Dear Mark … Are you really going to fight a mixed martial arts cage match with Elon Musk? It sounds like the plot of a bad 90s cyberpunk novel or an outtake of Idiocracy. I have to believe this is a huge troll of you two – my bullshit detector is screaming like a banshee. But there are disturbing indications that this is no joke.
This week you trained with UFC champions. According to The New York Times, you and Musk have been in contact with Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, to set up the fight, most likely in the Las Vegas Octagon. “It’s going to be the biggest fight in martial arts history,” White said.
If the matchup happens, it would also lower the bar for what passes as civilization in our society. In case this is real, I beg you, don’t do this.
I can see you’ve become a fitness nut, Mark. You recently won the Murph challenge, which involves a lot of gymnastics and sweat. Instagram posts have popped up with images of your swollen body. Last month you told your favorite podcast interlocutor, Lex Fridman, that most of your training goes to fighting and that you’ve recruited friends and Meta colleagues into an informal training circle, like a middle-aged geek version of the after-school training camp in The karate kid. Hey, whatever works to ease the pressure of running Meta! I understand.
But this Musk thing is not a respectful fight in the grand tradition of Zen or Jedi masters. It’s a cantankerous twist on a failed business relationship that has turned mean and personal. Remember, Mark, I was there when it started! That was in Nigeria, when you heard that Musk put your satellite on a rocket before testing was finished, and the whole thing exploded. You were steamed– and things haven’t been great between you guys ever since. More recently, Musk heard you were planning to launch a competitor to Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion but has since seen its value fall. That’s when Musk issued the cage match challenge, which you hastily, tragically accepted.
You and Elon have indicated that a portion of this battle royale’s pay-per-view funds will go to charity. Sorry, it’s not that easy to sort this out. You and Elon are among the two richest people in the world. With a swipe of your phone, you can divert a few billion dollars to any humanitarian cause you choose, including your own Zuckerberg-Chan Initiative, which seeks to eradicate all disease. Charity is a beautiful expression of the best qualities of humanity; this struggle would be nothing less than a return to the lowest impulses of our species.
At least leave it to Elon to speak out loud the real subtext of this glorified schoolyard scrap. In a tweet this week, he suggested that he and you have a “literal dick measurement contest.” That’s the level of sophistication this rivalry is at right now. Instead of defining yourselves by your historical technological and business achievements, the two of you try to resolve differences like cavemen.
This is even more alarming: hand-to-hand combat is an idea that is catching on among the super-rich. At this week’s mega-elite mogul-fest in Sun Valley, Marc Andreessen, a longtime member of the Meta board of directors, reportedly endorsed the Elon-Zuck fight and, according to Puck’s report, moved on and calling for a “return to how people historically defended themselves.” He urged parents to “train their children in martial arts in anticipation of an increasingly violent and uncertain world.” (This is all rather odd coming from a billionaire. In my opinion, the ultra-rich usually travel with private security, dramatically reducing the chances of a tech-hating Bruce Lee wannabe beating them with fists of rage.)
