What Is Mark Zuckerberg Thinking?
Reading Time: 5 minutesI Think I Know Why Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Fight Elon Musk, The billionaire has seemingly taken Elon Musk up on his invitation to fight. I think I know why., Musk-Zuckerberg fight: Why Mark could win.
If it happens, it will be the ‘biggest fight of all time.’ That’s what Dana White, the president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, says about the prospect of a cage match between megabillionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. White claims to have spoken to both Musk and Zuckerberg, and says that they are ‘absolutely dead serious’ about fighting.
In case you’ve been distracted by other globally relevant beefs, here’s how it went down. Last week, Musk, who owns Twitter, tweeted that he would be ‘up for a cage fight’ with Meta’s CEO. This wasn’t exactly shocking. Musk, who has fashioned himself as one of the world’s most notorious shitposters, frequently takes sophomoric swipes at other public figures. But then Zuckerberg responded on Instagram (which he owns) with a UFC meme: ‘Send me location.’ That might have been that, but when the Verge followed up with Meta spokesperson Iska Saric to gauge Zuckerberg’s sincerity, Saric replied, ‘The story speaks for itself.’
Meta could have taken the opportunity to walk back Zuckerberg’s post, or play the whole thing off as a joke. But they didn’t. It’s one thing for Musk, probably the world’s second-most famous troll (after Trump), to engage in this inanity. What’s harder to understand is what Zuck is thinking. What’s in it for him to challenge, and—if we take these guys at their words—literally fight Elon Musk?
On the surface, this seems like a crass-but-savvy way for Zuckerberg to draw attention to the Twitter alternative, code-named P92, that Meta is building. This was the source of the spat in the first place: In an all-hands meeting at Meta, a Zuckerberg deputy said Meta was working on a tool that, unlike Twitter, would be ‘sanely run,’ which set off Musk. If the cage fight actually happens, tons of people will tune in, countless words will be written about it, and in theory, millions of people, many of them frustrated Twitter users, will learn about P92. Just Musk/Zuck’s verbal fight has already generated some P92 press mentions (like this very one!).
But I think it’s more personal than that. Zuckerberg, at one point, was among the most admired people on earth. Then, he became one of the most despised. Musk then had his hey-day as one of the most admired people in the world—but now he’s becoming widely despised, too. They’ve both become supervillains in the public imagination, and while Musk seems to relish this role (to give one recent example, his doubling-down on an antisemitic swipe at George Soros), you get the sense that Zuckerberg wishes he were a little more beloved (remember his quasi-presidential-campaign road trip?).
If Zuckerberg actually fights and then defeats Musk, he stands to win back some sympathy, as a David figure who vanquished a Goliath. Musk, after all, not only picked the fight, but is 6 inches taller, and 30 to 40 pounds heavier, than Zuck. Granted, this would be a sort of silly way for a guy who’s been accused of enabling genocide to triumph … but hey, America has a short attention span and loves a ready-made Rocky story.
And here’s the thing: Zuckerberg actually has a decent shot at winning. He’s spent the past couple of years training in Brazilian jiujitsu—a largely ground-based martial art that involves trying to choke your opponent into submission— and he’s gotten pretty good! If the fight proceeds as it’s being teased, it will take place in a UFC octagon in Las Vegas, and will be a mixed martial arts competition, meaning Zuck and Musk will be allowed to employ a wide range of fighting techniques, among them BJJ. Zuck is still technically a white belt. But last month, he entered a BJJ tournament and walked away with a gold and a silver medal. He also won praise from the podcast titan Joe Rogan, who called him a ‘fucking savage.’
The whole idea of BJJ, according to Rogan—himself a BJJ black belt—and other evangelists, is that it’s not about brute strength; in fact, if you’re using a lot of strength, it’s often a sign that you’re losing. What BJJ rewards, instead, is intelligence. It was invented by a 130-pound man who realized that if he used leverage and turned his opponent’s strength against them, he could defeat much bigger, stronger guys. It was popularized in the UFC octagan, helping small guys like Zuck beat big guys like Musk.
I have spent the past couple of months attending BJJ classes, in large part because I was curious about why the Rogans and Zucks of the world are so into it (and because I’m a novelist working on a book about a tech billionaire who is drawn to various hypermasculine pursuits). I am personally a Musk-sized human in not-terrible shape, and I can report that I get consistently destroyed by smaller and skinnier people of all genders. It happens time and again: I’ll get matched up with some septuagenarian, and think, finally, I have a chance, only to get immediately swept off my feet and put into a chokehold, or flipped around and have my arm twisted into a hideously uncomfortable, potentially bone-breaking angle (luckily, in organized BJJ, one can always ‘tap out’ and end the fight).
What keeps me coming back, after so many humiliations, is the encouragement of the other guys at my BJJ gym, who insist that, after years of practice, I’ll be able to hold my own. But I also come back because, in spite of all of the beatings, I find it strangely peace-inducing. The second I enter the gym, all of my anxieties—career, family, status, aging—fade away. For an hour or so, I’m in flow: lost in the sometimes terrifying, always exhilarating, present moment.
Zuckerberg has spoken about this aspect of BJJ on The Joe Rogan Experience (‘if you stop paying attention for one second, you’re gonna end up on the bottom’), and more recently on A.I. researcher Lex Fridman’s podcast. Engaging in a sport that requires one’s full attention, Zuckerberg told Fridman, ‘is really important to my mental health.’ The irony here is that Zuck has made his fortune off of apps—Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp—that have utterly decimated our ability to pay attention. The fact that Zuck has become obsessed with BJJ, to me, is a kind of rebuke of technology—an admission that he’s tired of the very tools he unleashed on the world.
The whole point of technology, of course, is that it’s supposed to make our lives easier, and to deliver us from the pain and toil of our caveman state. And yet, here we are, in 2023, with two of history’s most famous technologists returning to the ultimate caveman activity: fighting. Yes, to some extent, their exchange is evidence of dumb macho posturing in a Trumpian world, and in all likelihood, the fight will never actually happen. But I also think it’s a sign of just how exhausted all of us—including Zuck and Musk—are by technology. Zuckerberg is going all-in on virtual reality goggles when really, he wants to rip them off, jump in a cage, and beat the crap out of someone with his bare hands.
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2023/06/mark-zuckerberg-elon-musk-fight-bjj.html
Ref: slate
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