There Are No Girls on the Internet - Elon Musk Insists He Does Read After Joyce Carol Oates Twitter Beef

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00:02:28.880 Christmas has come early for me because Joyce Carol Oates, yes, that Joyce Carol Oates, is beefing with Elon Musk on Twitter.

00:02:37.820 Mike, I have a real thing with Joyce Carol Oates. Did you know this about me?

00:02:41.960 I didn't, actually. Merry Christmas. And what's up with your thing with Joyce Carol Oates? How do you know her? Why do you like her?

00:02:51.060 Yes. Merry, happy Joyce Carol Oates beefing with Elon Musk on Twitter to all that celebrate.

00:02:56.940 So, yeah, I took a survey of Joyce Carol Oates' fiction when I was in grad school.

00:03:01.380 I also, independently from that, have followed her pretty closely on social media for some time.

00:03:07.800 So her beefing with Elon Musk, it feels like this is truly my time to shine.

00:03:13.300 So let's back up a little bit because we did a whole episode about another one of my favorite Elon Musk beef.

00:03:18.760 Elon Musk's beef with rapper Azalea Banks. That was probably my favorite celebrity feud

00:03:24.860 up until this point. Other than perhaps the rapper Ice-T and Amy Mann, the folk singer,

00:03:32.100 they had a little bit of a Twitter beef that I love. But I think the Elon Musk of it all

00:03:38.160 kind of illustrates what happens when somebody like Elon Musk comes up against somebody that

00:03:43.340 he is just inarguably outmatched by. The Azalea Banks thing was a perfect example of what I mean.

00:03:49.700 Elon Musk is an unreliable narrator. Azalea Banks is somebody who will literally say anything about

00:03:55.020 anyone or anything. Elon Musk thinks he's funny, loves to make it seem like everybody thinks he's

00:04:00.300 so funny. Azalea Banks, even though she is who she is, she is actually funny and can actually

00:04:07.640 destroy somebody with words and can come up with an insult like nobody's business. Like she really 1.00

00:04:13.240 is she's she's a lyricist at the end of the day so you know mike you know me you know that i am

00:04:20.600 not somebody who is prone to taking a victory lap when i say something that's proven to be

00:04:25.100 100 correct whatever you say boss we're recording i can see your face as we're recording and when i

00:04:32.900 was saying that i i got the sense that maybe you didn't totally agree but let's just say that's

00:04:38.040 the case for now sure we can say that for the case of argument i mean it's uh i guess we yeah

00:04:44.240 we can say that you you don't often like to take a victory lap but it has happened oh i'll take it

00:04:50.580 every now and then and i'm taking one right now because over a year ago we were doing an episode

00:04:55.560 about a goodreads scandal in the literary world and in that episode i said this joyce carol oates

00:05:03.340 who I have to say is kind of my like forever problematic fave.

00:05:08.900 She's like the Azalea Banks of the book industry.

00:05:14.160 Like nine times out of 10, she's super wrong.

00:05:17.360 But when she is right, she is so right.

00:05:20.060 That's how I would describe her.

00:05:21.560 I cannot quit Joyce Carol Oates.

00:05:23.260 She is my forever problematic fave.

00:05:25.620 I simply cannot believe how prescient that turned out to be

00:05:29.540 now that Joyce Carol Oates is also beefing with Elon Musk on Twitter, just like Azalea Banks was.

00:05:35.720 It is a little uncanny. I mean, did you call it or did you conjure this? Did you manifest this beef?

00:05:43.180 I willed this beef into existence. So as I said in that quote, I am like an OG follower of Joyce

00:05:50.620 Carol Oates. Everybody's talking about Joyce Carol Oates on social media now, but it's like that

00:05:55.240 Bane quote, you merely adopted Joyce Carol Oates' Twitter presence. I was born in it,

00:06:00.820 molded by it, right? I have been following this woman on Twitter for a very long time.

00:06:05.400 People might not realize how prolific of a Twitter history Joyce Carol Oates actually has. 0.99

00:06:11.400 She has been saying wild shit on Twitter for years. Again, not unlike Azalea Banks. 0.99

00:06:17.240 Joyce Carol Oates is actually one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter, even though, yes,

00:06:21.380 she is very problematic. I will get to that in a moment. She's also kind of an irreverent

00:06:25.520 personality on Twitter. So I have to admit that I am not familiar with her body of work on Twitter.

00:06:32.280 How important is it for me to understand what she's like on Twitter, what she talks about there

00:06:38.860 to really appreciate this thing that she's got going on with Elon? It is so important. It is

00:06:44.240 key to understanding what's going on here. So let's talk a bit about how Joyce Carol Oates

00:06:49.760 showed up on Twitter. She joined Twitter back in 2012 at the urging of her book publisher and has

00:06:54.500 been a prolific tweeter since then. Some things that folks might have missed if they were not

00:06:59.300 following her as closely on Twitter as I was. She went super viral in 2020 for posting a picture of 0.80

00:07:05.200 her foot covered in poison ivy that went viral. She also hilariously replied to a picture of the 0.86

00:07:11.420 director Steven Spielberg posing next to a dead dinosaur from the film Jurassic Park. She tweeted

00:07:17.860 that picture and wrote, so barbaric that this should still be allowed. No conservation laws

00:07:23.360 in effect wherever this is. I loved this. There was a whole flurry of questions about whether or

00:07:28.660 not she was kidding. Joanna Rothkopf over at Salon broke it down saying, there are only three

00:07:33.720 possibilities. One, Oates was making a joke, 5% chance. Two, Oates didn't click on the photo and

00:07:40.160 thought it was a picture of a slaughtered elephant, 80% chance. Or three, Oates thinks

00:07:45.280 a triceratops was murdered. 15% chance. That is delightful. I honestly hope it's the last one.

00:07:54.800 I hope that Oates was like, we have to save our triceratopses. I'm just glad that somebody is

00:07:59.680 finally speaking up for the triceratopses. There are so few of them left. We need to stop this

00:08:05.740 senseless triceratops murder. You and Joyce Carol Oates are on the same page about that one.

