Good workplace cultures “celebrate the aggression” and most companies need more “masculine energy”, says Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg is a male CEO of Meta, the company controlling social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which has arguably had more influence over the current state of the world than any other.
And he last week bowed to pressure from US President-elect Donald Trump and his right-hand man Elon Musk by dramatically overhauling Meta’s fact-checking programs with a promise to target “censorship”.
It seems Zuckerberg could do with a little more aggression himself to counter his flip-floppy approach to his values and character.
Zuckerberg, like his fellow tech bros, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has also made million-dollar donations to Trump’s inauguration fund. Ensuring there’s more masculine energy in the room, in what is likely to already be dominated by men (if the Republican Convention is anything to go by, where the hit “It’s a Man’s World” was played as Trump arrived on stage after wrestler Hulk Hogan had ripped open his shirt on stage to reveal a TRUMP-VANCE logo.”
Zuckerberg shared the “masculine energy” comments on the Joe Rogan podcast, on the same day Meta announced it was ending internal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices. The latter of which was announced by his VP of People rather than himself. Real courageous, masculine energy there.
Zuckerberg grew up (with three sisters) and lives (with three daughters and his wife) in more of a women’s world, and initially founded Facebook from his college dorm as a means to stalk women on campus. He shared his experiences growing up with and raising daughters on the Rogan podcast, although didn’t share anything positive about what this taught or offered him.
Rather martial arts, he said, has promoted a change of heart in him when it comes to masculinity. He said having friends “beat each other” has been a “positive experience.” Is this what he thinks masculinity is all about?
And thank god for yet another adjustment from Zuckerberg on how he frames the world, especially his new belief that DEI programs “neuter” company culture, after not so long ago praising the work his company had achieved on hiring and promoting more women and people of colour.
His about turn — days out from Trump’s inauguration — is especially timely given all this sudden feminine energy is, apparently, causing the wildfires in Los Angeles (where DEI policies supporting more women in the fire service have been blamed, despite just 5 per cent of firefighters being women and the climatic factors involved in stirring the flames).
It’s timely also given DEI is, apparently, causing all sorts of problems according to certain tech bros and their conservative friends. Like last year’s CrowdStrike tech outage, and the fall of Silicon Valley Bank (with one major Republic donar saying banks are “badly run because everybody is focused on diversity and woke issues”). And the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last year? That was DEI, too (“This is what happens when you have governors who prioritize diversity over the well-being and security of citizens”, said a Republican senator. )
Closer to home, the fire and capsizing of a New Zealand Navy ship the result of a gay woman at the helm, of course! With the Captain of the ship labelled a “Diversity Hire”, despite her decades of experience and little regard for the heroic efforts she put into saving every one of the 75 souls on board.
End this nonsense and bring back the bros, who are conveniently already there in the office!
The good news for Zuckerberg’s masculinity pitch is that Meta’s shift on hate speech will mean that users across the platforms can now comfortably call women “household objects”.