Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg need to cage fight it out already

We were promised physical violence, and instead, all we’ve gotten is tepid memes and litigation. The antagonism between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk continues, but not in the form of a cage match, which could have been kind of funny to watch. Instead, the social media guys are sniping at each other on social media and threatening legal action, which is boring and played out. Oh well.

The drama, such as it is, has to do with Meta’s newly launched Threads app, a Twitter competitor connected to Instagram. Twitter is in what the kids might call its “flop era,” particularly following the recent “rate limit” issue, so Threads has arrived at just the right time to steal some of Twitter’s glory. Zuckerberg poked fun at the similarity between the two platforms—and rubbed salt in the wound of his rival, whose greatest ambition is apparently to be seen as a champion shitposter—by posting on Twitter for the first time in more than a decade. No caption or nothin’, just a simple “Spider-Man pointing at himself” meme to get the point across.

Well, no doubt that got the notoriously thin-skinned Musk riled. But it’s not just glory Threads is stealing from Twitter, in Musk’s eyes. In a letter obtained by Semafor, a Twitter lawyer accused Zuckerberg of “systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property.” The company is threatening to sue Meta over intellectual property rights on the basis that Meta hired ex-Twitter employees who “had and continue to have access to Twitter’s trade secrets and other highly confidential information.” (Reminder: Musk has gotten rid of a whole bunch of people since taking over Twitter.)

“Competition is fine, cheating is not,” Musk declared on Twitter in the wake of his legal threat. He also warned the masses about jumping on another Zuckerberg bandwagon after Facebook and Instagram: “Any social media monopoly is despair,” he philosophized. He also made a rather shaky case for sticking with the bird app: “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.”

We’ll see if Twitter actually goes ahead with a lawsuit against Threads, though it seems exceedingly unlikely. They never followed through on the cage match proposition, so clearly the billionaires can’t be trusted to see something through to the end. If they really wanted to earn loyalty for their respective apps, they should try doing so via feats of strength and gladiatorial battles. Then we’d really, really respect them—right everyone?