algorithm. Why did this post take off? I’ve posted about Elon Musk before — usually pretty negative comments. Was it because this was vaguely positive?
Generally, my “mentions” were disorderly and swamped with comments from people I don’t know. I don’t think I saw most of them; I didn’t try to read them all. Replied to some
A significant fraction of responses were insulting or rude to me. I don’t really take it personally — they’re mad at Elon Musk. And that’s just how social media rolls, although I really try to not to roll that way.
The idea that Musk is trying to white-wash his image by bringing a kid with him in public is interesting and a bit counter-intuitive to me. I might look into that; first to understand if it might be true, second to understand if it actually helps his image, third, to evaluate if that means it’s a net harm that he does this, or if it’s still good to validate kids and Dads and parenting, etc. Is doing something good for personal or even suspect reasons still a good thing, or a bad thing? Or does it depend?
Evaluation
I didn’t mean to say something positive about Musk himself, but rather to bring up the need for more public manifestations of positive masculinity and parenthood. Virtually no one really reacted on that level — the overwhelming majority was hate on Musk — which I agree with. So using Musk to highlight this point was probably counterproductive.
On the other hand, many more people saw my post because it highlighted Musk; at least 2, maybe 3 orders of magnitude. And it was interesting and amusing to get that much reaction.
ENDS///
