We're ruled by Losers

Zuck, Musk, Bezos and the power of sad little men

It’s now been many months of Mark Zuckerberg trying to look cool, wearing a little chain that is clearly alien to him, and generally presenting himself as a young white guy who listens to mediocre hip-hop rather than a 40-year-old with over $200 billion. But this week was extra special. First, Zuck released a video to accompany Facebook and Instagram’s major policy changes, then he went on the Joe Rogan podcast for the typical interview where guests, who are increasingly the most powerful people on Earth, are allowed to lie with no pushback for three hours.

The New Zuck

The changes that Mark and Meta made last week include the removal of fact checking and the allowance of a wide range of hate speech, which will impact the discourse in America and around the world and play a role in shaping the direction of society. But I keep getting stuck on the fact that the man making these momentous changes is a massive loser, maybe because Zuckerberg has been so obsessed with remaking his image this past year or two. He’s made a very public display of getting into martial arts, and of changing his “style.” He now wears that chain everywhere and tries to look cool as he spouts lies to millions of people and plays his role in dragging social media to the right behind Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And, despite it all, anyone with the most basic ability to read people can tell that he’s awkward, dishonest, and uncomfortable in his skin.

His relentless campaign to make himself seem cool has won over some people in this unserious country, but anyone who has to spend millions just to be seen as relatively normal is giving the game away. As Karissa Bell wrote back in March, “Zuckerberg’s recent PR blitz is neither out of character nor a sign of a freshly rehabbed image. In fact, Meta and Zuckerberg are staring down one of the biggest crises they’ve ever faced … Meta is embroiled in a massive lawsuit from nearly every state over the myriad ways it has allegedly harmed its youngest users.” And it’s not just kids, Zuck and his companies have hurt countless people around the world. Now he’s poised to hurt us all even more.

The real issue here obviously isn’t that Zuckerberg is a loser in the conventional sense. I don’t care that he doesn’t know how to hold his arms, or drink water like a normal person, or speak like the rest of us. I care about the sociopath beneath, about how this man and his behaviors have been rewarded by this twisted system with immense wealth, and about how he wields vast power that touches billions of lives. Facebook has 3 billion users worldwide, Instagram has over 2 billion, and WhatsApp also has 3 billion. This one man has a greater impact on our communications than anyone else on Earth.

This level of power is hard to process, and unprecedented in human history. One man has an unfathomable level of influence over how humans interact with one another, and that one man happens to have not a hint of morality or scruples of any kind. His latest move is to allow users of Facebook and Instagram to refer to “women as household objects or property,” call immigrants “trash,” and say all manner of terrible things about trans folks, queer people, and other groups. In announcing this Zuck did his usual evasion by saying it’s all about “more speech,” whatever that vague nonsense means, all the while embracing the right and declaring open season on the groups that fascists are scapegoating.

As part of this rightward pivot, Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan’s podcast. It comes as no surprise that he lied for hours. The most noteworthy bit might have been his mediocre acting as he pretended not to know what the CFPB is. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is something Zuck is intimately familiar with, as it’s looking into Meta’s financial behavior and his company’s potential illegal activity with your data.

Zuck lying through his teeth on Rogan

In a now familiar pattern, the men who have everything, who control such vast amounts of wealth that they’re personally economic planets with their own satellites and lobbying arms and small armies remain greedy and unsatisfied and are willing to throw oppressed people further under the bus to get their next billion. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, we are increasingly subjected to these mens’ every decision because their vast fortunes have allowed them vast political power, in addition to the economic power inherent in such wealth.

Elon Musk being a pathetic loser is so well documented that I feel no need to expand on it here. His behavior, his sad memes, his little jumps in the air and most of the words he utters have made my point for me already. But we are, unfortunately, just starting to see the damage he is likely to do in the coming years. We already know that he spent more to elect Donald Trump than anyone else, but now he’s throwing his weight around DC, threatening members of Congress, and doing his best to act as a shadow president. This of course might piss off Mr. Trump, who doesn’t seem too prone to sharing the spotlight, but Musk has other avenues of influence as well.

Like Zuckerberg, Musk sees the power of social media. He’s demolishing the once half-decent Twitter, with the app’s value plummeting nearly 80% since his takeover and millions of people deleting their accounts, but in the meantime he’s making sure that he’s far and away the number one influencer on the platform. Musk, in his endless ego, has forced the engineers at Twitter to show his tweets to everyone, whether they follow him or not. And he uses his tremendous reach to slander firefighters in LA (for being women mostly), to boost Nazis across the U.S., UK, and even the leader of the German far-right (Nazi) party, and to direct hatred at every oppressed group. This is the particular brand of fascist loser we’re increasingly being subjected to.

