My Puzzling Brush with 1%ers

Introducing a new department: I Pretend to Understand Humans.

I thought I would be writing about having my life once again turned upside down by FIRE. But if it turns out that the old adage “Comedy = Tragedy+Time.” is actually true, apparently 4 weeks does not constitute sufficient Time for me.

Instead, I am posting this piece I have been working on for a while about a strange encounter I had with someone who went on to become America’s top oligarch. These days it is common to wonder about his intentions. But back in 2017, when the following occurred, I definitely found his behavior confusing.

Then again, I had never before had occasion to hang out with Corporate Big-Shots and/or Captains of Industry. ln fact, ALL aspects of the following story are completely unlike the typical social event I might attend.

Maybe that is why this all struck me as puzzling.

* * *

PART 1: A Very Peculiar Writing Assignment

In 2017, I was hired for a few weeks by the right honorable Ms. Sheryl Sandberg, then the COO of Facebook, to do ‘punch up’ on a manuscript she was co-authoring that would be published as a book about grief. Yes, you read that correctly. It was a book about coping with grief. And it was seeking jokes.

This immediately made it one of the strangest writing assignments I have ever encountered.

Ms. Sandberg had recently lost her young husband and, in dealing with this personal tragedy, decided to explore the topic of what options we human beings have as we go forward, learning to cope. This was understandable and admirable. But the problem, from where I sat, was that this thoughtful and carefully researched book was, by definition, mostly poignant and sad. What made my assignment even more challenging was that the book was written in the sensible, intelligent, well-intended and mostly serious voice of Sheryl Sandberg, a clear eyed, grief stricken widow and professional businesswoman. Therefore any jokes I added to her text needed to seamlessly match her tone.

I guess I should also mention that the entirety of my involvement with the book took place via online correspondence. In the course of the assignment, I never met Ms. Sandberg or anyone else on her team in person.

However, the deeper I got into the meat of the text, the more my expected contribution of intermittent, lighter moments began to strike me as inconceivable. Yet, at the same time, it would have been embarrassing to just throw up my hands and admit defeat. So day after day, I poured through the long passages about people in mourning, scrutinizing and sometimes abstracting the word usage in a careful search for any connections to humor. Toward that end, I examined the meanings behind every thought, turning them over and over, in case there was an amusing subtext. Frequently I would take breaks for howling in frustration into the unlimited void.

“The content of this book is tragic.” I kept moaning to my husband, “I just read a chapter about suicide among the Aborigines. What kind of sociopath would I have to be to feel okay about wedging a joke into that?”

And then the proverbial light bulb appeared above my head! It dawned on me that there were, in fact, dark, odd-ball jokes hiding underneath and inside this joke-free text. The problem was that they were a terrible fit with the earnest literary stylings of Ms. Sandberg and her co-author, psychologist Adam Grant, thus rendering them in terrible taste. Unless…..hmmm….unless I could somehow re-route them through a filter system I would create to allow the tone of the authors to occasionally merge with one that was friendlier to the kind of set up-punchline-comedic-asides sometimes associated with say, Groucho Marx . As in “One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don’t know.” If this worked, maybe I could also occasionally throw in a few of the darker jokes you might hear from someone like Ricky Gervais or Anthony Jeselnek.

And thus did I set about trying to microscopically excavate the surface content of every sentence, from every imaginable angle. And in so doing, I also freed myself from any expectations that what I was turning in would ever appear in this book. It was hard to imagine that the editors would allow such off-the-wall irreverence to smudge the rest of the well-intended content.

Not too long afterward, my friend who recommended me for this job, the writer (of many things) and occasional director Nell Scovell, (co-author of Ms. Sandberg’s previous huge best-selling book “Lean In.”) told me that Ms. Sandberg was, in fact, laughing at the jokes I was sending her. Considering her still fragile emotional state, this seemed like a positive result. Perhaps my work was not totally in vain.

