Zuckerberg presents himself and his chest hair – Musk flips back below the belt

Will Tesla boss Elon Musk and meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg actually fight in a cage soon? Nothing seems impossible at the moment. At least Zuckerberg showed his muscles and chest hair this week, surrounded by MMA fighters Israel Adesanya and Alexander Volkanovski.

The photo shared on Instagram can be interpreted as a greeting to Twitter owner Musk. Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a cage fight in June. Zuck’s commitment immediately followed.

Are the Techbros really fighting or are they still pinching? We shall see. The message Zuckerberg sends with the photo is unmistakable: because of him it must not fail.

Photos are also circulating of Musk as he prepares for the planned fight with professional help.

Musk has clear size advantages, the Twitter owner is 17 centimeters taller than Zuckerberg. He has more martial arts experience and is 13 years younger.

During the corona pandemic, Zuckerberg learned Jiu-Jitsu, a martial art of unarmed self-defense originated by the Japanese samurai. Videos are circulating online showing a highly trained Zuckerberg in tournament battles. He recently won a gold and a silver medal in a public competition.

Two big egos collide

It is said from the environment of both entrepreneurs that they take the fight seriously. No wonder. The tech multibillionaires have been enemies for years. Musk is worth $248 billion. Opponent Zuckerberg no less than 111 billion. Only her ego is bigger than her bank account.

Online, the fighters have been engaged in a long-range verbal duel for some time: Musk’s tone has sharpened since Zuckerberg launched Twitter rival Threads last week.

The Meta boss, on the other hand, remains provocatively relaxed: When one of his employees wrote on the new social network that threads had been excluded from Twitter’s trending feature, Zuckerberg ironically replied with the comment “concerning”. Just like Musk often does on Twitter.

Musks berates Zuck

Meanwhile, Musk slanders threads like “Instagram minus the pictures, which makes no sense”. He also throws around infantile tweets, writing:

Musk’s “Zuck is a cuck” pun is apparently meant to suggest that Zuckerberg is weak and that his wife is unfaithful. The Twitter boss uses an insult to progressive men who are mainly used in right-wing conservative circles and are weak.

His next tweet (“I propose a literal dick-measuring contest 📏”) probably needs no further explanation. Musk wanting to compare his manhood to Zuckerberg’s is exactly the kind of humor inherent in the world’s richest toddler.

Musk’s verbal low-blow is no coincidence: Zuckerberg’s new social media app Threads gained more than 100 million users in five days, making it the fastest-growing online service in history, ahead of ChatGPT. For the Twitter owner, this competition is not only an economic threat, it also appears to violate his masculinity.

For Zuckerberg, on the other hand, the triumph over Musk would not be just a business one: “For years he has been working on a new image,” Der Spiegel recalls. He wanted to appear fearless, casual, and masculine. “Like the Tesla boss who sends rockets into space and dates movie stars.”

Bro culture never went away

That this cockfight, which is unsurpassable in terms of embarrassment, is possible at all is in no small part due to the tech industry’s unspeakably brotherly culture, which is dominated by white men.

Inflated egos and the phenomenon of misinterpreting ruthlessness as strength is not limited to technology. But at virtually all major tech companies, advancing executives have had to leave their seats in recent years.

The companies promised to improve. In any case, men’s groups like the ‘Paypal Mafia’ around tech investor Peter Thiel – mastermind and patron of the far right – still have great influence in Silicon Valley.

The NZZ recently summed up the phenomenon of bro culture and the “Paypal Mafia”: “Their members, including Elon Musk, regularly invest in each other’s companies and trade high positions in their companies for each other. So, as you would in organized crime say, power stays in the family. And that’s how Musk’s Twitter takeover was sometimes funded.”

When it was revealed in 2022 that Musk had made a payment to settle a flight attendant sexual harassment lawsuit out of court, he could count on the help of his tech bros. Musk allegedly offered to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage.

Chad Hurley, YouTube co-founder and part of the “Paypal Mafia,” responded with a pun. On Twitter, he announced that Musk should stop messing around (“stop loitering”) and complete the Twitter deal as everyone wanted a “happy ending”; a nod to an orgasm at the end of an erotic massage. Musk’s answer: “Well, if you pet my wiener, you can have a horse.”

The accusation was thus declared a trifle.

The incident is a good example: The Boy’s Club never disappeared, and the current behavior of Zuckerberg and Musk demonstrates this once again.

The whirlwind benefits both

Both also benefit from the current hype surrounding the Techbros’ fight: it flatters their self-esteem and distracts them – at least temporarily – from the tech giants’ real problems: Zuckerberg’s metagroup is being pilloried for numerous violations of data protection. Under Musk, advertisers are fleeing Twitter, as many companies fear image damage if their ads appear in an increasingly toxic environment.

Twitter’s lax handling of fake news also puts the social network on a confrontational course with the EU, which is demanding more consistent action against fake information from internet companies.

After the rocket launch of threads and reports of reportedly declining user numbers on Twitter, Musk promoted his platform to allow everyone to live their true selves. But it is precisely this lack of control over content that could drive many disgruntled Twitter users into Zuckerberg’s hands.