Can We *Please* See More Bad People Be Punished?
On FAFO and the joy of accountability
If you are not terminally online (and please, please don’t be, it has turned me into a husk with hair and I’m ashamed this keeps me up at night), the Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg fight sounds so impossibly dumb, I am almost at a loss to explain it.
But, I shall anyway! In June, amidst the swirling but true rumors that Meta was going to launch a Twitter rival, Elon Musk did what any reasonable business man would do: Threaten to kick Mark Zuckerberg’s ass. In a cage match. And because billionaire tech bros have a very specific type of worm in their brain, Mark Zuckerberg agreed.
And so we have spent the last month watching essentially this scene from It’s Always Sunny play out: as a location, Musk suggested an ancient Roman coliseum (!) while Zuck countered that his backyard fighting octagon would suffice (!!), then Musk began talking about old injuries and needing surgery, and then leaked a text where he feigns concern over their height difference (!!!). So Zuckerberg did the one thing that cuts to the quick of any tech bro: He called Elon unserious and threw down the gauntlet. And Elon threatened to drive to his house?
It is unendingly stupid. The stupidity is overwhelming. The stupidity beats on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. The only thing that is possibly more stupid is Adult Human Linda Yaccarino’s hyper-banal chattering that this is a “humorous” boys will be boys “back-and-forth.” It is not.
The thing is: it would be rather gratifying to see Elon and Zuck1 go toe to toe, having a beach off would surely embarrass each of them. Neither of them are Good People. Of course, Elon’s transphobia and dismantling of a major communications platform has very real consequences for vulnerable populations, but there’s also the union busting, his mistreatment of his staff, the platforming of fascists, and his penchant for using his wealth to bully and intimidate anyone seeking accountability—and that’s just what I can think of without Googling “Bad stuff Elon Musk has done.”
On the other hand, while Zuckerberg is clearly handling this with more maturity, Meta has undermined countless democracies and popularized the concept of “fake news,” while promoting literal genocide—and that’s also just off the top of my head—and all he’s endured are a few uncomfortable congressional hearings here and there. So, in their grown man slap fight, the winners would really be us, the suffering public.
Which is precisely why it will never happen.
Because so often the people in power who fuck around2 rarely find out.
Ed Zitron, a person with opinions I enjoy though I’m not exactly sure how I started reading them, writes: “People didn’t want to see a fight. They wanted to see Musk, who had been boasting about lifting 50 pound weights, finally shown that one cannot bullshit forever3, and that while he may have billions of dollars, he is still a sack of bones and blood and guts and horrible, horrible ideas.” People want to see accountability. Folks want to see two billionaires who have generally been untouched by all the harm they have caused, scratching at each other’s faces because that is the type of humiliation that might be humbling. And that kind of feels good.
In Georgia, that schadenfreude we feel when actions have real consequences is playing out in a very different way. Obviously Donald Trump, along with human bucket of papier mâché Rudy Giuliani and several of his other soggy cohorts, were indicted on charges regarding racketeering and election interference. This means that all four of Trump’s cases have led to indictments, which surely suggests that history’s most damp president will face some sort of consequences, right? Right?
And yet. The likelihood that he will be the Republican nominee for president is extraordinarily high, with Ron DeSantis trailing behind him by nearly 40 points. In fact, his indictments only lend him credibility, demonstrating exactly how the “deep state swamp” has been out for him, and that his pariah status is well-earned as he disrupts the woke Demoncrap status quo.
Therein lies the problem with top-down accountability: it requires a desire for redemption. Let us say, in some sort of freakish turn of events, Donald Trump ends up in jail. There may be revelry in a certain sect of liberal politics, but for Trump and his followers, there will absolutely be no lesson learned. To them, being held accountable is a victimizing act, one that is done to them, not because of their actions. “Fuck around, find out” has no meaning when you simply refuse to, um, find out.
