Kim Kardashian’s crown is safe, Bigg Boss will continue to thrive. The great challengers to “reality” TV — disgruntled billionaires playing victim — are still a force to reckon with in politics, business, conflicts and many things besides. What they are not is entertaining. Beyond the politics, that was the most obvious takeaway from Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) boss Elon Musk’s two-hour interview with the man hoping, once again, to be US President, Donald Trump, streamed on the former’s social media platform on August 13.
The essence of the conversation was encapsulated in the first few minutes — with conspiracy theories, self-promotion and a glancing acquaintance with facts. The live stream was delayed by about 40 minutes and Musk blamed the glitch on a distributed denial-of-service attack — the server was flooded with users in an attempt to cause a crash. He provided no evidence for this claim. Trump, for his part, marveled at the number of users, perhaps confusing curiosity for support. Both abused their bete noires — Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Democrats and migrants for the politician; regulation, taxation and those who impose them for the tech bro. It was all predictable. More importantly, it was all boring.
Both Trump and Musk have gone beyond their core competence, to great success. From real estate to TV to the White House; from South Africa to space, and perhaps to Mars. They are adept at controlling news cycles and grabbing eyeballs. But the art of conversation is just a little more difficult than demagoguery. And not everyone can be a reality star, a la the Kardashians. For both the influencer and the interviewer, that’s good news.