00:08:10.640 She also made headlines pretty recently for tweeting about how she thinks that Trump faked

00:08:14.640 getting shot in butler pennsylvania so she's really like got her finger on the pulse sometimes

00:08:19.620 interestingly enough when asked about it in an interview she said that showing up on twitter

00:08:23.540 she doesn't even do it to get more readers when asked about whether she was trying to reach new

00:08:28.620 audiences of potential readers on social media she bluntly said i don't think of this at all

00:08:33.820 wow so like what what is she what's she doing it for then she's doing it for the love of the game

00:08:40.200 baby. Like, you got to respect that. So the main comparison that I see between Azalea Banks and

00:08:45.580 Joyce Carol Oates is that they are both women whose work and artistry I have enjoyed, but they're

00:08:50.700 also people who say things that I deeply disagree with the majority of the time. However, they're

00:08:56.780 the kind of people who, when they're right, they're right. Like a broken clock, when they stumble upon

00:09:02.140 a truth, they really hit that truth and they do not miss. And I had no idea how prescient that

00:09:08.300 comparison would become because now, a year after I made it, Joyce Carol Oates is following in

00:09:14.300 Azalea Banks' footsteps in this beef with Elon Musk. And you know what? I am here for it.

00:09:21.120 Yeah. But, you know, a lot of people have gotten into Twitter spats with Elon Musk

00:09:27.600 lately or ex-spats or whatever we want to call them. What is it about Joyce Carol Oates that

00:09:34.160 really pulls you in, even though, in your words, you disagree with what she says the majority of

00:09:41.400 the time? Oh, she is my problematic fave, as I said. First of all, Joyce Carol Oates,

00:09:47.980 like Azalea Banks, can write her ass off. I read her short story, which I would say is probably 0.92

00:09:52.780 one of her more famous works. Where are you going? Where have you been when I was young? And

00:09:57.000 it really made an impression on me it's this kind of slow burn gothic horror it's I recommend it for

00:10:05.640 anybody who likes kind of creepy short stories and so as we'll get to in a moment Elon Musk keeps

00:10:11.320 sort of insulting Joyce Carol Oates but Joyce Carol Oates is like the Michael Jordan of literature

00:10:16.560 like you cannot insult her you cannot like like the the numbers are there the stats are there she

00:10:21.060 wrote her first book in 1963 when she was 26 and since then she's written almost 60 novels she does

00:10:26.760 novels, novellas, plays, you name it. She's also kind of known for the sheer amount of writing

00:10:32.960 that she does. She talks about this a lot, how from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. every day, she writes in,

00:10:39.460 she hand writes in cursive every day, then again for two or three hours in the evening.

00:10:44.840 Like, I can't express to you how much Homegirl has a storied literary career. I'll put it to

00:10:49.620 you like this. From 1992 to 2014, Joyce Carol Oates published four books, and all four of them

00:10:55.940 were nominated for the Pulitzer.

00:10:57.620 Like, this is a woman who is about that written word.

00:11:00.540 It's funny, it kind of sounds similar to Stephen King,

00:11:05.160 like another very prolific writer

00:11:07.340 who is partly known for just the sheer volume of stuff

00:11:10.380 that he writes and also is used to be on Twitter a lot.

00:11:17.060 But I don't think he ever won a Pulitzer.

00:11:19.520 I love Stephen King as well.

00:11:20.660 Can I tell you a non sequitur fun fact

00:11:22.620 about Stephen King that blows my mind?

00:11:24.260 Sure, yeah, I would love to hear it.

00:11:25.440 Stephen King was once so obsessed with Lou Bega's Mambo No. 5

00:11:29.540 that his wife threatened to divorce him over it.

00:11:32.020 Wow, I'm like running back the timeline in my mind.

00:11:34.620 I'm wondering if that was before or after he got sober.

00:11:37.980 Oh, what do you think? 0.98

00:11:39.900 Yeah, Mambo No. 5.

00:11:42.180 It's still out there in culture. 0.73

00:11:45.200 Tearing couples apart.

00:11:46.780 Okay, so, but she's not Stephen King.

00:11:50.620 We're back to Joyce Carol Oates.

00:11:52.960 She's written a ton.

00:11:54.100 sounds like she's very celebrated as a writer so what makes her problematic let's just say

00:12:02.300 that she doesn't always have great opinions about everything especially when it comes to topics like

00:12:08.580 race and i wanted to mention this because i see a lot of people sort of celebrating her and to be

00:12:13.220 clear i absolutely think that she should be celebrated for her writing and the way that her

00:12:16.520 command over the written word but i do think it's important to mention this because she is a human

00:12:22.400 And she's an almost 90 year old woman. So it should be kind of unsurprising that not every take is a banger, much like Azalea Banks.

00:12:31.000 You know, she's someone who is often wrong. She's often tweeting things that are just flat out incorrect and not accurate. 0.98

00:12:39.180 But again, broken clock when she's right, she's right. 0.99

00:12:41.920 In that episode that I played a little bit from when we first mentioned her, we were talking about the racial climate in the literary world and this false attitude that people of color are the sort of golden child of publishing right now. 0.99

00:12:54.660 In that episode, we talked about how the thriller novelist James Patterson said that basically white men cannot get writing jobs right now.

00:13:02.240 And Joyce Carol Oates actually backed him up.

00:13:04.360 She said, a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good.

00:13:13.100 They are just not interested.

00:13:14.800 This is heartbreaking for writers who may, in fact, be brilliant and critical of their own, quote, privilege.

00:13:20.280 In that episode, we talked about how just the facts and the stats don't back up what she's saying. 0.69

00:13:25.620 Publishing is still overwhelmingly white and male.

00:13:28.520 But I also wanted to include that because, like, isn't that just the way it goes sometimes?

00:13:33.120 Like, Joyce Carol Oates gets it so right when she is calling out narcissistic men like Elon Musk or Donald Trump, who she calls out a lot on Twitter.

00:13:40.680 But I wouldn't count on her for nuanced, thoughtful analysis of things like race all the time, right?

00:13:47.100 So I want to acknowledge that.

00:13:49.160 But also, the woman has a way with words.

00:13:52.240 Like, when she gets it right, she gets it so right.

00:13:54.620 So this whole thing with Elon Musk, let's get into it.

00:13:58.280 How did that get started?

00:14:00.200 Well, it starts with Joyce Carol Oates.

00:14:02.240 Joyce Carol Oateson on X. On November 9th, she tweeted, quote,

00:14:08.260 So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates.

00:14:18.020 Scenes from nature. Pet, dog, or cat. Praise for a movie, music, a book. Parentheses. But doubt he reads.

00:14:26.240 pride in a friend's or relative's accomplishment,

00:14:29.400 condolences for someone who has died,

00:14:31.640 pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team,

00:14:34.400 references to history.

00:14:35.840 In fact, he seems totally uneducated, uncultured.

00:14:39.320 The poorest persons on Twitter may have access

00:14:42.020 to more beauty and meaning in life

00:14:43.820 than the most wealthy person in the world.

