A passing observation of Elon Musk’s use of X, his own social media platform, suggests something I’d call self-radicalisation: a descent into a death-spiral of addictive posting, sensation-seeking and validation-craving that continually reinforces the behaviours, beliefs, and identity statements that drive the engagement. The behaviour is so entirely self-referential and self-involved that it can, without any irony at all, be described as masturbatory. Most of us would agree that masturbation, carried out in private and without compulsion, is harmless — doing so compulsively and publicly is another matter altogether.
Tossing Off Tweets Faster Than a Teenager With High-Speed Broadband:
Why Elon Can’t Seem to Keep His Hands Off His X
A version of this originally appeared here as a blog post in Feb. 2025
When it comes to wankers like Musk, the reference to masturbation is more than metaphorical. Compulsive masturbation is a form of addiction fuelled by reward-seeking, dopamine-driven behaviour; it can also lead to a fixation of ideas (for example, particular sexual fantasies aided by pornography and repeatedly returned to) which can escalate into seeking progressively more extreme material as a form of “chasing the high”. Similarly, Musk’s posting behaviour can be seen as compulsive and progressively excessive; only, instead of orgasm-chasing, he seeks the ego-inflationary rewards of public validation through the kicks he gets from posting on X. As I shall demonstrate below, Musk has been a victim of self-radicalisation via social media - something to which we are all vulnerable.
Self-radicalisation is a process whereby somebody actively or even accidentally stumbles upon a way of garnering engagement on a social media platform in an iterative process of reward-seeking conditioning that alters their identity or beliefs to reflect those that garner the most likes, reshares, and followers.
According to Stats With Sasa, before acquiring Twitter Musk was averaging just over 12 tweets a day. After acquiring the network in 2022 his usage doubled to just over 30 tweets a day, before climbing to nearly 70 tweets a day by the summer of 2024. Sasa goes on to estimate that this apparently otherwise busy man and multi-company CEO could be spending around three hours a day creating posts — and twice that on the days of heaviest usage.
I am unable to find more recent numbers, but it’s fair to assume they’ve increased exponentially through the autumn’s US election cycle. Any casual observer who cares to glance at the social network formerly known as Twitter will see a timeline spattered heavily with Musk.
Since moving to Bluesky I only visit “the other place” for research purposes. But if I hold my nose and have a look right now, I can see:
Four reposts in the last half hour; posts from 28 minutes ago, 29 minutes ago, 36 minutes ago, 37 minutes ago, 41 minutes ago, another retweet, a post from 43 minutes ago, a retweet, a post from 46 minutes ago, a post from 54 minutes ago, a post from 55 minutes ago, and a retweet an hour ago. That’s 16 engagements in one hour, chosen at random.
Musk is like the drug baron who got addicted to his own product.
All these posts, barring one — a repost about SpaceX — are chest-beating brags to his base or taunting challenges to his opposition regarding his dubious role as Chaos Creator in Chief for the US government. Each post has comments and reposts in the tens of thousands, many of which he has responded to, which add to his overall posting tally. Each and every post will no doubt have given him a thrill of excitement, after which he will come back seeking more.
The Self-Radicalisation of Elon Musk
We often talk about how vulnerable people may be radicalised via social media, but the idea of self-radicalisation is less discussed. I would describe it as a process whereby somebody actively — or even accidentally — stumbles upon a way of garnering massive followings and reactions across social media, creating a vicious cycle that subconsciously steers them in the direction that generates the most engagement. Instead of promoting any intrinsic point of view or personal value, their content starts to skew towards whatever gets validated and engaged with the most. Enhanced by algorithms, this becomes an iterative process that I believe actually starts to shift the poster’s values themselves.
This is a process Naomi Klein alludes to in her book Doppelganger, where she follows the trajectory of the once-progressive feminist Naomi Wolf into a rabbit hole that eventually lands her on the same couch as Steve Bannon, spewing conspiracy theories. It’s as if Wolf stumbled upon an audience ready to give her attention, and then shifted her entire output in that direction.
I believe we saw the same thing happen with J.K. Rowling. If you follow her posts over time, you can witness them getting more and more extreme. For both Rowling and Wolf, this process is enhanced by the architecture of social media platforms, which reduces nuance and pushes any middling point of view towards the extremes.
Anthony Cuthbertson, writing in The Independent, describes Musk’s transition from posting memes about cryptocurrencies and clean energy to extremist conspiracy theories as a move from “an apolitical moderate to a far-right provocateur”. Cuthbertson applies some armchair psychoanalysis to trace this conversion to the breakdown of his relationship with his transgender daughter, whom he associates with the “woke agenda” and, in turn, with the Democratic Party (to whom he used to donate). In an interview with the equally radicalised Jordan Peterson (who, I believe, took a similar route to Wolf and Rowling), Musk stated that his “son” (sic) was “killed by the woke mind virus. So I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that. And we’re making some progress.”
