Elon Musk is winning, and the media can't ignore it

Ian Miles Cheong
  |   July 22, 2024   |   Be the first to comment

Elon Musk bet big on Twitter. He wanted a free speech platform, and, by God, he's created it. He put his money where his mouth is — selling Tesla stock to invest it in a dying company that had no prospects of being anything more than a glorified press release generator.

The price was $44 billion, but you can't put a price to what Twitter (now X) has become. For a long while, the media made fun of his efforts to turn the company around.

Week after week, they claimed the platform was going to die. That it wouldn't survive another quarter. That it had lost all relevance. That the engineers wouldn't be able to keep up when he let go of 75% of the company. Musk proved them all wrong. 

X, now more than ever, has become the most relevant social media and news platform in the world — ahead of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, and TikTok. Sure, you might get viral videos on those other platforms every so often, but anyone relevant uses X, and anything relevant only happens on X before it breaks anywhere else. 

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding — and Joe Biden's announcement yesterday, that the president was quitting the presidential race, is evidence that X is winning. The announcement, which dropped first on X, put the platform some 20 minutes ahead of the mainstream media. It was also posted on Instagram, but journalists barely use the platform — let alone politicians, business execs, and world leaders. 

Biden bypassed the traditional media, preferring to release the statement directly on his X profile instead of sending it to news stations and newspapers to broadcast on their own timeframe. There was no timed non-disclosure agreement, no exclusives for the New York Times. It was simply put out there, for the whole world to see. There were no barriers, no middlemen.

“White House aides learned Biden was dropping out by reading X,” wrote Musk on X. And it's true — they were blindsided by the announcement like almost everybody else. 

When an attempt was made on Donald Trump's life, people talked about it first on X. Journalists and commentators posted their remarks on the platform long before they went on their hour-long broadcasts to elaborate on their views. Conversations begin and end on X. 

And the media has taken note.

Once looked to as the stalwart arbiters of information, the mainstream media is now forced to play second fiddle to Elon Musk's X. The Washington Post wrote in a Monday story, "Biden tweets instead of talks, as Elon Musk seizes on chaotic election." There's a sense of bitterness in those words, as the publication that ironically still sports the words "Democracy Dies in Darkness" loses its relevance. If it wasn't for X, there would be no more democracy.

The Atlantic, which has spent countless words bagging on X, admits: "Elon Musk is Winning." 

"It’s still a rat’s nest of reckless speculation, angry partisans, and toxicity, but it’s also alive in a way that’s hard to quantify," writes Charlie Warzel for the paper. He continued:

Joe Biden’s shocking performance at the presidential debate in late June set my timeline ablaze in a way it hadn’t been since 2021. When a gunman shot at Donald Trump eight days ago, the platform did what it does best, offering a mix of conspiracy theorizing, up-to-the second hard-news reporting, and, perhaps most crucial, a notion of communal spectating (which, despite the awfulness, is genuinely addictive).

The past three weeks have been extraordinarily chaotic, full of the kind of infighting, violence, and spectacle that X was built to help document and even fuel. All of that culminated this afternoon when Biden announced that he was withdrawing from the presidential race with a series of posts on the platform. X has always been in the doomscrolling business, and business is booming.

He couldn't have said it better. 

"Biden Announcement Gives Elon Musk a Win on X," reads a headline on the Wall Street Journal, which is no fan of Musk. You love to see it. 

Perhaps it's high time the media gave X its fair shake. Instead of publishing article after article going on and on about how X is doomed and irrelevant, journalists must now come to terms with the fact that the platform they've been blasting for years has succeeded where they've failed.

And perhaps, just perhaps, they could wise up and try to work with X instead of against it. 

Ian Miles Cheong

Contributor

Ian Miles Cheong is a freelance writer, graphic designer, journalist and videographer. He’s kind of a big deal on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/stillgray

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