00:14:47.700 Now, come on, that is some cold, 0.99

00:14:50.620 spot-on shit to say about somebody. 1.00

00:14:52.620 yeah and she's really wielding punctuation in there like fucking daggers and weapons yes she's 1.00

00:15:02.140 got a parenthetical she's got some stuff in quotes she's got just devastating list item 0.99

00:15:08.560 after list item separated by semicolons wow it's like a goddamn ee cummings poem as but it also 0.75

00:15:16.200 an insult and i also think why it works is because it's it leads with curiosity and also

00:15:23.780 pity it's not a mean tweet it's a true tweet and that's even worse yeah i mean it's like a little

00:15:30.880 mean like it's it is curious but it's curious about this shell of a person who is like so

00:15:41.860 othered and lessered uh but it is phrased as as curiosity it is a devastating

00:15:50.240 couple of words this is basically kendrick lamar saying drake is not like us like we

00:15:57.520 take pleasure in sports film books family friends nature even children understand and talk about and

00:16:03.780 partake in these simple pleasures that seemingly just accompany what it means to be a full human

00:16:08.680 We talk about things that they're lost up. Elon Musk does seem like weirdly devoid of these things. Even Donald Trump talks about how much he likes Pavarotti.

00:16:18.240 He loves Pavarotti.

00:16:19.760 He loves Pavarotti. He really loves Pavarotti.

00:16:22.580 That's true. Yeah, it's like she's accusing Musk of being something less than human, like a singular person who has failed to appreciate the things that make all of the rest of us human.

00:16:39.500 Yes. And imagine being that kind of person against a reality where you're also the world's wealthiest person. You have access to every pleasure in the world at your fingertips and you're still so miserable.

00:16:52.580 And I think that she's absolutely right.

00:16:54.260 You know, if what Musk spends his time talking about and tweeting and amplifying on social

00:16:58.660 media is any indication, Joyce Carol Oates is right.

00:17:01.440 He is a supremely joyless person because when you go to social media feeds, it's all 0.93

00:17:06.480 grievances and point scoring and dick swinging. 0.84

00:17:09.220 He treats his own daughter, Vivian, who, by the way, Joyce Carol Oates said, seems like 0.98

00:17:13.740 a very nice girl, very cruelly.

00:17:16.380 His ex-partners have all been very vocal about his cruelness toward them.

00:17:20.580 He does not seem like a happy, whole person.

00:17:23.620 And I think that is the thing that eviscerates Trump here.

00:17:27.660 I always, if you hear me say Trump, because in my mind, they're the same guy.

00:17:32.180 No, they are a little bit different, though.

00:17:34.240 Trump likes Pavarotti.

00:17:35.960 Trump likes Pavarotti.

00:17:39.080 Let's see.

00:17:40.280 I don't think Trump reads.

00:17:42.680 But yeah, Trump likes Pavarotti.

00:17:46.260 Let's take a quick break.

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00:19:17.480 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

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00:19:53.420 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

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00:21:10.460 recommend some of our recent episodes with ben stiller the definition of what is a movie has

00:21:14.620 kind of changed anyway too right what do you think it is now it's images and words being spoken

00:21:20.380 captured by some sort of uh technology danny mcbride he loves oh that's fantastic and you

00:21:27.080 make it on you make your own that's great i call him tarot reed

00:21:30.900 it's a good name they're all named after cast members of american pie yeah i call i don't i

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00:21:48.220 same time yeah then mary steenburgen why are you guys talking to me like i'm worried why are you

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00:22:03.240 Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:22:14.780 And we're back.

00:22:15.640 you know having done a fair bit of reading about musk i don't even think that elon musk would

00:22:23.340 disagree that he is a supremely lonely person he has said that explicitly he has described in

00:22:29.700 interviews and to biographers the feelings that he used to have as a child kind of staying up all

00:22:35.960 night alone and how even as an adult now he hates the feeling of being in bed alone he hates not

00:22:42.120 having somebody to share a bed with as an adult. Case in point, what do you think that Elon Musk

00:22:47.660 was doing the day before Joyce Carol Oates tweeted all of this? Any guesses? Maybe he was penning

00:22:55.580 an apology to his daughter and surveying the landscape of philanthropies or charities that

00:23:04.620 could really use some support in these difficult economic times so that he could boost his fellow

00:23:10.740 man and make amends with those that he has harmed.

00:23:14.520 Maybe that's what he was doing.

00:23:15.620 Absolutely not.

00:23:16.740 At 4.30 in the morning Musk time, Elon Musk was up using Grok to generate an AI video

00:23:23.060 of a beautiful woman making eye contact with him and saying,

00:23:27.900 Oh, I will always love you.

00:23:30.080 That's right.

00:23:30.700 He was using AI to make a lady say that she will always love Elon.

00:23:35.000 Like, I'm sorry. 0.99

00:23:36.020 This is some grim shit, even for Elon Musk. 0.97

00:23:39.340 I actually debated whether or not to put this in the episode because I was like, this is just very sad. 1.00

00:23:45.300 And I almost feel sad bringing it up that when the day before he was called out for being this miserable, joyless fuck, 0.98

00:23:52.180 he was up at 430 in the morning using AI to imagine a woman saying, I love you because he doesn't have it in real life. 0.99

00:23:58.680 I'm sorry. That is very grim.

00:24:00.780 It is very grim. But like, we only know that he did that because he tweeted it.

00:24:05.380 He wanted the world to know that this simulated woman loves him.

00:24:12.480 You're absolutely right. 0.99

00:24:13.480 He doesn't see how sad and pathetic that makes him look, 0.97

00:24:17.480 which is a whole other set of questions I have about how he shows up. 0.95

00:24:20.080 But also, Joyce Carol Oates just really has his number as to why he is the way that he is.

00:24:26.540 And so her post about him just like struck through the noise and hit a nerve and went viral very quickly.

