Tonight Bill Gates was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the interview was just too painful to watch.
First Jon joked about Bill Gates getting and iPhone. First rule, never joke with Bill Gates, he’ll freeze up.
Then Jon mentioned that Bill Gates was now on Twitter, which was fine. Except it was clear that even though this matter had hit the press days before, Bill Gates only had a cursory idea of what the Twitter experience was really like. Then Jon asked the obvious question that everyone asks: “How many followers do you have?” Bill Gates completely froze. He had probably not been twittering himself and had no idea how many followers he had or that knowing your number of followers was important. After a long pause, he replied by asking Jon how many followers he had. Jon, being a good host, realized Bill had no idea what he was talking about and just moved on. Second rule, don’t ask Bill Gates about technology, he doesn’t know.
The rest of the interview seemed to be more of what we have come to expect from Bill Gates. Bill was talking about his charity as if he actually does real work, but you could tell he was talking about things his assistants or employees had done and that he only had the tiniest string linked to our reality.
He was smiling a ton, more than normal people would, and it came off creepy. I understand that Bill has huge interpersonal and social issues, so I felt kind of bad for him. I realize this type of thing is not his cup of tea. One interesting thing, he looked much better than he has in the past, and I wonder if he’s had plastic surgery?