Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, two pc geeks value greater than $300 billion put collectively, are posturing to battle one another in a mixed-martial-arts cage match. The dumb backstory: Fb, which was Zuckerberg’s follow-up to a girl-rating web site began in his Harvard dorm room, has been constructing a competitor to Twitter, an internet site for yelling at individuals on-line that Musk, who as soon as made his tunnel-digging firm manufacture flamethrower-like gadgets, purchased for $44 billion in a match of pique final 12 months. Then a senior Meta govt implied that Musk’s management of Twitter was, nicely, not sane, and Musk was like “😅” (or whew, lol in emoji), after which some tweep warned him that Zuck does jiu-jitsu now, and Musk went, “I’m up for a cage match,” after which Zuck agreed, or at the least posted that he did on the web.
What to make of this? Turning sports activities competitors right into a proxy for company triumph is nothing new; simply consider the Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s obsession with yacht racing. However to invoke hand-to-hand fight, and infliction of precise bodily violence, as a jostle for computer-app supremacy does ring new bells. Over the previous three many years, due to the huge income of the tech trade and its magnates, psychological fortitude appeared to overhaul bodily power on the trail to success, and as a cultural worth. However nope, it certain didn’t.
Many years in the past, when devices had been new however muscular tissues weren’t, the 2 had been cleaved. Their archetypal representatives in class, nerds and jocks, had been at all times at odds, in each actual life and popular culture. Their squabble had raged for a few years—the square-jawed soccer participant with the blond cheerleader on his arm bullying the thick-rimmed-glasses- and pocket-protector-wearing math geek—however the battle reached a brand new peak within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, when computer systems (and lasers, and house journey, and different domains of geeky delight) impressed a contemporary number of nerd. Movies reminiscent of Revenge of the Nerds (1984) and Actual Genius (1985) staged the quarrel in trendy phrases, whereas The Breakfast Membership (1985) and Again to the Future (1985) related it to the mid-century prototype. The theme: Folks with smarts however lacking brawn can use know-how (amongst different means) to win out, David-and-Goliath-style, over the bodily adept however mentally poor. The nerds had been underdogs, and their fictional victories charmed us as a result of they appeared unlikely.
Then the nerds started to win, for actual. Know-how grew from a pastime for weirdos right into a world-changing power that generated unfathomable riches. Invoice Gates, Steve Wozniak, John Carmack, Jerry Yang, Sergey Brin, and others proved that nerdom provided a fast path to wealth and energy. Pc science joined finance as a supply of cash and the alternatives it unlocked. Being a nerd wasn’t a situation to be overcome, however embraced. Pc life grew to become normalized, overtaking earlier methods of being. Aggressive video video games received recast as eSports, and nerds chipped away on the glory and spectacle of athletics. Situations historically related to the nerd archetype, reminiscent of social nervousness and autism, grew to become extra broadly understood and accepted. As soon as an outcast, the quiet, unusual geek grew to become hegemonic.
However energy is energy, and the type gained from algorithmic acrobatics solely amplifies the will to wield extra of it. Even a billionaire lives inside a human physique, and people our bodies decay into inevitable demise. That terror, together with the wealth and independence to dictate one’s personal time, gave rise to a brand new, ripped tech management. Swole Jeff Bezos grew to become a meme when the Amazon founder began bulking up. Peter Thiel’s injections of the blood of the youth supply one other instance, together with the enterprise capitalist Bryan Johnson’s $2 million-a-year assault on getting older. Zuck’s pursuit of maximum health, together with his obsession with martial arts, falls into this camp as nicely. And Musk: Although hardly chiseled, he’s bodily imposing, and he has claimed to quick and take Wegovy to keep up a match and wholesome look. The nerd-CEO’s mighty physique has turn out to be an equipment for securing and increasing his energy. Why accept psychological dominance when you may have power, intercourse attraction, and bodily conquest too? In that pursuit, the nerd flips into being a jock.
Within the films, jocks and nerds typically battle for intercourse. Musk and Zuckerberg aren’t preventing over a woman, however they could as nicely be. Social media hosts sexual politics and energy: Zuck’s unique hot-or-not-alike Facemash; the revenge fantasies of incel communities; the traditional attractiveness widespread to the influencer economic system. A battle for social-media supremacy is at all times additionally a battle for the situations of companionship.
Within the mid-Nineteenth century, when guidelines and organizations for a lot of sports activities first formalized, the British athletics advocate John Hulley borrowed an offhand line from the Roman poet Juvenal to outline the early rules of Olympism: mens sana in corpore sano, “a sound thoughts in a sound physique.” The concept was that youth ought to obtain each an mental training and a bodily one. There was a catch, nonetheless: The youth in query had been usually boarding-school college students, and due to this fact rich and largely male—the sons of those that ran society, and their inevitable successors.
Over the next century, the spirit of mens sana in corpore sano unfold, however few outdoors the elite had the chance to place it into apply. As an alternative they honed one facet or the opposite, cementing a cut up that may evolve into high-school cliques and their related stereotypes. Irrespective of what number of instances public colleges may emblazon Hulley’s slogan or its lookalikes on a fitness center wall, it couldn’t overcome the pesky drawback at its core. The easiest way to have a sound thoughts and physique has at all times been the identical: Simply be wealthy.
Musk and Zuckerberg’s spat amuses as a result of it’s infantile—and due to this fact brings these figures right down to Earth. It additionally feels genuine: You and I get into dumb dustups on social media, and these mega-billionaires aren’t any totally different, in a means. It would even make them appear extra embodied and due to this fact extra actual—two wealthy guys keen, at the least in idea, to duke it out for social-media mastery. However the feud additionally disappoints, as a result of it reveals how poorly our tradition has reconciled the dualism of psychological and bodily capability, even in its most outstanding successes. Nerds are nonetheless caught inside their heads, wishing they may specific themselves as our bodies, and jocks are nonetheless inclined to come back out swinging. Who wants both of these jerks? The battle between the nerds and jocks was at all times type of faux. On the highest ranges of society, nerds and jocks can’t be distinguished. Largely, they’re bullies to the remainder of us.
