Stanford University psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke said she doesn’t know what is going through Musk’s head, but frequent posters in general typically do so out of a desire for social validation, which can be even more potent to receive from people you don’t know.
Lembke said social validation from millions of strangers online can be “much more potent and therefore more reinforcing than the social validation we might get from people in our real life, because of the emotional complexity of real-life relationships where there’s much more give and take, and we have listen.”
“And that’s not necessarily true on social media, where we can just delete or block somebody or go somewhere else to get the reinforcement we’re looking for,” she continued.
Experts say one other reason for posting so much could be to control narratives against you. A New York Times report alleges that tensions between Trump and Musk had been simmering for months, but the breakup got accelerated after Musk felt “humiliated” when Trump got rid of Musk’s preferred pick for head of NASA.
”[Musk] wants to be validated. This was not the way it was supposed to go. He was supposed to save the country from all kinds of things. And he was the only guy who could do it,” suggested Tracy Ross, a couples therapist, about what Musk might be seeking with his frequent posts. “Think of the specialness of that, and then to lose that, he’s got to feel gutted.“
Ross said in her practice it can be typical for couples to engage in a blame game after a breakup. Instead of reflecting on “How am I responsible for this blow up?” people can discharge those feelings by seeking constant validation online so they “don’t have to feel those things and [they] don’t have to look at [their] own contribution” in the breakup, Ross said.
And one way to control a narrative about your reputation is to share nonstop posts about it.
“Whoever can post the most and get the most reposts, the most followers and likes, then they at least have the feeling that they’re shaping and dominating the historical narrative around what happened,” Lembke said about why people might post so much.
To be clear though, posting a lot is not a wholly negative behavior and can sometimes be out of “a desire for social connection and the possibilities of career enhancement,” Gerrard said.
It’s also a behavior that social media platforms encourage, Gerrard said.
“X has historically cultivated a following of frequent posters, which isn’t an accident as it’s precisely what the platform was intended for,” Gerrard said. “Whereas those posting through it on other platforms may face more criticism. Instagram, for example, is largely viewed as a space for highly curated, aestheticized, and potentially inauthentic content, hence the phrase ‘highlight reel.’”
But even big-time posters can reach a limit with how much they should share online.
Musk appears to have deleted his most inflammatory insults against Trump, including his claims that Trump appears in unreleased files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his support for the president’s impeachment.
Ross said that deleting certain insults could potentially be an “admission that maybe he thinks he went too far, and that … could backfire because Trump is known to be pretty vengeful.”
