It’s a shame the world is being subjected to so much Elon Musk at the moment. The billionaire investor, accurately described in Vanity Fair as “the thinking bro’s Trump”, has made himself an unfortunately permanent fixture in technology news since his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, and it’s been fumble after fumble for him ever since. It quickly became apparent that the Tesla founder – who by the way did not found Tesla, just invested in it early and then sued for the legal right to the title – possesses little business acumen and even less knowledge about the powerful digital infrastructure his ex-wife (thankfully not Grimes) begged him to purchase in order to “do something to fight woke-ism”. It is, quite plainly, the beginning of the end.
Since the acquisition, advertiser revenue has haemorrhaged as the company has lost the majority of its employees to mass layoffs and resignations – Musk’s Twitter is also facing lawsuits for the lack of notice ahead of the firings, as well as discriminating against disabled workers. All the while, Musk has been tweeting out deranged shit like pleas to Stephen King and, at the request of absolutely no one at all, this cursed image of his bedside table.
The overall aura of this photograph is, in a word, musty. If this truly is the nightstand of the richest man in the world, why does it look like an abandoned corner of someone’s bathroom? “There is no excuse for my lack of coasters,” he writes in reply to himself, before making a pun on his own name and the replica of a Revolutionary war-era pistol pictured. Okay. But this acknowledgement doesn’t make the scene any less depressing, only adding to the unchartable levels of Divorced Man energy radiating from the screen.
At least the echoing cup rings (the ghosts of caffeine-free Diet Cokes past) are a sign of recognisable humanity. But to speak of unrecognisable humanity, what man in their right mind is drinking caffeine-free Coke, a fool’s gold-coloured beverage that arguably undermines its own purpose? The choice to sleep beside not one, not two, but four of these open drink cans is a questionable one, but the decision to photograph them for the internet is even more so – rather than the rugged dedication of a messy genius Musk is likely hoping to project, the image conjures a depressive fugue, a man on the brink, attempting to wash his problems away in a river of aspartame.
Now, let’s talk about the toy guns. Indeed, it seems that neither weapon pictured is a functioning firearm. Sitting in a wooden box decorated with a classic colonial painting by Emanuel Leutze is a replica flintock pistol, a non-firing historical display item that recalls, at least for me, the poet Azealia Banks’ chosen title for Musk: ‘apartheid Clyde’. VICE’s Matthew Gault has identified the second piece of ammunition as a Diamond Back .357 handgun, a collector’s item from the video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution – a franchise about the dangers of technology and unchecked corporate influence. So close to self-awareness, and yet so, so far.
What compels a person to post a picture of their cluttered sleeping quarters? The answer is of course attention but, in the time-honoured tradition of twee, it appears that Musk is trying his hand at being quirky. Take for example the vajra, the small metal club in the left corner of the photo – it is a divine weapon in Hindu and Buddhist lore, but he probably just thinks that owning it makes him interesting, and uses it as a fidget spinner.
As many have illustrated online, Musk is standing before us in his underwear, gesturing at the racecar bed of his bizarre lifestyle and hoping for it to endear the world to him. Using a fraction of your net worth to feed millions would be a much easier way to do that, bro.