Musk-Zuckerberg cage match? (Never thought I'd be cheering "Go, Zuck")

In what has got to be the most tech bro bit of idiocy evah, Elon Musk has challenged Mark Zuckerberg to a cage match. And Zuck has apparently accepted.

Elon Musk, who frequently posts jokes and provocations on Twitter, which he bought for $44 billion last year, responded this week to tweets about a potential competing service by Meta, run by Mark Zuckerberg, by saying, “I’m up for a cage match if he is.”

On Instagram, the social network owned by Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg responded with a screenshot of Mr. Musk’s tweet and the caption, “Send Me Location.” (Source: NY Times)

Gauntlet thrown. Let the games begin!

Hoo boy! (Hoo bro?) Hard to figure out who to root for if this one comes off, but I'm going to have to go with Zuckerberg. 

No surprise that Musk is being his usual puerile idiotic self:

A Meta spokeswoman said Mr. Zuckerberg’s response “speaks for itself.” Twitter’s media office auto-responded to a request for comment with a poop emoji.

A variant of Godwin's law holds that the first person in a social media debate who makes a comparison to Hitler/Nazism loses the debate. 

I'm proposing Rogers' law: The first person to use the poop emoji needs to sit down, STFU, and stop tweeting/insta-ing/whatever-ing.

So my money's on Zuckerberg.

Oh, the poop emoji's just part of it.

There's the fact that Zuck has taken up jujitsu, and is even competing. Musk, on the other hand, claims that he "almost never works out." (Musk is, however, bigger than Zuck, and claims to have been a street fighter when growing up.)

I'm hoping that, cometh the cage match, Zuck's training beats Musk's ability to throw his weight around. 

But, oh these tech bros. 

More than in other sectors, tech leaders have been known to embrace conflict in public forums, said Katy Cook, author of “The Psychology of Silicon Valley,” who described the industry as a “male-dominated, emotionally primitive” environment where leaders are rewarded for displays of hypermasculinity.

“When you get a taste of power via some of those ways of behaving, it tastes good for a lot of people,” Ms. Cook said.

My career was spent in a "male-dominated" and often "emotionally primitive" environment.

In one famous incident, a colleague who was unhappy that our company had made an offer to someone he didn't want hired put his fist through the wall. We had to find a picture to cover the hole until we finally got around to fixing it.

The wall-puncher - with whom I always got along and pretty much liked, other than for this incident (I was pissed and called him a shanty Irishman, which would never hold in today's work world) - went on to a highly successful career in tech. 

The guy he didn't want to hire ended up doing very well at our company, and became one of my closest work friends. For many years, my work husband. (We were out of touch for a couple of years, but recently had a catch-up conversation and will be seeing each other soon.) 

Back to Musk v. Zuckerberg. 

There's now a proposed location: Las Vegas. (Where else?)

And, although Zuck is an "aspirational MMA fighter," who's developing some physical chops to go along with that big brain, Musk has tweeted:

“I have this great move that I call ‘The Walrus,’ where I just lie on top of my opponent and do nothing.” (Source: The Verge)

I find Zuckerberg creepy and weird, and I'm no fan of Facebook. But Musk is creepier and weirder. And a ton more dangerous. I'm on Twitter, but Musk has been turning it into a crazed rightwing and conspiracy theory playground. (Among other things, he's going all gaga over RFK Jr.) 

Never thought I'd say it, but "GO ZUCK!"