00:24:33.900 as of me writing this it had five million views side note Joyce Carol Oates is verified with a

00:24:40.500 blue check mark so I wonder if she's going to get a payout from X for generating engagement

00:24:45.260 on the platform what do you think oh that's a good question I mean I wouldn't count on it

00:24:53.240 I wouldn't count on it we know he doesn't like to pay in general um I I don't think she's going

00:25:00.260 to get a check for this one um but you know maybe he liked it i don't know how did he respond

00:25:06.840 uh on x after she posted this not well but it was in that classic elon musk way where it's you know

00:25:16.420 that meme don't print in the newspaper that i got mad because i'm not mad i'm not mad he called her

00:25:23.600 tweet quote demonstrably false saying everything she says in her post about me can be shown to be

00:25:29.420 demonstrably false with a simple search. He calls her lazy and a liar and an abuser of semicolons 0.95

00:25:35.880 and goes on to say, Oates is a liar who delights in being mean, not a good human. And then he adds, 1.00

00:25:43.820 eating a bag of sawdust would be vastly more enjoyable than reading the laboriously pretentious

00:25:48.780 drivel of Oates. I will say this, the Pulitzer Prize people disagree on that one, so I don't know,

00:25:54.580 I might let them be the judge. Also, him saying that Joyce Carol Oates' work is pretentious

00:25:59.240 is a tell to me that he has not read any of Joyce Carol Oates' work, because you could say a lot of

00:26:07.120 things about Joyce Carol Oates' writing style. No one would ever call it pretentious. Her writing

00:26:12.700 style is sort of meant to be very accessible and tends to be pretty realistic for the most part.

00:26:17.460 Like if you were trying to criticize Joyce Carol Oates' writing style, you might say,

00:26:21.380 if anything, you might say it's too mundane. You would not say it's too pretentious. Anybody who

00:26:26.400 says that has not spent any time reading Joyce Carol Oates, you cannot convince me he's actually

00:26:30.120 read any one of her novels or short stories. No, I mean, that's not shocking. He doesn't seem like

00:26:34.440 a big reader in general. He's probably not reading a woman author for sure. Yes. So where I come from,

00:26:41.120 we have that phrase, a hit dog will holler. Do you know that phrase, Mike? I've heard it.

00:26:46.000 I don't approve of animal violence, but like I've heard it. Unless it's a Triceratops.

00:26:50.940 yeah kill them all like god stored out those dinos so joyce carol oats basically said a girl 0.99

00:26:58.900 a hit dog will holler she's like you know it's funny i never said explicitly that i was talking 1.00

00:27:04.500 about elon musk so she did quote tweet a tweet that was like referencing him but she is right

00:27:10.780 that she never spelled out that she was talking about elon musk so funny that he would have such

00:27:15.660 a big reaction because, yeah, hit dogs do holler. Joyce Carol Oates just really seems to have Elon

00:27:21.720 Musk's number. Here's what she said. In speculating about the wealthiest man in the world, I did not

00:27:28.560 actually state any name. I was thinking of the emblematic, the type of being that great wealth

00:27:33.900 can make possible, but such wealth must seem unreal or ironic. It is impressive that Elon Musk

00:27:40.440 allows critical commentary of himself on X, that it's not usually a magnanomy of spirit commiserate

00:27:46.160 with the extreme type of non-empathetic person. So basically she's saying, well, I never said

00:27:51.300 Elon Musk by name, but I guess it's nice that he allows criticism of himself on his platform.

00:27:58.000 I should say, after she pointed this out, lots of people jumped in to say, no, Elon Musk actually

00:28:03.520 does punish people who are critical of him on X. There are critical complaints that he shadowbans

00:28:09.500 people who post things that are critical of him. In a piece in the New York Times called

00:28:13.820 They Criticized Musk on X, Then Their Reach Collapsed, Musk told the New York Times that

00:28:18.660 he might have kicked off some critical users out of X's premium program, which boosts the

00:28:23.680 visibility of paying subscribers. Doing so would effectively curtail their reach and prevent them

00:28:27.900 from making any money on X. We also already know that he has absolutely no problem using X to

00:28:33.940 publicly attack just regular people who are critical of him on the platform. And I mean,

00:28:39.600 this just absolutely tracks with what you know about Elon Musk. He punishes people who are

00:28:43.500 critical of him. He has no problem amplifying the names of real, just regular people who talk

00:28:49.220 about him and those people get dogpiled and attacked and threatened. That is definitely

00:28:53.000 his MO. When this was pointed out, Joyce Carol Oates said, now some observers are commenting

00:28:58.600 that X-rated Twitter is actually censored to a degree.

00:29:02.840 My perspective is obviously limited.

00:29:04.960 For years, half hoping that my account would just vanish

00:29:07.740 and the time spent drifting about the shoals of Twitter

00:29:10.820 like frothy flotsam might be freed for better use. 0.97

00:29:14.800 Even that is poetic, but the woman can write. 0.90

00:29:17.560 Yeah, that's some great prose, absolutely. 0.96

00:29:21.220 Yeah, before this episode,

00:29:23.040 you and I were talking a little bit about how

00:29:25.200 I was surprised that this was even able to take off on Twitter because, or excuse me, on X, because of his history of censoring his critics. But you pointed out that her initial tweet did not use his name. And I really have to wonder if that was part of what allowed it to gain traction before any, you know, some kind of like censorious intervention could be put into effect.

00:29:53.440 I absolutely believe that had she used Elon Musk's name explicitly, we would not even be making this episode. I believe that.

00:30:00.560 Yeah, I totally do, too. But she didn't either through luck or design.

00:30:06.580 And so here she is just lobbing high level pros at him as like devastating insults.

00:30:15.760 So what else is she saying about him?

00:30:17.380 So there was this banger about how Musk has lived a bunch of different places, South Africa, Canada, now the United States.

00:30:22.360 wherever he goes he wants to leave that's because when he gets there he has brought his own self

00:30:28.340 along and whatever club he's invited to join has been devalued by the invitation

00:30:33.260 devastating devastating i mean that one is all is like on a philip like a philosophical level

00:30:43.300 like a like he does all this traveling because he's trying to escape himself and he cannot

00:30:49.180 So everywhere he goes, he has he has brought himself there.

00:30:53.040 And so that experience is automatically devalued because he is there because he is him.

00:30:58.400 Oh, she's really casting his life as like a Greek tragedy.

00:31:03.140 But it is like she's like she's not wrong in pointing this out, that if money is commiserate with happiness, he should be happy.

00:31:11.560 He should be full. He should be nourished.

00:31:13.220 How does he spend his time up at 430 in the morning using AI to invent women to say, I love you, right? 0.99

00:31:20.040 Like, she's not wrong. This is something out of a Greek tragedy, which Elon Musk wouldn't even fucking know because he's not going to read it. 0.98

00:31:26.920 Yeah. And other than the companies that he owns, I'm kind of struggling to think of any sort of group or association or community that he is part of. 0.88

00:31:40.880 I'm really coming up with nothing.

