Elon Musk Vs. Brazil

Adeus Meus Amigos Brasileiros

Elon Musk’s idiotic feud with the Brazilian government came to a head over the weekend. I’ll be honest, I’ve hesitated taking this super seriously. I half-expect Musk to cave and the ban to be reversed by the time I send this issue out. Largely because it’s all just too stupid to believe.

The country’s supreme court has officially banned X and Brazilian users caught using a VPN to post to the platform face a fine of over $8,000 a day. It’s still unclear exactly how aggressively that fine will be enforced, which is important to note when discussing Brazilian laws like this. I personally think that it is almost an impossible thing to enforce at scale, but it sounds scary.

The exact details about what Musk wasn’t complying with has been a little fuzzy. But X launched a Twitter Files spin-off to organize their response to the Brazilian government called the Alexandre Files, named after Alexandre de Moraes, Brazil’s minister of the Supreme Federal Court and the chief architect of the country’s X ban. And according to what X has released, the conflict between the site and the Brazilian government boils down to seven users, which X, confoundingly, decided to dox in their Alexandre Files. The Brazilian supreme court wanted the users suspended, Musk didn’t. And now an estimated 40 million people can’t use X.

Now that we know the exact accounts that were ordered to be suspended, it’s extremely clear why Musk was comfortable sacrificing Brazilian users to keep them. They included Marcos Ribeiro do Val, a senator that’s been investigated for his role in Brazil’s 2023 insurrection, pro-Bolsonaro influencer Ednardo Davila Mello Raposo, and Paola Da Silva Daniel, the wife of Daniel Silveira, a former military police officer and state deputy that has been arrested several times for threatening supreme court ministers.

It should go without saying that if former Brazilian president and far-right COVID magnet Jair Bolsonaro was still in power and asking for leftist accounts to be suspended, Musk would have been more than happy to oblige. In fact, we know this because X restricted content on the request of the Turkish government in 2023 and complied with a government order to block accounts in India in 2024.

Multiple huge stan accounts for artists like Bruno Mars, Miley Cyrus, and Chappell Roan are now down. The Virginia Wolf Bot is offline. As is the Dianna Agron Updates account. And yes, the ban also applies to reporter Glenn Greenwald, who hasn’t posted all weekend. Silver linings, etc.

And it seems like many Brazilian users are headed to Bluesky, with about half a million users signing up over the weekend. This has led to a bunch of goobers on Threads wondering why their preferred Twitter clone didn’t see the same boost. The best take I’ve seen about why Brazilians didn’t go there was from X user @lucasberti, who wrote, “As if a newly created social network would be able to replace the rottenness of this fundamental soup of sadness and self-deprecating irony that has been marinating in decadent memes for years and years. You don't create a swamp overnight.” So I guess Bluesky is swampier.

But Threads also just doesn’t really fit into how Brazilian internet culture works. Most of Brazilian social media is still very much influenced by Orkut, the Google-owned Myspace-like social network, that at one point, according to WIRED, had 11 million of the 14 million internet users in Brazil on it. One of the best arguments I’ve heard about why Orkut so thoroughly dominated Brazilian internet culture in the 2000s was that it had a very good tool for creating public communities. And Twitter’s hashtag, chronological feed, and open search provided the same ability to create endless pockets of conversation or “zoeira” or “zuera,” the term Brazilians sometimes use for the meme-filled chaos that used to happen on X. A recent example being the Brazilian Hatsune Miku meme literally last week. The word comes from the verb “zoar,” which means to joke or mock or fool around. And this is why many algorithmic platforms, like TikTok, tend to be used less in Brazil. You just can’t riff as well.

Oftentimes you’ll see “zuera” used in the phrase “a zuera não acaba nunca” or “the zuera never ends,” that feeling when everyone’s dunking on you and you can feel it becoming a whole thing. Well, it looks like the zuera finally has ended thanks to Musk’s ridiculous culture war. And losing access to X is not just a problem for Brazil’s internet culture. As one Brazilian user confessed, “Unfortunately, I am about to lose 30% of my charm because a lot of my charisma came from repeating your jokes in tweet-free environments and reaping the rewards of other people’s laughter.” Relatable.

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The K-Hive Is Real Mad About This TikTok

A self-described “master herbalist” and “entrepreneur” on TikTok, who, also, I guess, runs some kind of organic honey company, published a long video about Vice President Kamala Harris’ reliance on what he called “surface-level” viral marketing. It’s an interesting and well-thought out video. Though, I should say, I think is observations are good, but his analysis is a little silly. Particularly the part about average Americans hating Oprah lol.

Anyways, he decided to delete his video about Harris, saying he “missed the mark,” which is, frankly, also silly. And now he’s at the center of weird conspiracy that his company, or his dad, or someone close to him is connected to the Trump campaign in some way. Maybe TikTok is not the best place for nuanced political content.

You know what it’s also not great for?

You Should Not Be Taking Financial Advice From TikTok

Last week, TikTok users starting sharing what they were calling the “Chase unlimited money glitch.” What this actually entailed was, well, check fraud. TikToker users were instructing people to write massive checks to themselves, deposit them, and then quickly withdraw the funds before Chase’s system caught it.

First, don’t do anything involving money that people on TikTok tell you to do. Second, you should also be a little skeptical about anything like this even happening in the first place. Chase has confirmed that there was a bug in their system, but hasn’t said exactly how many people actually took advantage of it.

Baby Gronk Dropped A Diss Track Aimed At The Rizzler

Baby Gronk has released a diss track against the Costco kid titled, “The Rizzard Of Oz” (good name tbh). I am unclear exactly why these two are beefing, I’m also a little unclear if this is actually a diss track specifically about The Rizzler. I can’t really understand any of the lyrics. Either way, I think we can all agree that children should not be allowed to make internet content.

Bad Cosplay Is Bad

Look, there’s no easy way to talk about this. But seeing as how MULTIPLE PEOPLE have sent this to me this morning, I feel like I have to address it. At Dragon Con 2024 this weekend, a cosplayer dressed up as the infamous Pony Cum Jar. I really don’t want to describe what that was in great detail, but it was a 2014 4chan thread that involved a My Little Pony figurine, a jar, some really awful life choices. Here’s a Know Your Meme link that is NSFW, but you can click it if you want learn more.

The cosplayer behind this truly rancid costume goes by @AderuKitten and you can find them on X here. Their costumes are pretty good! Also, if you want to see AderuKitten’s costume in action, here’s a TikTok.

A Beautiful Duet

Some Stray Links

• Everything Harmony Korine says in this interview is nuts

• Black Myth: Wukong, Chinese nationalism, and anti-woke gamers

P.S. here’s some very important journalism.

***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***