Analysis
Moms are often our biggest cheerleaders: When we’re running down the soccer field as a toddler, thrashing in a pack of kids at a bouncing ball, they’re there hollering. When we’re up on the stage at our school’s winter choral performance, they’re filming our solo.
And when you are purchasing one of the world’s largest social media networks and destroying it through petulant flip-flops and inscrutable policy edicts, they are right there hyping us up.
Who couldn’t relate?
Elon Musk’s Twitter reign has seen him alienate both liberals and conservatives alike, annoyed power posters and casual users, and been marked by a clear lack of strategy or vision, other than what seems like the wanton decimation of the digital pace.
But every time he does something, whether it faces tremendous backlash or just sounds a little dumb, Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, is diving into the fray to defend her son.
Take just Sunday, for example, when Musk’s Twitter announced a new policy that would ban people from promoting their other work on the platform, specifically blocking those who hype accounts for Mastadon and Post, two current Twitter alternatives.
“This makes absolute sense. When I give a talk for a corporation, I don’t promote other corporations. If I did, I would be fired on the spot and never booked again. Is that hard to understand?” she wrote.
Twitter has already deleted those tweets announcing the policy and removed them from its site.
On Thursday, Musk shocked a number of people by banning several prominent journalists, who he claimed had doxed his location, leading to someone harassing his child.
Do you know who was all in favor of it? Maye Musk.
“Twitter wants to prevent journalists from putting families in danger,” read one of Maye Musk’s posts. Another said “practicing safety for families is a priority.”
Elon Musk slowly reversed those bans. But during the backlash, when he declared Twitter more fire than ever, his mom agreed.
While she can and should be reasonably concerned about the safety of her family, she doesn’t appear to have any concerns that Musk might massacre test subjects in his quest to meld man and machine.
When her son was about to make an announcement for Neuralink, his brain-implant company that is under fire for mistreating (and potentially killing) monkeys, she was ready and waiting.
She’s also retweeted and praised a number of clips from Musk’s other companies, including Starlink, SpaceX, and Tesla.
When Musk shared recent slides from a company talk after he took over the company, Maye Musk was ready with a handclap.
In those slides, Musk claimed hate speech impressions were much lower on Twitter after he took over in a graphic that’s been proven false.
And after Musk launched his ill-fated (but since reestablished) plan to make verification for blue checkmark users cost $8), Maye Musk loved it.
She even offered to pay for it herself.
She has also joined in his attacks on journalists. “Getting the facts wrong on purpose,” she quote-tweeted Musk, after he said an Insider story about his ties to disgraced crypto financier Sam-Bankman Fried was “false.”
And she seemingly wants her son to date Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has been a vocal Musk critic.
But like all good mothers, she finds her son endlessly hilarious.
We should all be so lucky to have a mom like Maye. Each and every one of us should get to hear a familiar, supportive voice whenever we need it most, whether you are trying to get through a breakup, contemplating a career pivot, or plotting the destruction of the greatest communication tool in the history of the world because some memes made you mad.