00:31:43.220 No. So along those lines, she makes another really great point about Elon Musk after her

00:31:47.980 initial tweet. Truly, it was out of curiosity why a person with unlimited resources exhibits

00:31:53.480 so little appreciation or even awareness of the things that most people value as giving meaning

00:31:58.360 to life. Just minimally well-to-do people donate to charities, local museums, and libraries and

00:32:03.480 the like. They support the Commonwealth. And unlike the very wealthy, these people pay high

00:32:08.720 income taxes because he don't pay a lot of taxes. Now, this is something that I have often

00:32:13.100 wondered about, too. People truly need to understand how wealthy Elon Musk is. When folks

00:32:19.380 say things like, oh, there's no ethical billionaires, the reason why they say that is

00:32:23.360 because if you have a billion dollars, you could meaningfully use your money to solve so many of

00:32:28.640 the world's most pressing and threatening issues that we face as a people without ever really

00:32:34.900 feeling any kind of meaningful personal financial loss. So the fact that you do have a billion

00:32:40.080 and you're not doing that, it kind of means you're an asshole. And Elon Musk has $500 billion. 1.00

00:32:46.780 Compare that to somebody like Mackenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos' ex-wife, who has been steady giving

00:32:52.460 away $19 billion of her $35 billion net worth to HBCUs, shout out to my mom's alma mater,

00:32:59.920 Virginia State University, who she gave money to recently, and cultural and advocacy organizations

00:33:04.840 like the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. And according to Fortune, she still

00:33:09.500 has barely made a dent in her overall network because of her Amazon shares. So for as much

00:33:15.100 money as she's given away, and she's given away $19 billion of it already, it's basically a drop

00:33:20.060 in the bucket because she has so much money left. If you're going to billionaire, that's how you

00:33:25.660 billionaire. You foster culture and education and do what you can to use some of that massive,

00:33:32.360 massive, probably unethical wealth to make the world better for others because you have already

00:33:38.420 made it yourself. You have won at capitalism. You're done. Sledge Johns on Twitter put it really

00:33:44.060 well. You can tell Elon doesn't read or have any sense of his place in history. If he did,

00:33:49.620 he'd be competing with Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt to slap his name on music halls,

00:33:54.460 universities and libraries, among other public goods. But he doesn't. It's a good point. Yeah,

00:34:01.500 he doesn't do that. And those guys like Carnegie, Rockefeller, these are not heroes of the working

00:34:07.460 class. Yeah, I mean, Rockefeller was commissioning the muralist Diego Rivera to paint a mural in

00:34:15.500 Rockefeller Center. Now, he did end up canceling this mural because it included a portrait of

00:34:21.440 Lenin. So it didn't, you know, he's still like Rockefeller going to Rockefeller. But he was

00:34:26.300 using money to contribute to the cultural conversation. Like even the Sacklers, you know, 1.00

00:34:32.780 the people who gave us the opioid epidemic to enrich themselves these people are ghouls who 0.98

00:34:37.620 should be in prison even they're propping up the art world in the united states yeah everything

00:34:42.920 elon does is just to enhance his own glory i mean x at this point is just like a pr hype machine for

00:34:50.520 him personally uh grok is a machine to repeat his worldview where they've censored the output and

00:35:01.960 readjusted it it's training to make sure that it is more right wing and also producing the sorts of

00:35:11.220 women that elon likes to see tell him that they love him uh it's not really these things are not

00:35:19.080 benefiting society at large they're benefiting him as a person who owns them it's absolutely

00:35:24.740 true where a lot of wealthy people even horrible despicable ghoulish wealthy people still donate

00:35:31.500 to cultural preservation, Elon Musk, his charitable spending mostly just goes back to,

00:35:36.960 you guessed it, himself. When I was thinking about this episode, I thought to myself,

00:35:42.140 maybe it's possible that Elon Musk is funding a lot of charitable causes and we just don't hear

00:35:46.440 much about them, right? Maybe he's doing this in secret, doesn't want the acclaim. So I looked

00:35:50.300 into it and it turns out that Elon Musk does donate via the Musk Foundation. But per the New

00:35:56.380 York Times, much of the foundation's donations have gone to organizations linked back to Musk himself

00:36:02.020 or his businesses, and that the foundation has, for several years, fallen short of the minimum

00:36:07.540 required to give away annually, potentially incurring tax penalties. So yeah, sorry,

00:36:13.580 Joyce Carol Oates is right again. And I don't know, it's just so obvious that Elon Musk clearly wants

00:36:19.880 to be loved by people. He wants people to think that he is cool and funny and like in the culture

00:36:26.040 with the culture. And I would think, you know, he probably is somebody who could buy his way

00:36:32.640 into being liked if he gave his money away to good causes, but he doesn't. We were talking

00:36:38.440 about this off mic that, you know, that story about how he tried to get into that very exclusive,

00:36:44.100 very famous nightclub in Berlin, Bernheim. I always have to add this. I bring it up just to

00:36:48.980 have the ability to say that when we were in Berlin, Mike, we didn't have any trouble getting

00:36:53.820 into berheim no we got right in we waited in line uh that same bouncer who allegedly told elon to

00:37:01.820 take a hike uh just let us right in no problem you know my claim to fame is that everybody told

00:37:08.060 us oh you have to wear all black to get in there if you're not wearing all black they won't let

00:37:11.220 you in and i got in wearing head-to-toe crimson and just sailed right in that is my favorite claim

00:37:17.180 to fame i also love how elon musk spun not getting in he says oh well the reason why i didn't get in

00:37:23.780 is because I looked in and they had a sign inside that said peace.

00:37:27.960 And I didn't like that.

00:37:29.800 And I told the bouncer that I hated that.

00:37:31.960 And we had a disagreement.

00:37:32.960 And that's why I didn't even want to go in.

00:37:35.180 Yeah, right, buddy.

00:37:36.040 Yeah, you stood in line for an hour at a nightclub

00:37:38.800 that you didn't want to get into

00:37:40.100 because when you got to the front of the line,

00:37:41.900 you saw that they had a sign hanging inside that said peace.

00:37:44.760 Sure.

00:37:45.460 And I feel like if he truly wanted to become the kind of people

00:37:49.660 that welcome him in at their nightclub,

00:37:52.560 He could just do good things that people like.

00:37:56.420 He has the money.

00:37:57.360 He has the resources to do so many good things.

00:38:00.100 And honestly, people like me, his biggest critics, would probably sort of begrudgingly

00:38:05.340 like him if he was actually using money to do good things for people and culture and

00:38:10.500 not just enrich himself.

00:38:11.940 But he doesn't.

00:38:13.060 Instead, it's like he does the opposite.

