Column: Elon Musk keeps getting sued for bad tweets. They’re also why he keeps winning

So Elon Musk skated, once more. Dragged into court docket for one thing he undoubtedly mentioned that undoubtedly wasn’t true, no less than not within the typical sense, he received a go from a jury. And the reason being fairly easy: He understands how the web works higher than the folks in search of to carry him to account.

Extra particularly, Musk intuits the way in which that the majority common folks — i.e., the form of those who have a tendency to sit down on juries — understand their very own relationship to the web, a spot the place virtually nobody desires to be held accountable for what they are saying and do, and exploits it accordingly.

See, there may be an iron regulation of writing the phrases that change into posts on a social media platform, and it holds that whether or not these phrases are “true” or not is secondary to their leisure worth. Because the daybreak of social networking, it has all the time been thus. And Musk understands this innately, to the enduring detriment of everybody who doesn’t.

That is on the coronary heart of why the second-richest man on this planet can tweet issues which might be technically false, like, “Am contemplating taking Tesla personal for $420. Funding secured,” when no funding has been secured, get fined $40 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission, after which get acquitted by a jury when he’s accused of fraud for a similar tweet. Or why one other jury can take a look at a tweet through which he known as a cave diver who rescued stranded kids a “pedo man” and resolve it was not defamatory as a result of he most likely wasn’t being severe, even after Musk hired a private investigator to dig up dust on him to attempt to show his accusation had advantage, and after Musk insisted on-line in one other put up, “Guess ya a signed greenback it’s true.”

Musk is aware of that every part posted on social media exists in a liminal, perpetually half-true state: Sure, the phrases have been composed and made viewable on a public platform, and due to this fact there may be proof of the factor having been mentioned. However Musk additionally senses how social media robotically collapses any definitive that means or context, so who’s to say if anybody ever actually meant that factor in any specific method? Particularly, say, if one has huge shops of capital to put money into a mission of imbuing that assertion with a competing context. Lastly, even when somebody isn’t a social media consumer, there stays a robust sense that stuff posted there isn’t to be taken all that severely, and that individuals who do take it too severely are by some means suspect. They’re scolds, or they’ve an agenda; for God‘s sakes, it’s Twitter.

Now, Musk may not be a good poster, however he very a lot desires to be, so he posts loads, and he posts from the intestine. In actual fact, this tendency was most likely his most persuasive line of protection.

“Musk’s chief protection is, ‘All proper, it may need been technically false however spiritually true,’” as Ann Lipton, a regulation professor at Tulane College, told Vox. “Technically false however spiritually true” can be an excellent description of how anybody who’s been known as out for being unsuitable on social media has most likely felt about their offending put up.

The best way that Elon Musk makes use of social media — that’s, badly — could also be probably the most relatable issues about him. Each of those posts are traditional examples of main put up genres; by all indications, the 420 tweet is a s—put up, an impulsive try and stir the pot for the creator’s personal amusement. The cave diver tweet is a pure and easy ragepost. Musk was mad that the diver had made public feedback that made him look dangerous, and lashed out accordingly, as a result of it was extraordinarily simple to take action, and since tens of millions of his followers would enjoyment of his casually calling one in all his enemies a “pedo.”

That is what number of, many individuals behave on these platforms, and in reality how the platforms encourage us to behave — take an idle, possibly half-true thought of a private matter, pair it with one thing illicit to boost eyebrows, a 420 joke will do, certain, and hearth it into the ether. See that somebody has mocked you, reply with an impetuous burst of anger engineered to draw consideration and rile up and delight your followers. Musk is hungry for the adulation of the web plenty, particularly for the trolls and meme mills he thinks are humorous, and he desires to thrill within the delicate subversion he expects folks will expertise once they see him, a billionaire, tweet weed jokes a few severe topic, like his multibillion-dollar enterprise.

The best way that Elon Musk behaves after he posts is, nevertheless, reasonably unrelatable to most of us. Being unfathomably wealthy and helming a number of corporations, he has the useful resource to attempt to retcon their veracity, if such a factor turns into obligatory (“retcon” being internet-speak for altering your story after the actual fact). Therefore the hiring of the personal investigator and the story about an off-the-record chat with the Saudis who agreed to take Tesla personal in a handshake deal that left no different hint.

Musk has the facility to create the impression that the unfaithful issues he says on-line had been in actual fact, form of form of true, or true sufficient, or no less than turns the entire thing into sufficient of a funhouse mirror that jurors surrender on the enterprise of sifting truth from fiction as a result of it doesn’t in the end matter. As one juror told the New York Times after the case concluded: “There was nothing there to present me an ‘aha’ second …. Elon Musk is a man who may sneeze and the inventory market may react.”

That very same Instances story carried a quote from the closing arguments of the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Nicholas Porritt: “This case is about whether or not guidelines that apply to everyone else ought to apply to Elon Musk,” he mentioned. On the one hand, certain, sure, that may be good and good. On the opposite, it has change into so radically implausible to the extent that it’s borderline absurd.

Musk has drawn loads of comparisons to Donald Trump lately — for his ascent to Twitter’s everlasting primary character, for his “brash” and “unconventional” fashion and for his shifting political allegiances. However probably the most salient comparability level between the 2 males is likely to be their potential to acknowledge, on an intuitive degree, the place the vulnerabilities in a generation-defining mass media lie, and the way to manipulate them. Trump, a creature of actuality tv and 24-hour cable information, labored his crowds — and the refs — accordingly. Musk, a creature of the social web, does a lot the identical for the Twitter and Reddit technology, leveraging persistent uncertainties about reality and untruth. And to date, it really works.

Within the wake of Musk’s acquittal within the fraud case, analysts opined that we most likely don’t have to fret about too many entrepreneurs following in Elon’s footsteps, that he’s too distinctive a case, a singular “incorrigible” firebrand, and most executives can be content material to hew to the principles. Looks like we’ve heard that one earlier than, although.