Musk and Zuckerberg about to duel – like fools so often do
Twitter heavyweight Elon Musk’s proposed bout with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg adds to an inglorious tradition of posturing and self-promotion.
Two billionaire narcissists have revived one of the oldest and silliest rituals known to man: the celebrity duel, fought hand to hand, in front of a crowd.
Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and owner of Twitter, and Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, are apparently planning to settle their long-running feud with a cage fight.
Dana White, president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, has described the prospective punch-up between the tech moguls as the “biggest fight ever in the history of the world”. The Las Vegas Octagon, which stages mixed martial arts fights, is being touted as a potential venue.
Musk claims to have trained in judo, Kyokushin full-contact karate and “no-rules streetfighting”. Zuckerberg has been training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu for at least a year. Bookies have the younger, lighter Zuckerberg the favourite at 1-5, with Musk at 3-1.
Like every duel, the Rumble in the Cyber Jungle is being framed as a matter of honour, when it is really about business rivalry, posturing and attention-seeking. In the time-honoured manner, it has been preceded by a blizzard of mutual slights and an original offence (the 2016 explosion of Musk’s SpaceX rocket with Facebook satellite on board) that happened so long ago only the participants can remember it. Musk allegedly resents Zuckerberg for making his money too easily out of software; Zuckerberg is said to envy Musk’s status as an entrepreneurial innovator. Meta plans to launch a rival to Twitter.
Supporters on both sides are egging on the duellists, while their families are trying to stop the bout.
“I think Elon has got himself into a difficult situation as a result of high school behaviour,” said Musk’s father. “They both have.”
As so often in playground confrontations, the combatants don’t actually want to fight but neither can back down without looking even more foolish.
Down the centuries, duels pitted temperamental, thin-skinned publicity seekers against one another, killing or seriously injuring many. Almost always, as with Musk v Zuckerberg, such bouts are founded on vanity and machismo, exacerbated by overheated journalism. Quite often the journalists do the duelling.
In 1870, artist Edouard Manet threw down the gauntlet to an art critic who had failed to write sufficiently glowing notices for his paintings and ended up skewering him in the chest. Marcel Proust challenged journalist Jean Lorrain over a withering review of his first book, fired at 25 paces, missed and went on to write A la recherche du temps perdu. Mussolini seriously wounded the editor of an Italian newspaper in a swordfight lasting an hour and a half. French writer Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve duelled with the proprietor of Le Globe newspaper under an umbrella, insisting he did not mind being killed but would rather not get wet.
Celebrities like starting fights and often lose. Handel was almost killed in a duel in 1704. Pushkin was mortally wounded fighting a Frenchman who may have been sleeping with his wife.
But frequently such duels have ended by way of a soggy compromise in which both sides pretend honour has been satisfied to avoid getting seriously hurt. This will undoubtedly be the final outcome of the Musk-Zuckerberg cage fight – the most ridiculous “handbags at dawn” episode since Lady Almeria Braddock and Mrs Elphinstone faced off in Hyde Park in the great “petticoat duel” of 1792.
This celebrated duel is said to have originated with an argument that erupted during a refined tea party in Lady Almeria’s London home.
After an exchange of “bloated compliments”, Mrs Elphinstone (her first name is lost to history) remarked to Lady Almeria: “You have been a very beautiful woman.”
Lady Almeria bridled. “Have been? What do you mean by ‘have been’?”
Mrs Elphinstone pushed the dagger further in: “You have a very good autumn face … Forty years ago, I am told, a young fellow could hardly gaze on you with impunity.”
Lady Almeria was outraged: “I am but 30.”
Mrs Elphinstone had good information that her hostess was at least twice that age, and stuck to her guns: “That’s false, my lady!”
Lady Almeria: “This is not to be borne; you have given me the lie direct … I must be under the necessity of calling you out!”
Mrs Elphinstone: “Name your weapons. Swords or pistols?”
Lady Almeria: “Both!”
The two society ladies met at dawn in Hyde Park, with swords and duelling pistols, and seconds in attendance.
Mrs Elphinstone reportedly put a bullet hole through the fashionable hat worn by Lady Almeria; in reply, Lady Almeria is said to have shot off Mrs Elphinstone’s wig. Both parties still refused to apologise and so they resumed hostilities with swords, until Lady Almeria managed to inflict a minor wound on Mrs Elphinstone’s arm. Honour satisfied, they quit the field.
The thrilling contest was reported in the Carlton-House magazine, with an accompanying illustration depicting the petticoat duellists doing battle.
But the best aspect of the petticoat duel is that, like the billionaires’ cage fight, it was almost certainly a complete fake, a bogus confrontation cooked up by the participants, promoters and the media to make headlines.
The Musk-Zuckerberg pre-fight build-up took place on social media instead of in a Regency drawing room but their exchanges are straight out of the Braddock-Elphinstone playbook.
“I’m up for a cage match if he is lol,” Musk tweeted.
“Send me location,” Zuckerberg replied via Instagram.
“If this is for real, I’ll do it,” Musk responded.
Duelling is the perfect vehicle for rich, touchy egotists to make perfect fools of themselves. But alas, the cage fight of the tech titans will probably be called off before the first blow is landed: the greatest non-sporting non-event since Otto von Bismarck ducked out of a duel because his opponent, exercising his right to choose weapons, opted for two sausages, one of which was laced with cholera bacillus.
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