Of Odysseus, Elmo & Tweets

90-second read

Our next reader, Monika from Sydney, asks:

“Here in Australia, we now have a social media ban for under-16s. It looks like France and the UK will be heading in the same direction. Care to share your brewing thoughts on this?”

Well Monika, thanks for your email. You’ve come to the right place.

Just the other day, I was listening to a podcast on Homer’s The Odyssey. I was just doing my homework before the movie comes out. I like to be prepared.

Monika, you seem like a well-read person, so I presume you know the story.

Do you remember that part with Polyphemus, the one-eyed, giant, man-eating Cyclops?

Odysseus and his crew get trapped in his cave, and Polyphemus immediately starts eating people. They manage to escape by blinding him and sneaking out under his sheep. Once they’re safely back on their boat, Odysseus starts running his mouth and taunting the Cyclops. His crew begs him to stop, but he keeps shouting anyway. After escaping under the fake name ‘Nobody’, he yells his real name back at the Cyclops, just to show off.

It’s like using a burner account to escape, then doxxing yourself by replying under your real name. 

Unfortunately for Odysseus, it turns out that the Cyclops is the son of Poseidon, the godfather of the seas with powerful connections.

As soon as Poseidon hears about it, he gets mad, puts out a hit on Odysseus and his crew, and their journey home becomes a bit of a disaster.

Think of the Cyclops as the social media algorithm: a big, powerful beast that always needs to be fed.

It serves an audience that is huge, unpredictable and easily triggered. At times, it can’t be reasoned with.

And once it knows your name, it never forgets it.

You’d think we would’ve learned something by now.

Nope. We haven’t.

Several thousand years later

Monika, did you ever hear the tragedy of Elmo the Muppet and the NBA Finals tweet?

I’ll set the scene for you.

It was the 2026 NBA Finals: the New York Knicks against the San Antonio Spurs.

Elmo posted a wholesome message wishing both teams good luck.

That was it.

Just a furry red monster hoping everyone had a nice time.

Unfortunately, Elmo is from New York, and Knicks fans saw his neutrality as a betrayal of the city.

Fans got mad and told him to pick a side. They called poor Elmo a coward. People were calling into morning radio talk shows to complain.

Elmo tried to clarify, but that only made things worse. I guess the internet had found its issue for the day.

In the end, a simple well-wish turned into a full social-media meltdown.

What can we learn from all this?

Odysseus poked the bear. Elmo just wished everyone well. Both still ended up in trouble.

Once the message leaves the boat, you no longer control what happens next.

So yeah, it makes sense that governments are nervous about throwing kids into all this. We’ve built a place where grown adults can look at a friendly tweet from a red puppet and somehow turn it into a loyalty test. Expecting teenagers to handle that calmly was probably never realistic.

Odysseus had a boat. Elmo had a PR team.