Which is, again, why Musk and Zuck will never have it out. These guys live scot-free. Zitron continues,“Zuckerberg had the chance to make this a less serious bout — a charity boxing match, a cage match where he acknowledged the difference between them and still obliterated him, and so on, but chose to take ‘the high road’ against a pig that always seems capable of finding mud to roll in.” Yet Zuckerberg himself is no less of a swine. Looking to the people, institutions, and companies that hold power for societal catharsis, the experience of seeing bad men get it, is a failing task.
That catharsis, the release of anger and a sense of retribution, is only really achievable when the harmed community itself gets to deliver it. Let’s see Shaye Moss rip Donald Trump a new one. Let’s see the workers who have lost out on their severance pay get their just desserts from Elon. That would be gratifying. We’d find catharsis there.
Recently, on a much smaller scale, Black Twitter/TikTok experienced precisely this type of communal reckoning. If you haven’t experienced it, the Alabama Riverfront Brawl brought together almost every segment of Black social media to meme, celebrate, reenact, and simply chat about what fucking around and finding out truly looks like.
In short, a group of white boaters refused to move their boat for a riverboat that needed to dock and let out 200 or so passengers. The captain of the boat motored over and asked the group to simply scoot out of the way, and they attacked him with privileged savagery. What initially felt like an all-too-familiar scene of amateur footage capturing a Black man being horrifically beaten in public turned into a community moment as a swarm of Black coworkers and onlookers ran, jumped, and swam to his rescue.
The man, who was just doing his job, was defended en masse against a couple of drunk rednecks. Hats were thrown. Chairs were launched. A young coworker of the captain has been dubbed “Aquamayne” for impressively swimming to the rescue. And the fact that this happened in Montgomery, a city with deep ties to the civil rights movement, on a river that was once used to transport slaves, wasn’t lost on anyone. It became more than just a viral video, but a moment that showed Black solidarity and community to the entire world.
Three different events, three types of retribution, only one satisfying ending. Without endorsing any kind of vigilante justice4, the difference between the riverfront brawl and Donald Trump is that support for the victim came from the bottom up, from the community that was aggrieved. Not from a grand jury, not from a row of breathlessly reporting cable news shows. Similarly, Musk and Zuck are playing out a billionaire’s tantrum in front of the whole world, but all any of us want is just to see a toxic tech CEO get sucker-punched. But since that requires humility/responsibility, it’ll never happen. There is all of the fucking around, and truly none of the finding out.
This is why that brawl connected culturally with so many Black Americans; it allowed for immediate catharsis. Finding out was found. The entitled jerks got their comeuppance from familiar faces—the aunties, the Aquamaynes, the good samaritans—from within the harmed community. But Donald Trump/Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg are so removed from the harms they have committed, so ensconced in monied impunity, there will simply be no metaphorical (or literal! I’m fine with literal, too!) bloodying of noses. We’d even take the punishment if it was meted from inside their own house, like in the case of the tech babymen.
The point is: We should really see, as a collective society, if we could take that folding chair into Zuck’s backyard Octo-fighting pit. That might do the trick.
Hey, if you made it this far, thanks! As you can tell, I’ve been updating Night Creeps more regularly and focusing on thrilling night time missives. And I appreciate your support!
A bunch of you have recently tried to sign up to be paid contributors, which is so sweet. I’m turning on paid subscriptions in case your kink is giving me money, but I have no plans on paywalling anything yet because this is all just to please you, my internet friends. Just wanted to thank you all for the comments and sign-ups. If you really want to show your love, send this to a few of your pals! xox - Leila
Throughout this debacle, I have seen that Zuck has been training in various forms of fighting for quite some time, but I still want to imagine them windmilling their arms at each other like epically dumb Don Quixotes.
FAFO. Fuck around, find out.
Apparently once, some father of a kid Elon bullied in high school, tossed Elon down some stairs. It appears that this lesson did not stick.
Don’t be Batman!