Elon Musk is on Nick Denton’s mind

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Today, I have a member essay I wrote based on a conversation I had with Nick Denton yesterday for an episode of People vs Algorithms that will be out tomorrow morning. Nick's newfound identity as a “head of macro” says a lot of about the current media moment, when narratives and memes are all powerful and rarely driven by institutional media.

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Elon Musk is on Nick Denton’s mind

Nick Denton continually comes back to the world’s richest person during a conversation we had with Troy Young on a new episode of People vs Algorithms. He mentioned Elon Musk 19 times, in fact.

Nick knows a good story. Musk is a billionaire child king living out his own comic book fantasy. He has Main Character energy in a larger story that is well beyond the type of cultural ephemera of early Gawker like the politics of the Condé Nast cafeteria. 

This story is about how the future of the world is shaped. It will not be shaped in the Condé canteen. Trillions of dollars are at stake in a historic transition that’s beyond even the fall of communism, which he covered as a Financial Times journalist in Eastern Europe. 

This is the story of the American empire giving way to a new world where American hegemony is rivaled, and often exceeded, by Chinese power in the commanding heights of the future like AI and energy production.

“It’s the best story I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Bar none. No question.”

He doesn't want to tell that story. He wants to trade on it.