Neil Gaiman takes down Elon Musk’s idiotic Rings of Power complaint

The first two episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are out now. The show itself is pretty good, and so far looks like it’s finding an audience. But all of that has kind of fallen by the wayside, because so far as online discourse goes, The Rings of Power has become a lightning in the culture war.

In short, discussion about The Rings of Power online often has little to do with its merits as a TV show and more to do with its perceived attempts to force a “woke ideology” on the public, which basically means that folk are complaining that there are too many women and brown people in it.

I’m being a little glib, but whenever culture warriors choose to go to battle over some piece of media, usually that’s what’s really being fought over. I’m not saying that people don’t have problems with the show beyond its casting choices — I thought the first episode was a little slow, not all of the characters popped, and I didn’t like that opening scene in Valinor — but peruse complaints on Twitter, Rotten Tomatoes and elsewhere and you’ll see a lot of whining about “wokeness” and the show’s choice to be racially inclusive specifically.

And that’s people putting their thoughts politely because they know other folk are looking; in private, it’s more direct. For instance, it’s not the least bit surprising to hear that Ismael Cruz Córdova, an actor of color who plays the elf Arondir, woke up every day for years to find his DMs packed full of “pure and vicious hate speech,” as he told Esquire. Again, plenty of fans have legitimate complaints about the show — I personally thought Arondir was a pretty dull character — but the plain fact is that racism and sexism are a big part of the current backlash against The Rings of Power, as they have been against several pieces of media in recent years.

Elon Musk and Neil Gaiman both understand that Twitter is a yawning maw of chaos

When one of these backlashes crops up, it can be difficult to parse out the good faith criticisms from the hateful vitriol. When that happens, grifters are always happy to capitalize on the ambiguity, criticizing whatever show is currently making the internet mad in a way that seems value-neutral but is designed to harness the energy of the hateful mob. And there’s no bigger grifter on this Earth than Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who seems to spend way more time trolling on Twitter than managing his businesses (although you argue the two are related). Naturally, he threw in his two cents about The Rings of Power:

Actually, that’s more nakedly bigoted than I expected. Having watched the first two episodes of The Rings of Power are gotten to know male characters like Córdova, Elrond and Durin IV — not to mention seen Galadriel’s hubristic arrogance — I have no idea what that second tweet is referring to; it only makes sense when you realize that Musk isn’t trying to add anything to the discussion but rather trying to tap into an already-existing narrative of resentful grievance in order to get attention.

So Musk is a shameless grifter happy to exploit bigotry-driven culture wars for clout. And he often fights these culture wars on Twitter because that’s a platform that rewards quick, pithy comments that boil the nuance out of complex issues; you can point out all the ways Musk is being disingenuous and dishonest here, but you can’t do it quickly, and if you can’t do it quickly, it’s not gonna work on Twitter.

Twitter isn’t about argument or discussion; it’s about dunking. If you want to successfully hit back at a troll, you need to beat them at their own game and come up with a response that’s as quick and nimble as their complaint. The trap people too often fall into is trying to make a coherent argument on a platform where coherent arguments just don’t work.

Happily, there are some people who have mastered the art of the Twitter “argument,” foremost among them The Sandman author Neil Gaiman, who has adroitly hit back at folks complaining about racial inclusivity in The Rings of Power in the only language that Twitter understands: a concise, forceful rejoinder that’s light on content but still effective and often entertaining. For instance:

Gaiman also hit back at Musk’s comments, referencing the billionaire’s ongoing, very messy attempts to buy Twitter (and then to back out of buying Twitter):

The whole idea of Twitter as a space for earnest argument about anything is ridiculous; if you want to talk to someone about anything real, do it in person, call or text them, maybe write an article or make a YouTube video. But if you simply must argue on Twitter, this is the only way to do it.

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