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It looks as though Twitter tycoon Elon Musk and Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg won’t square off in a cage match after all. In the end, they couldn’t agree on the ground rules for their epic battle, as Musk, in an attempt to satisfy his obsessive need for attention, was only interested in pretending to want to fight the Zuckster, while the Facebook founder seemed to actually want to pummel the X-Man.
You can see how that would create some compatibility issues.
The best part of this fake fight was always that the hype surrounding it perfectly showed us who each of these tech billionaires is: Musk is all talk, and nobody should ever believe anything he says, while Zuckerberg still feels the need to prove that he is one of the cool kids, which is something all his money can’t buy.
Just last week, the former made it sound as though the fight would definitely happen. Musk tweeted out details about it, including that he had spoken to the prime minister of Italy and the country’s minister of culture to ensure the bout would take place in “an epic location” that looked like ancient Rome.
As it turns out, that “epic location” was inside Musk’s head.
Zuckerberg, on the other hand, wanted everybody to know that he had no interest in verbal jousting and wanted his fists to do the talking.
“I think we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on. I offered a real date. Dana White offered to make this a legit competition for charity. Elon won’t confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead,” he wrote on Threads. “If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me. Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”
You can almost feel the testosterone ooze out of the screen.
In other words, each of the social media magnates wanted to show the world that he is an alpha — Musk by saying he is and Zuckerberg by learning how to fight.
Last month, we already ridiculed both of them (which is the only way anybody should cover this story) for their pathological need to prove themselves, and suggested some ways in which such a cage match could actually be interesting. If you haven’t read the piece, the main takeaway is that it should be a fight to the death to ensure we all win for having to suffer through this nonsense.
Today, we’ll try to find another solution to this conundrum.
Generally, it is a good idea for Musk and Zuckerberg to spend their time on anything other than making social media worse than it already is (for a serious look at this, read today’s piece by WhoWhatWhy founder Russ Baker on the topic).
So we thought we’d look to the animal kingdom for inspiration and a way in which they could try to assert their dominance over each other while benefiting everybody else.
It didn’t take long to find the perfect way to settle this feud. Obviously, to show who is the alphaest of them all, Musk and Zuckerberg should emulate a pair of rams. All they would have to do is sprint toward each other at full speed and bump heads as hard as they can.
Now that’s something we’d shell out a pay-per-view fee for.