Of course Musk, like Zuck, also wants us all to think he’s cool and normal. He’s gotten hair transplants and likely other surgeries to appear ‘better looking’ and more conventionally masculine:

As it happens, Jeff Bezos is ever more in line with Musk and Zuckerberg as well. He’s donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration fund, just penned a $40 million Amazon deal with Melania, and suddenly pulled back diversity and inclusion programs at his giant corporation. Oh, and he’s also done plenty of work in another sad effort to appear more masculine and cool and less like the loser he really is:

These men are not losers because they used to look like nerds, of course, far from it. Their physical appearance is mostly immaterial, other than their personal obsession with it and the way it conveys who they’re attempting to appeal to. Their sociopathy is what makes them losers, the ways they’ve harmed countless workers and are eagerly throwing as many people as possible under the fascist bus makes them losers, and their obsession with hoarding wealth makes them losers. Fine, the cowboy hats and the cartoonish obsession with masculinity and their inability to say a single funny thing no matter how hard they try might be a factor here as well. These men, who have more than any person could ever need in a lifetime, really show what immense, sad losers they are when they insist on being adored by the people they’re screwing over, in addition to everything else. The vast pits inside them are insatiable. Adulation must be poured on top of their billions and their power. And that, still, does not satisfy their appetites.

This inability to ever be content, no matter how much they take, is what makes these men who increasingly rule us into such massive losers. Despite the media training and the public relations campaigns, any observant person can see the utter lack of inner satisfaction within each of these guys. It might be covered up by awkward bravado, or a blatantly out of place outfit, but the insecurity, and the desperate effort to hide it, is still plain to see.

And capitalism rewards these men. It rewards them again and again. Bezos is rewarded for forcing workers to pee in bottles, Zuck is rewarded for abusing our data, and Musk is rewarded for spreading hatred and busting unions. We live under a system that rewards black holes, rewards endless greed. There are many ways to judge capitalism, but one metric that makes sense is who gets elevated, who is able to accrue vast fortunes and power beyond measure. In these three men we see some of the worst of humanity, sickos who scapegoat others both to rake in more profits and to distract from how horribly they’re hurting us all.

The reward given to those who exploit under capitalism is inherently tied to the rise of fascism. Zuck, Musk, and Bezos have all flown to Mar-a-Lago repeatedly, and Elon practically lives there with the son he treats as a prop. But that’s just the surface level, these men and their Silicon Valley robber baron cohort have supported Trump with millions and are eager to do away with government regulation, union power, and any semblance of democracy. Unchecked greed is incompatible with any sort of real democratic governance and promotes fascism, both because it piles more and more money into fewer and fewer hands, and because when that still is not enough democratic norms are shoved aside in favor of further accumulation. The tech baron era happens to pair all of this with men whose egos are extra puny, whose sociopathy is extra rampant, and whose willingness to shake off even the pretense of decency is extra virulent.

We see just how thoroughly characteristics that ought to be checked are rewarded under capitalism. And this is nothing new. From the beginning the system has been justified by the profoundly absurd idea that everyone greedily pursuing their self interest will somehow merge into a healthy society. This is Adam Smith’s invisible hand, a silly concept that does not exist in any way, other than in the imaginations of those so devoted to enabling greed that they stick with an idea that reality has repeatedly disproven.

All of this exploitation and greed that has always featured prominently in capitalism, and which has generally been harmful to most of the working class, is particularly glaring in the age of tech barons who, not content to enjoy their spoils privately, insist on public adulation. And even that is not enough. Alongside love and praise they simultansiouly want you to think they’re normal. They want to be richer than entire nations, adored, and seen as just regular dudes all at once. Just chill guys buying elections, funding fascism, and driving you back into serfdom.

So we should be clear — they’re not normal. Elon Musk might get his hoards of incels to sing his praises and make AI images of him, but he’ll never actually be one of us. He’ll never be cool, or regular, or likeable. Zuck will never find the right chain to make him hip or chill. Bezos will never pull off that stupid cowboy hat. These men are sick, profoundly distorted people who view the rest of humanity as beneath them, and they should never get the satisfaction of thinking we don’t understand these dynamics.

More importantly, they should know that we’re coming after their wealth and power. We must be aware that our system will not check them; it created them. We, the people, are the only check remaining. We have to build power and come together to forge consequences for those who try to trample us, for those who are willing to set the world on fire in their endless attempt to fill a void that no material goods can fill. This is the only response left. Our organizing, our unions, our movements are the only check and balance we have. So it’s time to build. It’s time to come together and say enough to this system, and to a group of oligarchs who have no conception of the word. No one is coming to save us from these losers, we have to save ourselves.