‘Boulder-sized balls’: Inside the Musk-Zuckerberg feud – and how we can all be more like Elon
Fed up with losing? A leading business journalist has analysed the habits of Elon Musk to work out how we can all use the tec titan’s tactics in our own lives.
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In this edited extract from his new book The Leadership Genius Of Elon Musk, veteran business journalist and broadcaster DENNIS KNEALE examines what we can all learn from the Tesla chief’s punchy style.
Our world is defined by a lot of fakeness – political correctness, false modesty, insincere politesse, and pandering to the press and the elites.
Elon Musk lacks time for any of this. He bows to no man or woman, nor anything in between.
The boss of SpaceX, Tesla and X – formerly Twitter – says what he thinks and believes, and rarely does he filter it or hold back in any way. He has “f**k you” money, and he acts like it.
Wouldn’t you?
One example is his feud with Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. They had been tangling with each other since 2016, when a $62 million SpaceX rocket, carrying a $200 million Facebook satellite, exploded on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. Zuckerberg posted on Facebook that he was “deeply disappointed to hear that SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our satellite.” This was a diss.
A year later, Zuckerberg said people (like Musk) who sensationalise the dangers of AI “try to drum up these doomsday scenarios … It’s really negative, and in some ways, I actually think it’s pretty irresponsible.” To which Musk countered on Twitter: “I’ve talked to Mark about this. His understanding of the subject is limited.”
In March 2018, Musk tweeted, “What’s Facebook?” and deleted the accounts of his Tesla and SpaceX as #DeleteFacebook was trending. This, in response to reports that data firm Cambridge Analytica had exploited lax privacy policies at Facebook to access the files of 90 million people without their consent, and used them to craft political advertising in the 2016 election.
Musk was in good company. Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, tweeted, “It is time. #deletefacebook.” This was bold, given that he had personally reaped $3.1 billion when WhatsApp was sold to Facebook for $19 billion in 2014. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also cancelled his Facebook account.
In 2022, Musk tweeted: “Facebook gives me the willies.” In early 2023, he said Meta’s Instagram depresses users, and WhatsApp “cannot be trusted.”
When news broke in June 2023 that Facebook’s parent company, now named Meta, was preparing to release a new Twitter copycat called Threads, Musk lamented on Twitter that the world is becoming “exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options.” A user cited Zuckerberg’s jujitsu training, and Musk countered on June 20, 2023: “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”
The next night, Zuckerberg decided to man up: “Send me location,” he wrote on Instagram. Musk called and raised: “If this is for real, I will do it.” He joked on Twitter, “I have this great move that I call ‘The Walrus’, where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing.”
Zuck is five foot seven and weighs 155 pounds drenched; he had trained for two years and completed his first jujitsu tournament a month earlier. Musk is six foot one and weighs 200 pounds or more and jokes about his love for doughnuts. And a meme was born.
Elon clearly was being lighthearted about this, but Zuckerberg took him seriously. Thus making the joke funnier.
Threads went live on July 5, 2023, drawing worldwide media coverage and landing a hundred million downloads in five days. The “Twitter Killer,” the media called it. Hours later, a Twitter lawyer accused Meta of hiring dozens of fired Twitterati and engaging in “systematic, wilful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.”
On July 9, Musk tweeted, “Zuck is a cuck,” and proposed “a literal dick measuring contest.” Channelling his inner twelfth grader.
Soon, Musk was tweeting about the setting for the fight and training with former UFC champion Georges St-Pierre. He posted on August 6: “Zuck v Musk fight will be livestreamed on X. All proceeds will go to charity for veterans.” Zuckerberg: “Shouldn’t we use a more reliable platform that can actually raise money for charity?” Oh, snap!
This was a snide reference to the infamous crash of Twitter servers when millions of users tried to listen live to Florida governor Ron DeSantis announce his run for the Republican presidential nomination.
On August 11, Musk tweeted that the fight would occur at “an epic location” in Italy (the Coliseum) and that it would be livestreamed on both X and Meta. Dana White, president of UFC, said the fight would break pay-per-view records.
Two days later, Musk texted Zuckerberg, offering to do a “practice bout” at his house. Zuck has his own octagon fight ring.
Zuck responded: “If you still want to do a real MMA fight, then you should train on your own, and let me know when you’re ready to compete. I don’t want to keep hyping something that will never happen, so you should either decide you’re going to do this and do it soon, or we should move on.”
Elon: “I will be in Palo Alto on Monday. Let’s fight in your Octogon [sic].” And: “I have not been practicing much … While I think it is very unlikely, given our size difference, perhaps you are a modern day Bruce Lee and will somehow win.”
When news of this exchange leaked, it spawned funny memes on Twitter, showing Photoshopped images of Zuck hiding inside his home as Musk knocks on the front door.
Later the same day, Zuckerberg ended this dance: “I think we all can agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on … If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me. Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.” So there!
This provided an opportunity for Musk to torture Zuck some more. Musk responded by tweeting, “Zuck is a chicken.” Now channelling his inner seventh grader.
It is fun to watch Elon run roughshod over the conventions of so many card-carrying members of the boring, repressed, preachy Establishment. You marvel at the boulder-sized balls on this man, and his ability to find humour in otherwise threatening attacks. And to give as good as he gets.
Thus, Musk can be an inspiration to us in how to handle critics and controversies, a guide for how we can stand up and be heard. Even if this makes you unpopular. Elon Musk cares little about being popular and clearly revels in being heard. We can operate in the same way, at work and, perhaps, in our most difficult relationships, whatever they may be.
If someone in your life gives you static, you can learn to let this amuse you, at their expense. You can choose to be the one who pisses off the other side, rather than the one who gets hurt and offended.
Then again, to achieve great things and invent a better future for the world, does Musk really have to be this way? To smack back so hard, and say hurtful things without regard for their impact, to be so unabashedly willing to be the Greater Asshole to get what he wants?
My inclination is to hope otherwise, enjoyable as it is to watch it unfold. Then you consider other great achievers – Steve Jobs, Pablo Picasso, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, the mercurial TV chef Gordan Ramsay. Even Donald Trump. Jerks every one of them, really. Yet all of them so effective.
This is an edited extract from The Leadership Genius of Elon Musk by Dennis Kneale. It will be published in Australia by HarperCollins on January 29.
Originally published as ‘Boulder-sized balls’: Inside the Musk-Zuckerberg feud – and how we can all be more like Elon
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