Mediocrity in the Extreme

Mediocrity + Sycophancy = Disaster

Valhalla on fire by Max Brückner, 1894 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons)

“When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte

The fragility of an insecure leader is a sad spectacle.

You know the type — they tend to overcompensate for their own lack of skills or intelligence by bullying, insulting, and controlling others.

These leaders, desperate for what soothes their damaged souls, welcome and even encourage a Potemkin village, ignoring or oblivious to the challenges evident to everyone around them.

Rather than surround themselves with talented and intelligent people, they prefer the company of sycophants, lickspittles, and yes-men who will tell the leader what he wants to hear and do his bidding while robotically nodding in approval.

Marking the Spot

In what looks like a caricature of incompetence and obsequiousness, Elon Musk and his chief toady have determined that the best way to convince advertisers they should spend money promoting their brands on Twitter is to sue them.

Unsatisfied with producing (and conning marks into purchasing and raving about) a $100,000 dumpster on wheels that’s literally junk glued together, Elon Musk filed an antitrust lawsuit against companies that decided not to advertise on Twitter.

Oh, to have the self-confidence of a mediocre broligarch…

“A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn’t enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong. The spectacle is nearly always comic.”

— Lewis H. Lapham, 1988

Twitter’s CEO Linda Yaccarino, who left her high-ranking advertising job at NBC to become Elon’s lackey-thug-in-chief (and who, along the way, so completely bought into the cult that she changed her Twitter username from @lindayacc to @lindayaX), issued an open letter to advertisers followed by a cringeworthy video more suited to an elementary school play or hostage situation.

YaX claimed that companies choosing not to advertise on the platform that Elon bought and systematically ruined (including disbanding with the Trust & Safety team) are breaking the law by withholding their dollars.

Free speech mama believes advertising is legally required (check the necklaces)

How Earth Responds

The great karmic irony, of course, is that Elon himself issued the challenge last year at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit in an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin:

Musk: “I hope they stop. Don’t advertise… If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go f*ck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. GFY.”

Sorkin: “But they’re going to say, Elon, that you killed the company because you said these things and that they were inappropriate things and that they didn’t feel comfortable on the platform, right?”

Musk: “And let’s see how Earth responds to that.”

Earth did respond — advertisers pulled back from associating their companies with Musk’s increasingly toxic platform.

And the Free Speech Mama brought in by Elon, ostensibly to fix its advertising model, had to deal with both the results of the above and what was most assuredly a tantrum thrown by chaos-manchild Elon.

So they’ve sued advertisers in a case that’s the equivalent of a restaurant owner allowing smoking at their establishment but suing patrons who chose not to dine there because of the smoking.

“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.”

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1914

Self-Immolation as a Career Move

Elon can’t stand anyone who defies him, offers an alternative point of view, or is smarter in an area that is not his expertise. So he surrounds himself with people like YaX, willing to debase themselves in service to his mediocrity.

YaX gave up her top advertising job at NBC for what? Power? Money? A chance to grind her heel into the faces of some perceived enemy?

Instead, she has succeeded at self-immolation more spectacular than Brünnhilde riding her steed Grane onto Siegfried’s funeral pyre.

It takes courage to stand up to a powerful person and speak your mind, particularly when your livelihood is on the line.

Honesty, bravery, and self-respect are the currency required to speak truth to power to gain admission to the halls of integrity.

Like Dean George Makechnie did:

With Integrity Comes Courage

When Walt Disney was building his first park, Disneyland, he realized that where competitors were lacking, he could surpass them:

“Their mediocrity is my opportunity — it is an opportunity specifically because there is so much room for improvement.”

There is always room for improvement.

And it happens when you surround yourself with talent and listen to their expertise.

There’s so much to learn,

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