00:38:15.220 For instance, in 2020, the UN told Elon Musk that they needed $6 billion to help 42 million

00:38:21.480 people that they said were literally going to die if they did not get help. Elon said that he would

00:38:26.720 give the U.N. World Food Program the money if they could, quote, describe on this Twitter thread

00:38:32.700 exactly how the six billion would solve world hunger. I will sell Tesla stock right now and do

00:38:37.940 it. He followed it with the condition it must be open source accounting so the public sees precisely

00:38:43.600 how the money is spent. And the U.N. World Food Program did exactly that. Yahoo Finance reports

00:38:49.800 that on November 15th, 2021, the UN's World Food Program did that. They published a spending plan

00:38:55.700 showing how the $6.6 billion would be used to provide food assistance to 42 million people

00:39:00.980 in 43 countries. The plan included $3.5 billion for food procurement and delivery, $2 billion for

00:39:06.180 cash and food vouchers, $700 million to develop country-specific programs, and $400 million for

00:39:11.380 administration, oversight, and logistics. The head of the World Food Program tweeted the link

00:39:16.080 directly to Musk, adding, you asked for a clear plan and open books. Here it is. Now, despite this

00:39:22.380 clear, detailed plan that they released, Musk never even replied or engaged further. It is worth

00:39:30.380 noting that according to this piece, the response did not occur within the same Twitter thread,

00:39:35.620 which was a specific condition that Musk outlined in his original challenge. So maybe he kind of

00:39:42.060 got off on a technicality i guess that's such bs and it's like not surprising that he would

00:39:51.480 just ghost them on that because if you remember his fight with zuckerberg that was supposed to

00:39:57.200 happen where he just like talked about it a lot but then eventually just like it was clear that

00:40:02.640 nothing was going to happen uh you know he has a long history of saying things and then not

00:40:09.220 following through on them but this particular thing not only did he not follow through and

00:40:13.700 giving them the money he wasted a tremendous amount of staff time of people who are like

00:40:20.360 working hard to try to address world hunger with the limited resources that they already have

00:40:26.380 uh which makes it particularly gross and offensive uh so yeah maybe he got them on a technicality

00:40:34.040 but like who cares about the technicality you know it's like it's all just a game to him he

00:40:42.060 could have just said no yeah he could have just said no or he could have not said anything or he

00:40:47.500 could have pushed back or he could have engaged with the organs with the the un world food program

00:40:55.960 offline and work something out where he gave him a far lesser amount but still did something good

00:41:03.360 But instead, he just, like, disappeared on this, you know, did.

00:41:08.500 Yes. So who's even talking about this technicality?

00:41:11.740 His, like, reply guy friends?

00:41:14.440 Yeah, it's funny because when I was looking into that claim,

00:41:17.360 I saw people saying he does do charitable things.

00:41:21.080 He was going to give you the U-Bend that money.

00:41:23.180 And then other people would say he never actually did.

00:41:25.440 And they were like, well, he says that they needed to provide accounting

00:41:28.600 for where the money was going to go.

00:41:30.240 And it's like they did. He ghosted them.

00:41:32.100 well he's he didn't like the way that they they put together their budget and it's like well

00:41:36.860 okay but he didn't give the money that's the whole point like if he wanted to give the money he would

00:41:40.660 have he did it what are you even talking about more after a quick break

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00:43:53.120 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent

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00:45:11.560 with ben stiller the definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anyway too right what do you

00:45:16.300 think it is now it's images and words being spoken captured by some sort of uh technology

00:45:23.440 danny mcbride he loves boba oh that's fantastic and you make it on you make your own that's great

00:45:28.800 i call him tarot reed

00:45:30.600 that's a good name they're all named after cast members of american pie yeah i call i don't i

00:45:38.920 I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachy Sobieski.

00:45:42.660 I don't think she was in American Pie, but I still like that.

00:45:45.220 Haven't looked it up.

00:45:45.900 Haven't looked it up.

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00:45:50.100 Why are you guys talking to me like, why are you talking so down to me

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00:46:02.940 Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:46:06.620 or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:46:08.920 let's get right back into it so what's funny to me is that Elon Musk did not dispute any of

00:46:21.840 Joyce Carol Oates's claims about his selfishness or lack of charity or the idea that he devalues

00:46:27.500 every club that he joins or any of that he just got hung up on disputing this he doesn't read

00:46:33.720 claim. It's like he picked the most specific bit out of her entire long insult and decided this is

00:46:40.820 the thing I can refute. And also that was the piece that was like in parentheses. Something

00:46:44.960 about something about putting in parentheses makes it like just penetrate extra deep.

00:46:51.240 Yes. So Musk starts replying to posts about films and books, you know, culture to show that he is a

00:46:59.260 cultured person who knows about and enjoys culture. He replies to someone's post about

00:47:04.400 the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow with, great movie, and later to somebody's post about the film

00:47:10.060 The Fifth Element, saying, fifth element has great style. Leon put it so well on Blue Sky that it

00:47:17.000 would be like if Joyce Carol Oates accused Elon Musk of not knowing his shapes, and he just started

00:47:22.100 replying to posts about shapes with, great shapes, to prove otherwise. He also tweeted about his love

00:47:29.040 of the Iliad saying can't recommend the Iliad enough and noted that the book is best enjoyed

00:47:35.480 as the Penguin audiobook version at 1.25 speed but then he actually posted a link for the Odyssey

00:47:43.960 not the Iliad so I don't know he's just like not meeting these uncultured doesn't read charges to

00:47:50.840 me no and why would he know like it's best enjoyed at 1.25 speed like what does that have to do with

00:47:59.260 the text so i honestly think that for a lot of people reading is just another thing to conquer

00:48:08.240 it's just another proof point about how smart and accomplished you are so of course you want to

00:48:13.500 consume it on fast mode because the whole point is just like getting through it it's not about

00:48:18.600 appreciating it or spending time with it or wrestling with it or enjoying it. It's just

00:48:23.680 about finishing it. I was really struggling with this because the recommendation of playing it on

00:48:29.840 audiobook sped up. I can't even make an analogy of why that is so weird. If I was like, oh, what

00:48:36.500 books do you like to read? Oh, you got to listen to the Iliad on 2x speed. It's just such a weird

00:48:41.540 thing to say about a piece of art it really speaks more to his experience of reading it or in this

00:48:51.800 case listening to it than it does about the work itself which is like a weird way to criticize a

00:48:59.400 piece of literature but totally makes sense for a narcissist who doesn't believe that other people

00:49:07.640 exist in the world some on twitter even got served with sponsored posts on the platform

00:49:13.400 letting them know that elon musk actually does read with a list of his favorite books this was

