Until the gusty gearstick of our current century slipped into ‘D’, the ego used to be exclusive. Undeniably everyone has one like old ladies have cats or netas their stash. The values of the 20th century, sickened by two World Wars and one Cold War, didn’t publicly approve of egos. Egos were good as bling of empires and superstar cocaine. The conceit of celebrities was tolerable since they are weird creatures, not totally human, but exotic in a perverse, sadly splendid, slightly psychotic way.
Celebrities were entitled to Himalayan egos like Elvis was to a private jet with red velvet seats. But the public doesn’t like fads forever. Has ego blown its cachet and has celebrity lost its chic? Anyone can afford to have a pimped-up subconscious as long as they have a cellphone and just enough money to buy knockoffs. Social media, the great equaliser, has created celebrities of morons whose only claim to fame is how many times they change their clothes or where they shop.
This is what tickles Elon Musk, one of the biggest ego boys on the planet. Musk began life as Musk in a garage. He builds cool electric cars. He sent astronauts into space. He wants to build Mars colonies. His ego is bulletproof enough to get all the hate speech-ers back online.
He is one of the most abhorred men in the tech space after advertisers pulled out of Twitter and he lit the fuse on mass layoffs in the world of wires and servers; such is the curse of social media, which is having a moment of reckoning. Meta is losing billions and members. Instagram is becoming cringe among Zoomers.
The cruel realisation is dawning on influencers that time is up. The harder their bots try to be relevant, the louder the world laughs because the world is a cruel place where trends are fleeting avatars of popular entertainment designed to engage the collective boredom of history. Social media, which came of age with Instagram, is squirming with self-doubt. Its ego isn’t as confident as before; there is too much exhaustion from too much of it.
Celebrity and democracy are as mixable as petrol and Pepsi. Instagram democratised egos. TikTok reeled them in. In spite of all those hours spent being blind to one’s faults, influencers could never become real celebrities. It takes hard work to get behind the velvet rope. The high muckety-mucks, however much they flaunted their expensive dental work, didn’t approve.
Social media forced celebrities, once eagles with esprit in high hallowed places, to behave like their fans, who they secretly loathe. They are on a constant roster to post new dresses, styles, cool hangouts and cooler friends for their followers to emulate.
They fretted when companies began to pay big bucks to influencers for promoting stuff they should be pushing. In the bargain, they get trolled with abuse that would shame Donald Trump on a bad day, by people they wouldn’t spit on.
The coolest kahunas are not on social media: Brad Pitt, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Daniel Radcliffe et al. Aamir Khan and Sonakshi Sinha have logged out. Social media has become the biggest carnival of bad taste and bad luck since the sheikhs discovered oil. Musk should know something about that. He isn’t the planet’s richest man anymore. Bringing a kitchen sink to work on his first day at Twitter wasn’t on the money after all.
Ravi Shankar
ravi@newindianexpress.com