Elon Musk is smarter than me. Let’s just get the obvious out of the way. 

But his financial and scientific successes do not relieve him of criticism from me and many others who see what he is attempting to do with Twitter as a careless, dangerous game move. 

And it seems to me the reason Musk is so brazen with his actions to make the social media site more of a safe space for baseless “woke free-speech” is because he will never suffer the real-world consequences of his actions. 

Let’s use this week as an example. 

Democratic leader and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked in their home in San Francisco with a hammer. The police revealed that the assailant was looking for Nancy Pelosi herself. 

This failed possible political assassination isn’t being treated as yet another example of how extreme the American political landscape has become. 

It is being treated as fuel for the latest conspiracy theory which states that this event wasn’t an attempted homicide. But it was an argument between secret lovers. 

And who is the one that put this ridiculous idea into the middle of mainstream discussion? 

After the attack, Elon Musk retweeted a right-wing conspiracy website that falsely claimed there was somehow more to the story. This article asks the question of was Paul Polasi and his attacker involved in a homosexual affair. 

The post read: “As SF’s gay bars closed at 2 am, two gay men met in a bar and went home together. Happens all the time. Except, one of the two men, was married to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”

After realizing how dumb this made him look, Musk deleted the tweet, but not before causing more chaos on his newly acquired social media platform and leading more easily convinced and comically online individuals to buy into this obviously false theory. 

Now, we’re not going to even begin to discuss how the right-wing using this attack as a way to insult Pelosi and her husband using homophobic rhetoric. 

But what we will discuss is the fact that Musk refuses to combat this fake news. Even though Musk knows this conspiracy theory is not at all based on reality and he knows he made a mistake by promoting the article, he refuses to make a public statement to explain his failure. 

Most of Musk’s fans and conservative online influencers and politicians have taken this conspiracy theory and run with it. 

This situation and Musk’s current behavior are showing us how he plans to run Twitter from now on. It will be a free for all hellscape that will become plagued by conspiracies and political lies. 

And if we lived in a different world, like the world we lived in five years ago, I wouldn’t have a serious concern regarding any of this. 

I remember there was a peaceful era of the internet where theories attempting to find the hidden truth of the world were, for the most part, incredibly harmless. 

Concepts like the Illuminati and the truth of the JFK assassination were ordinary topics that never aimed to radicalize you and persuade you, for example, to go to the United States capital and cause a riot because you believe the election was rigged. 

I don’t know why, but in recent years conspiracy theories have become less interesting, thought-provoking discussions and more dangerous poison that rots the brain. 

We must be careful with the conspiracies we find because it can evolve into real violence and terror. Musk, being a generally intelligent man, must know this. And that is what makes him dangerous. He knows what he is doing. 

He will allow racism, homophobia, and bigotry onto his platform because it will cause more mainstream outrage and will draw in more eyes. By allowing these types of content, he will generate more money for himself and his business.

Many see Elon Musk as a newly formed conservative figure, but I honestly don’t think a billionaire like Musk genuinely cares about politics. He only cares about himself and the small 1 percentage world around him. 

He doesn’t care about pushing false information because he’ll never see the potential side effects of his actions. 

This is a dangerous mistake. I fear the day one of the conspiracies perpetuated on Musk’s social media site will be the reason for a sick person to become violent. 

Yes, Musk is a smarter man than me. But if I were him, I’d never protect my money more than I protect people.