Elon Musk likes to provoke and shock.
The serial entrepreneur likes to push the limits of what is commonly considered acceptable by those he calls the "woke mind virus."
Behind this phrase he includes most of the defenders of progressive values. This is his vision of culture war, which pitches traditional values against change.
Two important points of the new progressive ideologies -- ESG and pronouns -- have been divisive and for many months have been the subject of a big pushback from conservatives.
ESG stands for environmental, social and corporate governance policies, while the term "pronouns" points to the gender-identity debate. It means people have to stop assuming that gender is binary and to accept that everyone has the right to decide how they want to be referred to: he/his/him, she/hers/her or they/theirs/them.
Musk believes that ESGs and pronouns are expressions of wokeism and lead to cancel culture: intolerance and the end of free speech. As a result, he's on a mission to defeat this "woke mind virus."
"The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters," he said last December.
An Image That Will Upset Progressives
In this effort Musk regularly attacks progressive politicians. He never misses an opportunity, for example, to mock Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), an icon of the liberal left.
But his main weapon against progressives is provocation. It's as if he wants them to organize a boycott against him. Musk is firmly confident that such a call for a boycott of him would meet with fierce opposition from his nearly 129 million Twitter followers.
The Tesla (TSLA) CEO and Twitter boss hopes he can also expect support from conservatives who say that the American way of life is threatened by what they call the woke movement. They consider Musk a standard-bearer.
Musk has just posted a message that will make progressives jump. The message is an image.
In the image are two women, both dressed in black. One is a blonde who is standing. She holds in her right hand a bottle of milk and in her left hand the hair of the other woman, a brunette. We cannot tell whether the brunette is seated, squatting or kneeling. The blond woman is forcing the brunette to drink the milk, which the brunette obviously does not want to do.
The blonde represents "Elon's tweets,' while the brunette is "Twitter."
The literal message is that the billionaire's tweets feed the platform, not only because they are numerous but also because they provoke a lot of interactions and prompt users to react.
Twitter Is Divided About the Image
Musk also seems to be suggesting that you have to deal with his posts on the platform, like it or not. The image also shows that the billionaire is fully aware of his influence and power. Unlike his peer CEOs, he doesn't seem to fear backlash.
But what is problematic is the image used to convey these different messages. The image is a meme known as "Forced to Drink Milk," which is an object-labeling image series using a photo of a woman holding an open bottle of milk up to a kneeling woman's mouth while pulling her hair.
The message is clearly a response to Twitter users who complain that they receive the billionaire's posts in their feed -- known as "For You" -- when they do not follow him.
"I don’t know what’s happening with this platform, but virtually every. single. tweet. on my “For you” feed is @elonmusk’s tweet or his response to someone. I don’t often read him, if ever. Why is this happening?" a Twitter user posted on Feb. 13.
The provocative post also comes days after a former Twitter engineer claimed he was fired by Musk because he refused to inflate the billionaire's popularity on Twitter.
"This was me, my 6.5-year stint at Twitter comes to an end today," the former Twitter employee said. "Proud of the work we did and have full confidence the three or four people left will be able to honor Elon’s requests to artificially inflate his view counts (and view counts for advertisers). Not me though."
Musk didn't add anything else to his Feb. 14 tweet, leaving users to comment. The post had been viewed more than 44 million times just hours after it was published. The reactions were diverse. Some users were shocked.
"Not a tweet I was expecting from you lmao," commented one Twitter user.
"But what about the choccy," added another user.
"An entrepreneur in usa can put such tweets. If entrepreneur like Ambani and Adani in India start posting such tweets people will boycott them," said one user.
The billionaire can also count on his legion of fans.
"Maybe y’all need a better sense of humor," defended one Twitter user.
"The message is 'wokes into submission'... Almost Gandhi style!," quipped another Twitter user.
"Expired milk?" one used asked.
Musk said nothing else, but for this expert in the art of getting people talking, he has surely achieved one of the goals of his message: getting people talking.
