Borkowski Weekly Media Trends 14-04-22
Partygate: a scandal too many? | Lego & Sony x Unreal: the Metaverse takes shape | Government's Rwanda gamble | Elon Musk's Twitter powergrab
Partygate: Even the Teflon Prime Minister isn’t invincible
Boris Johnson’s continued invulnerability to communications logic has been severely tested this week. Not only has what everyone already knew been confirmed – Johnson spent lockdown breaking the rules- but the already-embattled Rishi Sunak has been dragged into the partygate saga, compounding weeks of negative headlines.
Both Johnson and Sunak have dug in. They won’t be resigning over the partygate scandal despite breaking the very laws they created and the fact that the majority of the public thinking they should go.
Boris has been temporarily saved by an apparent need for stability during a war in Europe and the Easter recess where the full force of Westminster corridor plotting will dissipate, preventing any large-scale Tory rebellion.
But this isn’t the end yet; the Sue Gray report is still yet to be released and the conclusion of the police investigation means that all eyes will be back on it quicker than we forgot about it. There are theories that he could still be fined again for other breaches and rumours of damaging photos still to come to light.
With war in Europe, Russian aggression, the Ukrainian president’s supportive words weekly, and an opposition failing to gain meaningful ground, it’s likely Boris will limp on until after local elections, but he can’t deny the inevitable. His so-called leadership has seen his government lurch from one crisis to the next and even for the Prime Minister’s seemingly teflon reputation, we must be approaching ‘one too many’. No one is invincible in this game.
The race for the perfect Metaverse is heating up
Sony, Lego and Fortnight – is this the dream team for the perfect gaming metaverse? This week Epic Games, the company behind the hugely popular Fortnight, announced that it secured $2bn investment from Sony and Lego to build their gaming metaverse.
Sony’s long-time rival, Microsoft will watch with eagle eyes as their battle to dominate the gaming universe enters a new arena.
The utopian vision of the metaverse is a seamless, unified virtual world where we move between gaming, work, and friends at the click of a mouse.
But, famously self-interested, the world’s biggest tech companies want to dominate the landscape - like Facebook did for social media or Amazon did for shopping- and have entered a fiercely competitive arms race. The prize? 1 billion users in what could become a trillion-dollar market.
This week’s announcement is a strong contender for that top prize; Lego’s ability to transcend generational divides, Fortnight’s cult following and Sony’s vast experience in the video game space are all valuable assets.
As we saw earlier this year, with Facebook rebranding as Meta, and Microsoft’s aggressive takeover bids in the metaverse space, the race is heating up.
Sceptics often ask if we actually need a metaverse, and if so, is Big Tech’s avarice and cut-throat competition just going to create a series of disconnected metaverses that will be awkward and expensive to navigate? In any case, these multi-billion-pound deals are the strongest evidence yet that the metaverse is here to stay for the long run.
Government’s Rwanda Gamble is Another Scandal
Tradition for tradition’s sake enjoyed a brief revival as a political PR tactic, particularly in Boris Johnson’s UK – in the form of flags and portraits of the Queen- and Trump’s USA – where flags, guns and bibles were among symbols of a halcyon age nobody can quite recall.
But in recent times most such moves have been treated with the eye-rolling cynicism they deserve, and in fact the darker undertones of this kind of political ancestor-worship have been exposed, most notably by Vladimir Putin’s invocation of the former glory of the Soviet Union as justification for his heinous crimes in Ukraine.
This context adds further weight to outrage around the British government’s decision to divert asylum seekers landing in the country to Rwanda.
From the outside it appears that the move is targeted at the government’s anti-immigration support base as a powerful symbol of the Boris regime’s hostility towards any foreigner landing on our shores, with some also suspecting it a handy distraction from the Prime Minister’s legal issues and Chancellor's plethora of legal and PR problems.
For a certain hard core it will succeed on both fronts. But, of course, there are fresh issues.
First, as referenced above, there’s the tradition into which it falls. The UK’s shameful treatment of asylum seekers is a long, bleak tale, with such precedents including the deportation in 1940 of Jewish asylum seekers from the British mandate of Palestine to Mauritius, where the refugees were kept in internment camps, and many died of tropical illnesses. The parallels are unavoidable.
Even if we attempt to look beyond the grizzly human rights implications, optics issues for the government include the choice of pantomime villain Priti Patel as the face of the proposal, the UK public’s continued agonised sympathy with those fleeing the war in Ukraine, some of whom will be affected by this new law (images of which would cause further damage to the government), the choice of Rwanda – battle-scarred, ensconced in the Ethiopian civil war, and struggling with its own corruption and human rights issues- as the destination, and the growing perception that this government uses reactionary policies as ‘dead cat’ tactics to distract from their own scandals.
The government’s three biggest obstacles to re-election are the perceptions of it as incompetent, corrupt and reactionary; this move will not disabuse moderate voters of any of these notions.
Elon Musk trumps Twitter by using Twitter better than Twitter
As Elon Musk plays an elaborate chess game with Twitter's board, shareholders, and the broader media in acquiring the social media company, which he has offered to buy for $41.39bn, his brand and personal stock skyrockets.
Musk's master gameplan is still underway, but ever since he announced a 9.2% stake in Twitter (that made him the largest shareholder), he's carefully choreographed each public announcement, taking advantage of his masterful communication skills and ability to understand the crowd, and more importantly, his cult-like army of die-hard followers.
We're not in the business of heaping praise on Musk, avoiding any mass ego-inflation, but the way he has leveraged Twitter, both as a user and a stakeholder, will be a case study in fame for the ages.
So let's take a step back and look at what Elon's done to manage his reputation.
Blasting Twitter...on Twitter: Musk's meta-commentary and Twitter sh*tposting in late March saw him poke holes in the tech giant, exciting those following the story that saw people speculating Elon's intentions.
As he acquired more stock, Twitter's board invited him to join it. A strange position for Twitter's shareholders following a series of Tweets that saw Musk troll the company.
Just as Twitter's CEO and other board members began excitedly welcoming Musk to the board, he rejected his seat at the table. It was the day Musk was set to join officially, but he decided to pull out (Twitter delayed the announcement hoping Musk changed his mind).
Despite Twitter's strength as a brand and company, they were desperate to have Musk onside, which he exploited. Instead, Musk took his opportunity as alpha male to troll Twitter in a series of cryptic posts that included a weird joke-by-poll...
Musk used the speculation and excitement around the developing story to his advantage. He effectively played to his strengths, using Twitter (the platform) more effectively than any of the company's board members. His quirky off-the-cuff Tweets drove eyeballs to the situation, which now sees him offering to buy the whole company.
Elon is one step ahead of Twitter's hierarchy, and playing this out in public - Musk's playground - has proven to be a masterstroke. It's not over yet, but we'll be watching closely.