PART 2… A ‘SMALL CASUAL DINNER.’

A few weeks later, I was surprised to receive a dinner invitation from Madame Sandberg. Interested in finally meeting me, she was inviting me and my husband to what she described as ‘a small, casual dinner’ at the home of her then boyfriend, Bobby Kotick. Sheryl explained to me that it would just be the four of us. Mr. Kotick was, at that time, the CEO of Activision Blizzard, “an American video game holding company” that produced, among other titles, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Candy Crush Saga, Guitar Hero, etc etc etc. I am a complete video game illiterate but even I had heard of those game titles. (Just a few years later, Microsoft would buy the company from Kotick for 68 billion.)

If you have ever read my work with any regularity, you probably know that I am famously phobic about parties. I only mention this as a way to explain how everything about this invitation gave me agita. Nevertheless, because of our recent work relationship, my attendance definitely seemed mandatory. “Come on! It’s ridiculous to worry about a small, casual dinner.”the more mature adult who is usually napping inside me lectured, “Remember, she laughed at your dark, weird jokes. Maybe this will turn out to be fun!” So I proceeded to tell my inner high school principal to shut up.

This lead me to a thornier question: What does a guest bring as a ‘gift ‘to a dinner hosted by two billionaires? Equipped with no information at all about the personal preferences of either of the two hosts, I decided that an especially nice bouquet of flowers was a fool-proof way to go. So I went to the fanciest florist in Malibu and bought the most expensive, most carefully arranged bouquet of beautiful flowers that I have ever purchased. Then, confident that I had found the best solution to the traditional guest-bearing-gift tradition, I walked into the largest Beverly Hills home I have ever entered.

This home, which belonged to Mr. Kotick, opened big and kept on going. It had a boulder the size of Half Dome perched on the pathway that lead to the front door. And from the moment we walked in, I became aware of being surrounded by enormous vases full of gorgeous flowers seemingly everywhere. All of them were twice the size of the bouquet I was carrying. Suddenly handing my floral “gift” to the hosts made me feel like a small child, offering a daisy I’d just picked for a display in a hotel lobby.

I also could not fail to notice that, in a large dining room off to my immediate right, a formal table had been set for perhaps twenty people. Clearly, Ms. Sandberg and I had very different definitions of the words “small” and “casual.”

So I made a cartoon swallowing noise, (possibly along the lines of ‘GLUB!’), then turned my attention to the huge sprawling rooms directly in front of me, which were full of enormous iconic works of art from the massive collection of Mr. Kotick, who offered us a tour. Some were (I think) at least 12 feet high and by art history book All-Stars like Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Frank Stella and Jackson Pollock. There were also many smaller pieces by equally impressive luminaries (like Ed Ruscha) as well as perfectly maintained large glass display cases containing collections of rare antiquities. The one I remember most clearly contained figurative sculptures originally collected by Paul Gauguin when he was in Tahiti!

As my husband and I stood there in awe, trying to figure out what the correct next move might be, we couldn’t help but notice that a lot of guests had now arrived and were gathering in an area off the living room where they were talking and sipping drinks. That was when my beloved husband, (a devoted student of car design) leaned over and whispered to me “Holy fuck. That’s Elon Musk.” He pointed to a guy sitting on a sofa, chatting with a few people. (BTW it’s also important to note that back in the moment I am describing, Mr. Musk had not yet begun to shock everyone with his unsettling opinions or decided to try and run the world. In fact, he was still in possession of a certain amount of respectable, cool-dude credentials as ‘The Tesla Guy.’)

The next thing I remember is that we were all being asked to take our designated places at a very long, beautifully set table where, in the manner of all dinner parties that could never be described as small or casual, the person who arranged the seating had bothered to exile both members of an existing couple to separate table horizons. That is the only explanation I have about how it came to pass that I was seated in between my former employer, Ms.Sandberg and the not-yet-known-as-an-unnerving-government-takeover-guy Mr. Musk.

