Celebrating failure: a path towards opening up disciplinary debate

Abstract

The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk was welcomed with an even mix of horror and excitement. His erratic ownership has been characterised by the sacking of roughly 80% of employees, the growth of hate speech, graphic violence and misinformation, and the disappearance of advertisers (Digital Planet, 2023). Although Musk’s fans have certainly tried, it is hard to defend this failure. Yet, there has been widespread speculation that this commercial debacle was planned, part of a masterplan inscribed in Musk’s political ambition to transform the platform into a right-wing space (Seymour, 2022). Such accounts, although often voiced by Musk’s critics, amplify the narrative of his genius, as fawningly described by Fortune magazine in 2014: ‘his brilliance, his vision and the breadth of his ambition make him the one-man embodiment of the future’ (Elkind, 2014). The moves of such a genius are incomprehensible to the many, we are told. Indeed, Musk’s personality quirks are not just excused but found to illustrate the essence of his brilliance. We find this narrative of a hidden master plan, which only Musk governs, particularly interesting as it pushes us to think of what can be viewed as a failure and who can afford to fail. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, failure is ‘the fact of someone or something not succeeding’. Failure is generally placed in opposition to success. It is conceptualised as a lack, whether in the ability to fully control something or falling short of a target. Musk failed to retain advertisers and suppress the growth of hate speech, but were those his targets? As argued above, some sustain that business success was not the main motivation of Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. If we follow this reasoning, in answer to our first question, success and failure are then coexisting in Musk’s modus operandi, rather than being in a dichotomic relationship. His business failure (Twitter’s value is down two-thirds since his acquisition; see Hern, 2023) sits alongside a possible transformation of the role of social media in the political landscape that might impact the next US election, as hinted at by Musk’s announcement of his support for Republican Ron DeSantis’s presidential run (Goldmacher et al., 2023). The second question; who can afford to fail? brings power into the equation. The reframing of Musk’s business catastrophe within a broader, hidden masterplan is certainly an example of how certain failures benefit from generous justification and explanation. We think that this narrative, in which the Twitter debacle is considered and justified against standards that go beyond simple business ones, is an example of how the structural position of the failing person determines the framing of the failing. To put it simply, the position and conditions under which Musk operates allow him the luxury of risk since failing does not jeopardise his structural privilege. As a wealthy white man, he can afford to act abhorrently, without accountability, since his failure still has an allure of eccentricity, success and is intertwined with his charismatic personality – traits that have been shown to be unequally attributed (Joosse & Willey, 2020). This is in JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT 2023, VOL. 39, NOS. 9–10, 735–743 https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2023.2243959