Why is Elon the only person doing this?

Why don’t other leaders in government, industry, media, and academia engage with the great unwashed? They could. They could do it right now by opening an app, clicking “go live,” adding a title, and watching thousands of people suddenly appear. You can talk with multitudes. This could be Biden, Gates, Schumer, Fauci, the presidents of any university, the editors at the major newspapers, or anyone else on the planet.

Down With Aloof Posturing by Politicians and Elites

By Jeffrey A. Tucker, The Epoch Times, February 21, 2024;

Last evening, users scrolling their feed from X saw a notification of a so-called Space, which is a live chat involving potentially a vast number of people, where Elon Musk was holding forth. I went there and listened for half an hour or so. Nothing newsworthy came from it really but it was fascinating at a meta level.

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Here was the richest individual in the West commenting in real time, without notes or talking points, about various matters, from sci-fi to censorship to technology and timelines for flight or anything else that came up. He was chummy with some other speakers and engaging with strangers. This went on for hours.
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There were probably only 10,000 or so listeners and participants. To my knowledge, this was not scheduled ahead of time. It just happened. Again, it was kind of like having Elon over for drinks except that 10,000 people were in the living room.

Apparently he does this often.

Now, this is very interesting. One presumes that he is a very busy man, who during the day probably has his each half-hour planned in advance. He has more to worry about than practically anyone. He has many companies and interests and over 25K employees, and is responsible for hundreds of billions in valuation.

And yet he makes time to sit and gab around with random regular people from all over the planet using this very cool technology. Nor does he use the occasion to pronounce like some guru. Participants are deferential to him, of course, but he comes across as just another regular person—very smart but also normal—except with a special calling. As a public figure, he senses a real responsibility to engage the public, and encounter the public as a regular person.

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He speaks not with a script or a teleprompter but just in conversational English, including of course profanity that we know all these people use anyway. If he doesn’t know something, he says so. If he cannot talk about something, he says that too. But on every other matter, from books he has read to predictions of the future, he is an open book.

Now just ask yourself: why don’t other leaders in government, industry, media, and academia do this? They could. They could do it right now by opening an app, clicking “go live,” adding a title, and watching thousands of people suddenly appear. You can talk with multitudes. This could be Biden, Gates, Schwab, Fauci, the presidents of any university, the editors at the major newspapers, or anyone else on the planet.

Why is Elon the only person doing this? Where is everyone else? We live in a time of democratized technology. Where are the other vaunted leaders of our time in this space?

Don’t tell me it’s because they are busy. Elon is rather busy. It’s not because it is beneath them. Elon could say the same. It cannot be because they don’t know how. The X app makes it extremely easy from any smartphone. You don’t need a studio or any special equipment. Why are they not there?

My theory: their aloofness masks their fear. They don’t want to be grilled. They cannot stand to mix it up with regular people. They consider the rest of us their lessers and not worthy of their time. They think we are stupid and not particularly relevant to their plans for our lives. So they have set themselves apart in every way. This includes housing, methods of travel, social circles, belief systems and otherwise.
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They are the powerful, the insiders, the people who have made it. We are the others and mostly represent a threat. At the very least, we are icky. We are just readers, users, writers, and normal workers. They want nothing to do with us.

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