My husband was seated waay down at the other end of the very long table, nestled within a cluster of women colloquially known as “the wives'.“ He did not know any of them, though they all seemed to know each other, but he was also too far away to participate in the coffee klatsch of senior music business executives at the far end of the table (which included the Chairman and CEO of Universal Music, Lucian Grange, and the legendary music MVP, Irving Azoff. )

But getting back to me, as all things in this substack inevitably must.

Up next was a beautiful dinner, meticulously prepared by Mr. Kotick’s private personal chef. As it was served, I recall feeling uneasy at this ‘small, casual, dinner’, tasked as I was with eating in such close proximity to Mr. Musk. Speaking as someone who had never spent any time (or less) with denizens of the tech or corporate worlds, I quickly realized that I had no idea what to talk about. Ms. Sandberg mentioned that earlier that day she had been Mr. Musk’s guest at the launch of a Space X rocket. Ah yes. As opposed to myself who, earlier that same day, had walked my dogs and…what else? Nothing much else. Forgot to pick up my dry cleaning again. And that was IT.

This conversation made me more aware than ever how out of my depth I was trying to socialize with this crowd.

Then I remembered that I had recently read an interview with Mr. Musk in which he expressed grave concerns about the power of this new and rapidly spreading technology known as A.I. So I decided to start there. And it turned out to be a good idea because it didn’t take much encouragement for him to launch into a reprise of his greatest fears about the coming A.I takeover (…fears he seems to have gotten over and then some. But I digress.).

Looking for a way that I might contribute anything remotely meaningful to the conversation, I decided to try and talk about the one and only thing I kind of understand: Comedy. (Well, I also know quite a bit about squirrels, but that seemed like an even bigger reach.) So I said something along the lines of “Well, I know one thing A.I. will never really be able to replace. And that is the arts. In particular, Comedy. Because to do that would require a 24 hour a day programmer who would have to continuously figure out and then reprogram the software to keep up with the ever shifting specifics of what is and is not, at any given moment, considered funny. In real life, joke constructions that were once considered hip and edgy quickly turn old and dated. Word usage, vocal cadences and acceptable topics are always changing.*** Plus, the best comedy is about the details of being human. It totally relies on the vulnerabilities and attitudes of individual human personalities to put it across.”

“I hope you’re right.,” he responded, “But have you heard any of the jokes being written by A.I.?”

“Not sure. “ I said, “I may have heard one or two.”

“I just heard this one.” he said. And he proceeded to tell me a joke that he found so amusing, he could barely get through the telling of it without breaking himself up. I would like very much to repeat that joke for you right now. But because it was the kind of joke that made me stare without blinking, I could barely remember the punchline even a few minutes later. It was the kind of joke to which I could only say “Uh huh”, followed perhaps, a short silence later, by an additional “Hmm!” thrown in for politeness.

What I am trying to describe is that this joke was situated so far outside the borders of what I generally categorize as humor that I had no idea how to fake any degree of physical approval. Making things worse, I suffer from a malady I call “the curse of the honest face.” Therefore it is not unlikely that the post-joke expression I may have wound up with on my face looked something like this:

And, having failed miserably to register even a small amount of facial amusement, the only thing I could think of now to politely smooth over the moment, was “Has anyone ever tried that joke out in front of a live audience?” “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” he replied. To which I nodded solemnly before finally saying, “Okay. Well, good luck with that.”

We had now arrived at the end of the only part of our dinner-time chat that I can recall. So I turned my attention toward Ms.Sandberg, seated on my other side and Mr. Musk turned his attention toward the person seated on his other side. And we all enjoyed an amazing dessert, carefully prepared by Mr. Kotick’s personal chef.

