The Elon Musk Clubhouse Room
The Elon Musk Clubhouse Room
4D Chess by the Elites?
Elon Musk broke the Internet the other night. He went on Clubhouse, and talked about Tesla, SpaceX, Mars, and how The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a book of philosophy that changed his life, which actually explains a lot. There wasn’t much new information, except perhaps that Neuralink has monkeys playing video games with their minds. The Live Stream is available here.
At 53:30, Elon Musk brings “Vlad the Stock Impaler” on stage to give the “inside scoop” on the recent Robinhood scandal where Robinhood prevented retail customers from being able to buy certain meme stocks. It felt like an awkward corporate PR talking points explanation in a poor attempt at damage control. The Internet is still pissed:
Ultimately, if we look at the big picture, Vlad stands to make billions of dollars if Robinhood is able to successfully move forward with their IPO. It seems that he’s pretty incentivized to do whatever it takes to not lose these billions to the Internet lynch mob. It also seems blatantly hypocritical for someone to use the Robinhood myth as a brand to steal from the rich, “democratize investing for the masses,” and become a multi-billionaire. But, I’m just judging… a little bit.
There were a few interesting points to this seemingly historical event.
Instead of mainstream media, Vlad Tenev officially addressed the public on Clubhouse, with Elon Musk acting as an amateur investigative journalist.
The side rooms/afterparties, some of which ran for over 30 hours, had some really interesting discussions unpacking the event, including from people like Tim Urban and Lex Fridman, who have had more access to Elon than most.
What I learned from some of these rooms:
Pitchbook is an expensive subscription database where you can look up the various investment rounds for different companies. If one follows the money for both Clubhouse and Robinhood, this room makes a lot of sense. The Elon room is a brilliant 4D chess go-to-market strategy being played by billionaires.
Financial literacy is a huge problem for most people (including me).
Eric Weinstein seems to be obsessed with cuttlefish and cephalopods. I joined that room partway, so I missed the context, but think it had something to do with Neuralink.
Marc Andreessen of a16z was also on stage and if you look into the investment history of both Clubhouse and Robinhood, and a16z has already made many multiples on their investments. Clubhouse was seed funded on January 1, 2020, and is already a billion dollar company in a little over a year.
The general (cynical) sentiment of the evening (at least from the rooms I was in) was that the shenanigans in the system wouldn’t change, that the elites are too powerful, and that democratization of knowledge and financial education is a partial answer to these problems.
Now, it seems that the real problem is that, in the aftermath of Elon Musk participating in a public fireside chat about space exploration, the future of humanity, and technologies such as AI and Neuralink, which have the potential to drastically increase power and information asymmetry, the Clubhouse conversations seemed to be dominated by Robinhood, GameStonks, and how to get a piece of the pie from a rigged game where a master 4D chess player can simply pay their way out of jail with their billions.
The game is 4D chess. Don’t hate the player, learn the game, so we can create a new one. Andreessen-Horowitz playing 4D chess is not the problem. Their portfolio, which includes Clubhouse and Substack, is democratizing voice and knowledge, especially compared to their predecessors (Facebook and the MSM).
There is a collective discussion happening, and we all have a responsibility of speech. Decentralization of power is inevitable through technology, and it needs a proper Metagame. One that incentivizes society to produce more Elons and fewer Vlads.
Because Elon isn’t playing 4D chess.
He’s playing 5D chess.