00:49:19.920 the sponsored ad on twitter for blinkist when he's not building rockets boring tunnels beneath

00:49:27.020 los angeles or sending cars into space elon musk reads a lot here are nine non-fiction books he 0.97

00:49:33.040 thinks that we all should read that is the saddest shit and it's got a little like a little like 0.97

00:49:38.860 cartoon image of his face looking thoughtful as if perhaps he's just read something and it has 0.97

00:49:45.360 moved him they got them they got a man all etched like in the like in the wall street journal you

00:49:50.100 know those like etches they got them all yeah to make them look deep yeah yeah to look deep exactly

00:49:56.420 also like in this copy which presumably came from his pr team the the first two things when he's not

00:50:03.640 building rockets like okay we're boring tunnels beneath los angeles like specifically beneath los

00:50:10.480 angeles that's just what he does that's what the boring the boring company's been doing for the

00:50:13.820 past like 30 years just just digging tunnels beneath los angeles who's using these tunnels

00:50:18.720 no one no one's using these tunnels they've not moved a single passenger but he's down there

00:50:25.140 digging them down there boring you know how elon does truly i have never seen a hit dog do more

00:50:33.400 hollering in my life meanwhile i should say that while elon musk was rage tweeting about how not

00:50:39.400 mad he was don't put in the newspaper that i got mad because i did it joyce carol oats was tweeting

00:50:44.520 about how she was on a return flight from a lovely literary festival in charleston sitting next to a

00:50:49.840 very cute dog like truly unbothered all of this was going on i mean she's like she's older right 0.99

00:50:58.620 she's almost 90 people of that age bracket just like do not give a fuck like i try not to swear 0.99

00:51:04.900 on this podcast but like there's just no other way to say they do not give a fuck no she'll just 0.99

00:51:09.400 eviscerate elon musk casually and then go to the charleston literary festival right after like oh 1.00

00:51:15.500 Look at this cute dog.

00:51:16.940 Basically, like, literally, that is her life.

00:51:20.120 So the big question that I wanted to pose to you and to the listeners, do we think Elon Musk actually reads?

00:51:28.040 Good question.

00:51:28.760 Listeners, let us know.

00:51:30.260 Email us at hello at tangyoti.com.

00:51:33.120 So I think it's debatable.

00:51:35.940 Ronan Farrow, who has written a lot about Elon Musk, has a great exploration of the different science fiction pieces that Musk has said that he likes and is inspired by.

00:51:46.020 But hell, Ronan Farrow points out that Elon Musk almost always seems to take away the wrong thing from all of these texts that he says are his favorites.

00:51:55.280 He said that his hero is Douglas Adams, a writer who skewered the hyper rich and also Musk's own kind of progress at any cost ethos.

00:52:04.940 Musk is also an avowed fan of Deus Ex, also one of my favorite video games.

00:52:10.060 It's a first-person role-playing game with a heavy focus on ability-enhancing body modifications,

00:52:16.000 and he's talked about it a lot when discussing his company Neuralink, which has that same focus.

00:52:22.120 The plot of the game turns on a manufactured plague designed to control the masses.

00:52:27.380 And during the pandemic, when Musk was embracing COVID denialism,

00:52:31.460 He actually changed his Twitter profile picture to an image of the protagonist from the game.

00:52:36.880 But Deus Ex, like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is a fundamentally anti-capitalist

00:52:42.920 text in which the manufactured plague is the culmination of years of unrestrained corporate

00:52:49.340 power.

00:52:50.320 And the villain of the game is the world's richest man, who is a media-darling entrepreneur

00:52:56.320 with global aspirations and political leaders under his thumb.

00:53:01.460 So if I had to say what was going on, I think it's a combination of when somebody says their favorite book is Catcher in the Rye because that's the only book they read because they read it and they had to read it in high school.

00:53:11.940 And when somebody hasn't read a particular book all the way through, but they feel like they know enough about it, they've gotten the gist enough to sort of claim that they've read it.

00:53:21.460 I'm not above this.

00:53:22.700 That is like me when I tell people, sure, I've read Infinite Jest, but really I've just read Consider the Lobster and I will never read Infinite Jest.

00:53:28.980 But I feel like I've gotten the gist enough to be like, sure, I've read it.

00:53:32.800 I mean, I've gotten the gist.

00:53:35.940 But Elon's, like, list of his science fiction that he loves, they're good books.

00:53:42.220 They're classic works, but they are, like, intro to science fiction 101.

00:53:46.520 For somebody who's supposed to be, like, Earth's sci-fi genius, come on.

00:53:54.720 It's just, like, not deep at all.

00:53:56.620 It is like entry level science fiction that he's even talking about,

00:54:01.720 setting aside the fact that he's like getting a lot of it wrong.

00:54:05.160 Yeah, exactly.

00:54:06.520 So I won't say that I don't believe that Elon Musk has never read a book before.

00:54:12.000 Like, I believe he is someone with literacy, which is something I am something I am not convinced of when it comes to Trump.

00:54:17.620 I don't I am not convinced that Trump is somebody who has literacy.

00:54:20.540 But I don't even think that Joyce Carol Oates literally meant that Elon Musk does not read.

00:54:26.620 Like, whether or not he reads was not the substance of her criticism.

00:54:31.020 Him taking this one specific bit and then taking it super literally, 0.92

00:54:36.400 honestly, it kind of is like what a non-reader would do to me.

00:54:39.620 I think it says a lot that that's how he's going about refuting all of this.

00:54:43.740 Yeah, I think, yeah, he's just, like, really latched onto that one thing

00:54:47.760 and is just, like, buying ads to refute it by demonstrating that he has read books.

00:54:55.900 Yeah, I just think that what she meant is that he is not well read. And that he isn't like I agree with Joyce Carol Oates. I don't think he's the kind of person who reads things and takes lessons or messages or values from them the rest the way the rest of us do.

00:55:11.560 I think there is an entire subsection of kind of tech and business guys for whom reading is just another thing to wield at people to prove how powerful and smart and better than other people they are.

00:55:24.280 Like men who keep that book, The 48 Laws of Power, or The Art of War on their shelves to look smart and accomplished.

00:55:31.940 By the way, Donald Trump has said Art of War is one of his favorite books.

00:55:35.140 Guarantee you he has not read it. Guarantee.