A STRANGE FAREWELL

A short while later, (and not a moment too soon) it was time for us all to take our leave. People began getting up from the table and saying their goodbyes. I recall Mr. Musk checking his cell phone immediately before announcing that he would now be on his way. As he began to head full steam into departure-mode, I turned toward him and said something along the lines of “Nice to meet you.” He nodded pleasantly. And then, before he got up out of his chair, he leaned over and kissed me goodbye on the mouth.

This was definitely NOT my idea of a #Metoo moment. It was NOT any type of assault or even a big heavy, real kiss, if you’re imagining that. But neither was it the polite handshake I would have predicted. If there had been a kiss on the cheek, even that would have come as a massive surprise since nothing about our conversation had really established a bond or some kind of special rapport. And I think it probably goes without saying that no part of our discussion about AI and Comedy contained so much as a filament of flirtation.

Because I compulsively analyze the behavior of everyone I meet, like some kind of a feral free-range shrink, I began to examine this incident in an attempt to figure out what happened.

I started out by considering the possibility that I was naively unaware that Big-Time Corporate Bro Culture had recently decreed that this was now the way all goodbyes were going to work. Because I was leading a blissfully bro-free existence, I had not received The New Bro Etiquette Protocols which had just gone out via insider bulletins, declaring that the act of bidding adieu to all women, regardless of age or circumstances, would now require this type of kiss.

After I crossed that possibility off the list, no other obvious angle of analysis made sense to me. Speaking as a woman who is probably at least a decade older than Mr. M, I am clearly not his “type”. Nor have I ever, at any point in my life, had even a nodding acquaintance with the word ‘hottie.’ I do not remember exactly what I was wearing to this “small, casual” dinner but my guess is that it was a combination of temperature-appropriate wardrobe pieces selected from my closet full of black pants-and-contrasting-color-blazer ensembles. I like this look for me. But it has never, under any circumstances, been described by anyone as ‘enticing.’

Unable to supply myself with a motive that made any sense, I never mentioned the whole non-incident to anyone until a few months later. Then one evening I told the above anecdote about the ‘small, casual dinner’ to a group of friends, just to see how it played. What I found interesting was that when I got to the details about the afore mentioned goodbye, the reactions of everyone in the room ranged from “WHAAAAT????” to “EWWWWWW.”

My husband wanted to know why I never mentioned it before. “Well, it didn’t seem like a big deal. I didn’t think it really mattered” I said. “Yeah,” he countered, “But who does that?”

A Possible Explanation

Spurred on by these responses, I dove back in to trying to understand this behavioral puzzle.

It was pointed out to me by a friend that Mr. Musk has some kind of spectrum related neuro-divergent issues, like Aspergers. I have no reference points at all for understanding that.

But here is the possible motive I came up with that made some sense:

In speaking my mind about AI and comedy, I had disagreed with him. And because I am so naive about and unfamiliar with Billionaire Corporate Culture, it didn’t register with me that I was talking to someone who was accustomed to having everyone around him nod and agree with him at all times, to say nothing about laughing at his jokes.*** I have no such people around me so it never occurred to me that a guy like this could have experienced our conversation as a lopsided power imbalance. I mean, there he was, talking to some rando female who, by all definitions, was miles beneath him in measurable status, power and international clout. Yet for some inexplicable reason, the conversation had ended up without him having the last word. And in his sense of how things are meant to work, even the smallest, most utterly insignificant imbalance of power in any exchange, especially one with a complete-non-entity female, needed to be corrected ASAP.

So in our parting moments, he had successfully reclaimed his rightful position as Alpha. And in so doing, made sure that he did, in fact, end up having the last word.

This has been a presentation of “Merrill-Pretends-to-Understand-How-the-World Works.”

If it does turn out that Bro-Culture is trying out some new Departure Protocols, I will let you know. But since I continue to live a largely Bro-Free existence, I may not be a reliable source of updates.)

*** To illustrate the point I was making about how humor is ever shifting, here is a real joke from “Boy’s Life” in 1910