In my perhaps under-informed and uncharitable impression, Venkatesh Rao always seemed a bit of a rather coldly calculating amateur social theorist. The way he d

In my perhaps under-informed and uncharitable impression, Venkatesh Rao always seemed a bit of a rather coldly calculating amateur social theorist. The way he dismisses entire categories of people in his Gervais Principle analysis, which made him viral in the first place, felt mildly sociopathic. So I'm rather surprised that he's labelling Elon Musk here as a "priest in the arena," since most similar blogger types probably embrace Musk's ruthless cost-cutting and preening at Twitter as necessary things that hard men do. I wonder what cult Rao is the priest of.