Cuthbertson traces the self-radicalisation of Elon Musk to a mere three-month period — from a tweet in which Musk states “I prefer to stay out of politics” to his tweeting about the “woke mind virus” — and categorises this, as I do, as being “radicalised by his own platform”. Given that all the examples I outline here — Elon Musk, Naomi Wolf, J.K. Rowling, and even Donald Trump — were previously associated (albeit loosely) with the centre or centre-left, we are compelled to better understand the psychology behind radicalisation on social media.
The Distorting Reflection of the Social Media Mirror
Narcissus, at least, fell in love with an accurate reflection of himself. Narcissistic infatuation with the self online is a perversion of that reflection. As I discuss at length in my book, and more briefly in this post, social media invites a lean towards superficial validation when what is in fact required for psychological health is something much deeper: recognition.
As individuals become radicalised online, they narcissistically “fall in love” with the image they are producing: an image gamed towards public engagement rather than authentic expression. The result is a distortion of the self that may begin as something performative but soon turns into something real: a perversion of one’s actual identity.
Nick Robins-Early, writing in The Guardian, explores a single day of Musk’s tweeting — 13 August 2024 — which is worth quoting at length:
"It’s just after midnight mountain standard time in the US on 13 August when Elon Musk makes his first post of the day on X, the platform he bought for $44bn when it was known as Twitter. Musk has been tweeting for hours about his interview with Donald Trump, and he will continue into the night before taking a few hours’ break – presumably to sleep – and then logging back on to tweet dozens more times.
Over the next 24 hours, Musk will post over 145 times about a range of obsessions, projects and grievances to his 195 million followers. He will share anti-immigrant content, election conspiracies and attacks against the media. He will exchange tweets with far-right politicians, conservative media influencers and sycophantic admirers. He will send a litany of one-word replies that say “yeah”, “interesting” or simply feature a cry-laughing emoji."
There is no doubt a compulsive, addictive quality to this rampage; he seems incapable of not being on the platform, and he seems to delight in the glow of millions of siloed, filter-bubbled online fanboys. It’s as if he’s found a recipe for the easy win of attention through provocation. While many say his purchase of Twitter was an act of genius in his aim to take over the world, I often wonder whether that “strategy” only emerges in hindsight. I wonder if buying Twitter was a form of turning cocaine into crack, that he bought the platform to enhance a high he would be unable to achieve outside of it. You could say it’s the act of a very sad man who bought all his friends.
Will Elon Musk Ever Be Beaten Off?
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter instigated a trickle away from the platform — one that turned into a haemorrhage shortly after the election. Platforms like Bluesky (where you’ll find me) have offered a form of refuge for those of us who don’t want to support Musk or be exposed to X’s poisonous culture. But the evacuation of differently minded people from X will only make matters worse there. Many of us are terrified at what we see happening in the United States and elsewhere, and in these spaces we can share our terror, find community, and support one another. Between Bluesky and X, however, one finds entirely different realities. When the CEO of a platform is radicalised by it and is also its primary influencer, you’ll find — I’m afraid — the radicalisation of a culture as well.
It’s as if the perverted reality of an individual, by way of massive influence, has perverted the reality of a population. So long as powerful tools like these are run by individuals who are not checked by outside forces, they will continue to reinforce these realities. Things are going to get worse before — and if — they get better.
Strategically, the only thing that can really mitigate the situation is some form of statutory regulation — but, given the circumstances, this is getting harder and harder to achieve. And while we shouldn’t give up that struggle, I have a feeling that the dissolution of the current situation will actually come from the inside.
Psychology teaches us that the end of the road for narcissism is never a good one. That is because the narcissistic “love” one has for oneself is essentially empty. A narcissist who doesn’t deal with the roots of their narcissism will never fill the bottomless cup of absent recognition with validation, no matter how much of it they get. Trust me on this: you would not want to live in Trump’s or Musk’s head. It is not a happy place.
Don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love. — Woody Allen
Masturbation, like narcissism, is a lonely activity. Woody Allen got this one wrong: masturbation isn’t really sex with someone you love, it’s simply an act of self-stimulation. There is no love involved. Sensual pleasure only goes so far, and the dopamine-saturated thrill of provocation and validation is really just that, sensation.
At some point, the lack of a deeper experience of loving and being loved for who you really are will make itself plain. The compulsive seeking of more and more validation, which in the end is just a defence mechanism, will eventually wear out. This usually comes in the form of some sort of breakdown, a depression that can no longer be ignored, or simply the continued chasing, and never getting, of an unquenchable thirst. One day this pathological process will hit a wall: for Musk as an individual, but also for all the people wrapped up in the expectation of attaining the elusive happiness that is promised and can never be delivered.
This is sad enough for all of us. More saddening still is that pathological narcissism on this scale invites massive collateral damage. The narcissist’s craving for validation blinds them to empathic relations with others, which renders others dispensable. The damage is already evident, and it will get worse. Out of the destruction, we can hope that a new and better set of values will emerge. In the meantime, we must resist in every way we can, and seek to support each other with the undying values of care, kindness, integrity, empathy, love, and community. As for those like Musk, they will have to beat themselves off to the point of exhaustion. We do not have to watch.
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