The Elon Musk Mind Virus: Spreading Easily Debunked Misinformation That Confirms His Own Biases

Elon Musk has been on a tear of late, attacking the mainstream media" at every turn. It's true that this started about five years ago, when Tesla started getting some negative press (after about a decade of extremely positive press), and Musk seemed to absolutely lose his shit. It kinda comes with the territory, though, that every single successful tech company eventually goes through a round or two of media scrutiny, and some of it will be wrong and unfair.

But Musk seemed to take it extremely personally, and never let it go.

And, look, we've regularly highlighted how the mainstream media picks up narratives that it can report in extremely misleading ways. So, we're not exactly mainstream media boosters around here. But, the difference is that I can actually understand how media folks get sucked into certain narratives. And, I mean, the very folks who regularly mock the mainstream media are guilty of the same sort of confirmation bias on stories like the supposed (but not actual) crime epidemic in San Francisco.

But, a key argument that Elon seems to have glommed onto is that this kind of confirmation bias (which he falls for all the time himself) is some sort of proof or example of someone pulling the strings." In Elon's case, he seems to be convinced that it's the woke mind virus" and that the mainstream media is somehow controlled by it. This is silly, and disconnected from reality, but Musk now seems to go searching for confirmation bias at every opportunity. It was almost certainly a big part of the reasoning behind Musk's chaotic decision to label NPR as state-affiliated media, because he often seems to suggest that the current administration and Democrats are behind this woke mind virus" and the talking points and narratives that go with it.

So, it wasn't much of a surprise that Musk went a little nuts last Thursday after one of his biggest fans, the guy behind the Whole Mars Catalog" Twitter account, tweeted out a video of a bunch of newscasters repeating the same script with the key line being this is extremely dangerous to our democracy."

This video was initially created by reporter Timothy Burke at Deadspin, and highlights how Sinclair Broadcasting, an extreme rightwing owner of tons of local news channels, often requires its newscasters to read scripts it provides:

This video got a ton of play back in 2018 when it was created.

However, over the intervening years, a bunch of right wing folks have reposted it, without the context of the name Sinclair Broadcasting, or the fact that Sinclair was a huge Trump booster, and presented it as proof that the left wing media gets all its talking points from a single source. A quick search on YouTube and Twitter will show you a ton of examples of this video being reposted with the assumption that the video is highlighting a leftwing conspiracy from the mainstream media, rather than a rightwing conspiracy from a business that gobbled up tons of local news stations.

Here are just a few examples:

There are many, many more. Anyway, the dude behind the Whole Mars Catalog tweeted it with the dangerous to democracy" line, and it got a shit ton of views:

And Musk replied to the video multiple times, freaking out about who is writing the script, and how they're marrionettes" and whatnot:

But, of course, as tons of people pointed out, this wasn't some vast leftwing conspiracy. It was rightwing talking point driven by an ideologically-driven media company that has scooped up a ton of local news channels to spread its slanted message. And you know who would have told these dipshits all of that? The very media they hate:

What's truly amazing is that a ton of people responded to both Musk and Whole Mars Catalog" pointing this out, and the two of them just kept on going as if it was somehow unclear who was crafting this narrative, and never admitted that it was actually the opposite of what they were implying.

And yet, since then I've seen more and more people on Twitter sharing this very video as proof of the leftwing conspiracy. Some are even arguing that this proves that Donald Trump was right about the fake news media'" not realizing the script was written by one of Donald Trump's biggest supporters.

And there are a ton more like that. And the end result is that Elon Musk is responsible for spreading all sorts of misinformation, which tons of his fans and friends are using as confirmation bias about how the leftwing, mainstream media" is all government controlled" by woke mind virus" when the actual video is showing... how rightwing corporate controlled media actually was set up to push pro-Trump messages.

Thomas Burke, who created the original video... is not happy.

The mainstream media gets stuff wrong. They get stuck in confirmation bias like everyone else. But it's truly bizarre (and, yes, stupid) to see people like Musk get sucked into a grand conspiracy theory when the facts are literally a Google away at the very mainstream media sources he's trying to trash.

But, alas, that's too much work. Must be the woke mind virus.