‘Appalling And Indefensible’: Elon Musk Incites Rage Online After Claiming No One Is ‘Trying to Assassinate Biden/Kamala’
‘Appalling And Indefensible’: Elon Musk Incites Rage Online After Claiming No One Is ‘Trying to Assassinate Biden/Kamala’
Billionaire Elon Musk sent out a controversial post on Sunday following the attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump.
Full tweet:
As usual, he's now claiming it's just a joke. https://www.mediaite.com/news/elon-musk-deletes-appalling-and-indefensible-harris-biden-assassination-social-media-post/
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It has been reported that this has now been deleted. He called it a joke, but damn what a terrible joke.
The "It's just a joke, bro" defense. Classic defense.
It wasn't a joke. That's his go-to excuse when people generally decide he's said something atrocious.
It's also the go to excuse when getting called out when gaslighting someone.
I mean it was probably a joke.
Jokes have setups and payoffs. Humor is the subversion of the expectation and Musk's tweet has nothing resembling that.
Yeah i can imagine theres a definition he isnt meeting for him to call it a joke. Im saying i think he truly believes he wasnt being serious. I think he was being edgy and sarcastically accusing democratic elite of an assassination attempt.
And i would expect someone to follow up with how irresponsible that is, and that it still doesnt fit the webster definition of a joke. Please understand that im an imperfect human being who was giving their opinion about their perception of musks intention based on very little context.
Sometimes its impossible to post a comment of your own opinion when it could potentially be percieved as going against what is objectively morally right... when really there is no deeper meaning than my perception.
Im saying i think he truly believes he wasnt being serious. I think he was being edgy and sarcastically accusing democratic elite of an assassination attempt.
You might think he's being edgy. Hell, he might think(if he ever thinks) he's being edgy, but out of the numerous people who blindly follow him, how many do you think need to take him seriously and take him up on the suggestion.
There are jokes you can make to a private group of friends that you can't make to over a million people unless you really mean it. It doesn't help that twitter has a short character limit on messages. You simply cannot have a nuanced opinion on that site and need to consider that when making posts there.
I get why you would see someone calling it a joke and want to punish that because it was not funny and potentially dangerous.
But it can both be true that he was trying to make a joke, and that he was grossly irresponsible doing so.
You are telling me what i believe (that it wasnt a big deal) and im sorry but this reactive extrapolation of information that is constant and pervasive on sites like lemmy is something i hate and anyone can say im taking it too seriously but it keeps people from engaging/thinking instead of memeing.
I get why you would see someone calling it a joke and want to punish that because it was not funny and potentially dangerous.
Please define punishment in the context. Is criticizing Musk punishment?
But it can both be true that he was trying to make a joke, and that he was grossly irresponsible doing so.
What's the point you're trying to arrive at? Where he's making jokes or making stochastic terrorist comments, I can criticize him either way.
You are telling me what i believe (that it wasnt a big deal)
Everyone is coming to that conclusion. If you think everyone is misinterpreting your comments, that's because you are not a good communicator. I do not have the same problems as you.
I guess i have been overly defensive against you, but i saw your first semantic argument as being obtuse when to me, saying it was probably a joke does not evaluate to: 'musk is blameless and im siding with him'.
Defining a joke to me, seemed a little combative compared to asking me a clarifying question so i felt like you were trying to discredit me instead of trying to understand, which seemed like punishing a commenter for not aligning with the sentiment of the chain. In hindsight i think your comments were fair...
Forgive the run-on response: The top comment on this chain mentioned it was a joke, and the reply was that it was not a joke. I guess they could have meant that from the perspective of a semantic definition of the word joke. I interpreted it as them saying musk did not intend it as a joke.
When someone says "i was just joking", it does not always mean they delivered a joke by your definition provided above, in fact its usually the case that it doesnt because they are having to tell their audience its not a joke. If i were interpreting "i was just joking" with the intention to accurately understand that person, i would assume they meant: "i wasnt serious", "i thought it was funny to say that", or "whoops that wasnt recieved like i thought it would be".
All that to say: to me, musk genuinely seemed to miscalculate the poor taste of his comment. In my opinion, Musk didnt seem to try to incite violence, which is the basis for the outrage. He is just short-sighted and the consequences are far reaching compared to a normal person saying something which would otherwise just be "a bad joke".
Edit: And yeah to be clear i think he's an idiot. But i dont think he had evil intention here.
I don't get it. Could you explain it to me?
Idk maybe that democrats are the ones trying to kill trump? That was my first impression anyway.
And that's a joke how?
I dont see that as a call for people to assassinate biden, but a sarcastic accusation that democrats are trying to assassinate trump.
Listen i know most comments are trying to voice a grander opinion but mine is simply a genuine belief that he was being an edgy dumbass who didnt consider how much influence he has over dumb people that might see it as a call to action of some kind.
If you are truly asking me then theres my answer. If you are trying to uncover my secret status as a disinformation agent or something then please... leave me alone.
Why are you getting so pissy when people respond to the comments that no one forced you to make.
So nowhere in that response do you say how it's a joke. At best it's a baseless accusation that democrats are trying to assassinate Trump, flying in the face of all evidence that the people going after him are Rebuplicans. At worst it's a call for assassination of the democratic candidates.
I don't think you're a disinformation agent. I think you're either a Elon nuthugger or a useful idiot uncritically parroting Elon while ignoring everything he's said and done for the past few years. Maybe both.
If I understand correctly he's not saying he thinks it was a proper joke, only that it seems to him that Elon thinks it was a proper joke.
What if you werent right about that though and i was offering my perception based on very little context?
Its just frustrating how stuff gets extrapolated to make me something im not based on nearly zero information about me. Why does it always have to be about who the commenter is instead of the fact that it seemed like elon probably thought he was joking or not being irresponsible? I think hes an idiot who misguidedly pursues free speech for its own sake.
Can you really tell me any response to my comment has good intention to talk about what elon meant? Because it just seems like people want to destroy some unsorted injustice by calling me out for other things i might think.
I see you dude, just wanted to say at least one person gets what you're trying to say (hope i'm not alone). Sadly, according to lots of people, you can't give the enemy the benefit of the doubt without it meaning you agree with them.
And i really appreciate that. I know im complaining about the worst of lemmy, and there are much better places to find compassion in people than a political sub and these people just want a higher ethical standard in the world... but damn if we dont need a better way to communicate about this stuff.