Dear Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk: Talk is cheap. If y'all wanna fight, let's go. I'll take the both of you. Cage match, Las Vegas Octagon, Roman Colosseum, or my backyard — "send me location." I'll bring the thumbtacks, folding chairs, and a lifetime of service-industry class rage hardened into the lethally powerful mixed martial artform known as F*** Around and Find Out. You bring your inhalers and whatever Bugatti-built stretchers you wanna leave on.
You're probably starting to realize nobody actually cares about whether two billionaires in overpriced athletic gear awkwardly paw at each other on the floor of an arena like a couple of confused virgins in the backseat of a Honda Accord. And, to be fair, watching grown white men of the American ruling class thump their chests and beg for applause — in a match that's sure to be as thrilling as a yellow-belt demonstration by suburban private-school kids — isn't normally how I like to spend my weekend. But I'm willing to make an exception for a good cause.
See, now that you genteel rich folk have decided to legitimize a fist-based approach to economic conflict resolution, us poors finally have a shot at getting ahead in this country. So protect your necks; we're better at this than you.
Nobody actually cares about whether two billionaires in overpriced athletic gear awkwardly paw at each other like a couple of confused virgins in the backseat of a Honda Accord.
And, gentlemen, I can think of no finer gift you could offer the working class than a broadcast of your amateur fumbling. As the saying goes: If you can see it, you can be it. Your little spat would inspire in millions of viewers the sweetest sugarplum fantasies of themselves in that ring, finally given the power to beat — in the most satisfying way imaginable — a couple of surveillance-state barons who have Congressional hall passes and an army of lawyers.
Bring it then, boys. I'm going to trap you two in that cage and make you kiss like my Barbies. I can wing a can of Grizz at 16 mph in a high wind, have fallen down no less than four flights of stairs in my life without spilling my beer, and I might even have rabies. Who knows? Either way, it's not like there's a Coggins test to get into this dog and pony show. Roll up.
Are you sure you want this?
A fight may not even be necessary in your case, Elon. You've made clear what this is actually about for you.
You want a d**k-measuring contest instead of a fight? Go for it. It's not like the women on your platform haven't already been inundated with d**k pics since the inception of DMs — a problem whose solution never seems to be more urgent in your thus-articulated Twitter.com vision than allowing a flood of AI-driven ad bots into a For You feed no one asked for.
And it's not like anyone should expect sexual harassment of women on Twitter.com to get better, since the security and safety teams (how many remain after your layoff spree?) all seem tied up avoiding a legal crisis of non-compliance with two Federal Trade Commission consent orders.
So do it already, Elon. Either whip your skank meat out of whatever GQ-Worst-Dressed nightmare-fit you're sporting and let the Bird Site roast you in a final, glorious swan song — or shut up about your stupid penis.
You both won. The hyper-surveillance dystopia is your oyster. Congratulations.
And you, Zuck? I don't know if this is about the sport for you either. But I did detect some glimpse of light that seems yet un-snuffed in those mannequin-dead eyes of yours, which tells me this may be the first time you've felt anything close to emotion, outside of whatever locker-stuffing Phillips Exeter flashbacks presumably haunt your therapy sessions. And that's good enough for me.
Either way, don't listen to Wired's Steven Levy, whose July 14 column begged Zuckerberg "Don't fight Elon Musk in the Las Vegas Octagon." Rumor has it Levy's got money on Musk, despite being on your payroll. I would know since I made up that rumor in an attempt to also bait him into a cage fight. (Square up, Levy.)
You two dorks have both got more money than God, and likely better accountants. You both have the power to swing an election with the flick of a wrist courtesy of addiction-by-design swipe-holes and no real federal laws of substance to stop you. You both have fleets of lobbyists at your disposal, ready to pump millions into the campaign coffers of senators that the rest of us barely get to vote on.
To top it off, you can tap a dragon's hoard of personal data at any time to doxx me and every other person clean off the face of the earth — with near-total impunity. You both won. The hyper-surveillance dystopia is your oyster. Congratulations.
And yet you both want to turn this embarrassment of riches into a parade of your excess — a slap-fight between the Pilsbury Divorced-boy and three FTC investigations stacked in a trench coat. Since you won't pay someone to read the room for you, someone's got to teach you a lesson you didn't learn in the Ivy League.
If I beat you, here's what I want.
I don't want your money. Here are my terms.
Elon, if I come down off the top rope so hard that I flatten your hair plugs into a rug for the front row, then I want you to make things right for the roughly 2,000 former workers whose lives you upended with your cruel and thoughtless layoffs. In fact, go ahead and do right by every person listed in this Vanity Fair highlight reel of your greatest hits, which includes "tweeting misogynistic things at Senator Elizabeth Warren because she said he should pay more in taxes" and "attempting to 'destroy a Tesla whistleblower.'"
I also want to know why you and Zuckerberg both always look slightly damp. It's weird, guys.
You both want to turn this embarrassment of riches into a parade of your excess — a slap-fight between the Pilsbury Divorced-boy and three FTC investigations stacked in a trench coat.
Zuckerberg, if I kick your ass, I want Meta and all Meta-invested entities to stop snitching on abortion seekers in anti-abortion states, and stop enabling the hunt of migrant families by renegade agencies. We're trying to keep these 11-year-olds alive after they get raped, and we're trying to make sure kids survive desert cages. Meanwhile, Facebook has been so thirsty to narc that it and others have gotten busted for rubber-stamping the data requests of fake warrants from perverted stalkers who were hunting girls.
If I beat you, I want Meta to stop trying to take control of city public services, and I want to see you rip up any and every non-disclosure agreement you've ever had a city sign which keeps your impact assessments out of the public record.
And if I beat both of you, I want you both to hand over ownership of the company towns you're building to the cities you're building them in, to stop dodging taxes with overseas shell companies and to voluntarily adhere to manufacturing and logistics environmental standards that meet or exceed the aims of the Paris Agreement. That also means divesting from any holding, hedge, subsidiary, instrument or position that contributes to deforestation and the burning of the world's lungs — and the same for any water-related investments.
And finally, I want you both to delete every single piece of personally identifiable data your companies have got on us non-billionaires — all of it.
If you beat me, here's what you get
If you all win, you get to brag to the world that you beat the hell out of some punkass writer who brought a pen to a wallet fight, and who could never turn down the chance to swing on a bully.
It'd be worth getting the teeth kicked out of my head as long as it meant landing just one, solid, nose-busting hook on either of your faces.
You can wave to your adoring fans from whatever social media platform you want, recounting how you mercilessly steamrolled yet another broke Millennial who can't afford to fight you in court — much less afford your personal trainers, boutique performance enhancements and backyard octagons.
And then you get to go on parading through the embers of a burning empire from its highest point, while packing your bags for Mars. Or shouting about how I didn't want the smoke, as you put on your gas masks and descend into your private island bunkers.
As far as my own mug is concerned, it doesn't matter how many top-notch trainers your algorithm-engorged wallets can buy or how fast you can flatten me. It'd be worth getting the teeth kicked out of my head by Zuck's preciously pedicured foot — and my knee tendons hyper-rotated into möbius strips by a dirty leg-sweep from Musk — as long as it meant getting you away from your bodyguards long enough to land just one, solid, nose-busting hook on either of your faces.
When the EMTs peel me off the mat, I'll laugh a fountain of blood out of my mouth just so I can scream "worth it!" to the ring-side CNN cameras.
Seems like a pretty good deal to me, fellas. Ready when you are.
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