00:55:36.800 I have also not read it, but I did listen to a friend of the show, Michael Hobbs' podcast, If Books Could Kill, about it. And it's all about how to maneuver oxen in old-timey 5th century military tactics and shit. Donald Trump didn't read that shit. 0.98

00:55:53.720 it's just funny to me that toxic men have held that book up but they definitely have not read 1.00

00:55:59.920 as a book that makes them look like powerful when really it's like oh what did you find

00:56:05.440 applicable to your current situation like navigating your promotion at work the bit

00:56:12.240 about how to maneuver oxen over snow like like what like what were the takeaways here that you

00:56:16.720 found so meaningful and applicable to your current situation you know trying to scheme on data and

00:56:22.040 accounting to make your way up in this real estate office actually like maybe one of the

00:56:29.000 technological innovations of that book was just the the branding of it and like putting

00:56:35.260 basically the whole like so much of the whole message like into the title like where you can

00:56:40.920 just read the title and feel like you get to just just project your own preconceived ideas onto it

00:56:49.320 uh and call it good enough oh my god no offense to men because i know you are one but like

00:56:53.620 the men who hold that book the art of war up as a meaningful text in their lives it's like what

00:56:59.340 war are you fighting like genuinely and it also reminds me of like you know i know men who brag

00:57:07.120 about how they only read non-fiction or quote philosophy which let's be real philosophy is like

00:57:13.980 self-help for men but they don't want to call it self-help like jordan peterson books and things

00:57:17.820 like that as if reading nonfiction or like philosophy makes you better or smarter when in

00:57:24.060 reality everybody knows like this is a proven thing reading fiction certain types of fiction

00:57:28.540 is linked to the ability to have empathy for others and their experiences and creativity

00:57:32.620 not to mention it's just pleasurable it's just fun yeah I guess I just hate when people put down

00:57:39.960 the reading of others you know that all I read is like trashy fiction do you remember the time that

00:57:46.660 We were at the bar and our friend Abby was talking about a fantasy book.

00:57:51.840 I can't remember the book, but it was about dragons.

00:57:54.480 It was a book, Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yaros, which is like one of the most popular books to come out in the past year.

00:58:03.480 A lot of people read it.

00:58:05.100 It's like young adult.

00:58:06.940 It's fiction.

00:58:08.920 It's a little sexy, but it's, you know, a lot of people enjoy it.

00:58:15.340 I read that book.

00:58:16.100 it was a good book so our friend abby was telling us about reading that book and our bartender

00:58:20.800 overheard and was like oh just trashy lowbrow fantasy for women and i was like oh well i don't

00:58:27.780 know because all i read is smut and like literally the reviews are like zero plot 10 out of 10

00:58:32.680 no plot whatsoever and out of 10 really he wasn't wrong the only incorrect word in that set in his

00:58:40.240 criticism was just like yeah it's trashy lowbrow science fiction but like that's fine people love

00:58:46.700 it it's great yeah like i guess i guess i just feel like i don't know you you we've talked about

00:58:52.280 this how i did not read a ton for a long time i was in like a very long reading slump and i was

00:58:58.700 gone to the beach and i brought the book the new jim crow by michelle alexander with me and that's

00:59:05.360 that's a meaty book and i was like oh i had just heard an interview with her about it i was like

00:59:09.400 i gotta read this book and i took this book in my carry-on to the beach and i did not crack i did

00:59:15.440 not like read one sentence and someone was like oh why didn't you like get like just a trashy beach

00:59:21.300 read i thought fiction that's right and now i'm just getting a whole lot more enjoyment out of

00:59:26.400 the act of reading and so again no shade to non-fiction because i definitely get a lot of

00:59:31.120 value out of it i might even be putting a little of it out into the world myself one of these days

00:59:37.540 teaser teaser oh i believe that's called foreshadowing oh in the literary world yes

00:59:44.300 it is very good very good but like that that i realized i was making reading i was making

00:59:52.240 reading something that i wasn't looking forward to anymore and reading a lot of like thrillers

00:59:56.280 and mysteries and smut was really getting me back into the space of just cracking open a book which

01:00:01.020 now i do quite a lot yeah i am when i was a child i read all the time and lately for the past several

01:00:09.420 years i'm just like not reading much and i don't know why and it kind of bums me out and i want to

01:00:14.260 read more uh but uh that book that that mean bartender was shitting on uh i devoured that

01:00:23.280 thing in like a week uh yeah because it it was like dragon smut but like whatever it was an easy

01:00:33.100 read it was fun uh and it felt good to read it and so even though like you i am i if you were to

01:00:39.800 be asking me like what kind of things am i reading these days it would be stuff that i would be like

01:00:43.440 embarrassed to tell you about even still if somebody told me that i did not read and i was

01:00:48.540 not a reader, I would not feel the need to like take out a paid ad trying to convince them

01:00:53.820 otherwise, right? I would laugh because I have degrees in literature, right? Like I am a student

01:00:59.040 of literature and the student of literature in me loves to see a little old lady writer completely 1.00

01:01:05.700 body Elon Musk with the power of the humanities. As Brandon Bishop put it on Blue Sky, Joyce Carol 0.94

01:01:12.640 Oates is demonstrating the value of the humanities through public ownership of the richest man on

01:01:17.840 earth. To wrap it up, like what I really love about this and why I wanted to talk about it on

01:01:23.080 the podcast is that I think it goes to show the power of words. Elon Musk is the richest man on

01:01:29.160 the planet. He is one of the most powerful men on the planet. And here he is being eviscerated by

01:01:34.680 an almost 90 year old writer who is just good at expressing herself with words. As Zaratustra put

01:01:41.040 it on Blue Sky, Elon Musk is incalculably richer, more famous and more powerful than Joyce Carol

01:01:47.220 Oates. She has nothing that could hurt him except the truth. And I would say that is a power that

01:01:54.620 we all have. We may not have their money. We may not have the White House. We may not have Rockets.

01:02:00.040 We may not own our own social media platforms, but they do not own the truth. That still belongs

01:02:05.580 to us. The writers, the readers, the little old ladies who refuse to shut up. Joyce Carol Oates

01:02:10.920 reminded him and all of them that words still bite, they still sting, they still cut through

01:02:18.480 all the nonsense, and they still hold the truth. And if we use them right, words can still build

01:02:24.780 a better world. With that, I will leave you all with one of Joyce Carol Oates' posts that I think

01:02:30.680 best sums up my relationship with Twitter and maybe even social media in general.

01:02:35.840 Twitter is the boat the boat owner pretends to enjoy

01:02:38.820 until a hurricane washes away not only the boat,

01:02:42.020 but the entire dock, and that's it.

01:02:44.740 Gone.

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - November 14, 2025

Elon Musk Insists He Does Read After Joyce Carol Oates Twitter Beef

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