In a world of pointless questions like ‘Are tariffs good for me?’ and ‘Why does Kevin Rudd have a beard?’, only one really matters: ‘Is Elon a genius?’ My wife says he is and so does the manicured sales guy at the Chadstone Tesla display. Even the sweary Married at First Sight girl said so during Intimacy Week’s mandatory knife fight and non-sexual massage though I still think she chose ‘stay’.

According to Whoopi (Oscar-Emmy winning genius) on the Never-Trump View, Elon may be a Hitler-enabling unelected Trump surrogate, but yes, he is a ‘genius’. The other panellists grudgingly nodded in agreement like those amusement park clowns with the gaping red mouths you drop the balls into, before slouching off to the next segment about Meghan’s new podcast and the genius of a $100-million five-year Netflix deal.

An Elon-hating TV panel saying Elon is a genius is next-level validation, but when did this consensus start? Maybe it was 2018 when Trump declared himself a ‘very stable genius’ and Bitcoin went up 5 points. Or, maybe, it’s just the usual marketing rhetoric of escalating compliments where everything is the best, greatest or so low-fat you don’t recognise your own before photo.

Musk has an impressive CV and not wanting to discredit the Elon vibe but like Einstein and time, I think genius is relative. Sure, he launched self-returning SpaceX Starships, and they actually came back. Then again, the last one blew up so we may need to revisit the business model. Perhaps his report card should read: ‘Must do better, you smart bastard’.

Maybe Musk’s genius isn’t genius at all, well at least not the kind you’d rely on if out cold on the operating table. Rather he’s a talented marketing guy, not a rocket scientist, which is why Monash University offers a double degree.

To be a genius you need to be the one who designed the spaceship not the guy who put the X on the end of SpaceX. Even if there was a Theory of Elon showing how to split the Tesla and create a new non-carbon energy source to save the world and reduce our resentment of people who drive them, I’d have my doubts. Asking everyone to write a letter saying what they’ve done in their last week of work doesn’t cut it, especially when the rest of the time you’re talking big about spaceships to Mars and Ukrainian rare minerals.

Trust me, I know what genius is. I sat next to one, trying to copy his maths homework while students together at a sports-obsessed Catholic school in Toorak. He had all the symptoms of an overactive curiosity gland – no girlfriend, tedious attention to detail when painting his Airfix models and a fascination with Genesis and the scandalous sell-out of drumming genius Phil Collins’ ‘Can’t Hurry Love’. Like Napoleon crowning himself Emperor or that mousy hot girl with the bulbous eyes in Queen’s Gambit, my proto-genius announced his genius at my 12th birthday party, beating my uber-smart father at chess in front of the other invited schoolboys, defeat driving my dad into an emotionally remote twilight of comfy couches, two-kilogram philosophy books and henpeckery.

Proto-genius is now a doctor in astrophysics. An important job. He once got interviewed live-to-air by Karl (Idiot Box Genius) about the big bang theory but in the context of a new Bruce Willis movie. I may be embellishing, which is something non-geniuses often do, but I think Karl was wearing black tee shirt merch emblazoned ‘Banger’ and blokily asked ‘Come on, black holes, really?’ which is a bit rich as most of us still wonder if Richard Wilkins was early AI and Karl himself just a construct created by feminists so they can talk about the injustice of Lisa Wilkinson’s salary on International Women’s Day.

Proto-genius once explained why there aren’t more geniuses. He said it’s harder now because all the low-hanging genius fruit has been snapped up by the likes of Marie Curie, Louis Pasteur, winged-keel inventor Ben Lexcen and whoever first came up with the Nigerian prince scam, leaving wannabe-geniuses with nothing but cures for baldness, Ozempic and Climate Council consultancies to get their teeth into.

By this logic, rather than geniuses, the Beatles had it easy. Modern electric rock music with all those wonderful earworm tunes was yet to be discovered back in 1962 meaning they got first creative dibs unlike the bands that followed, making them no more gifted than that Frankston lady who created Dance Monkey from the wreckage of Western civilisation.

Rapper Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize for being Kendrick Lamar but after watching his disorienting Super Bowl half-time musical Ted Talk on race relations, I think he would have been better off with a PowerPoint presentation and extra dance lessons. Bob Dylan received a Nobel Prize, but have you heard him sing? He should hand it over to Timothee Chalamet with an apology.

In Australia, you can’t swing a cat for all our geniuses. Not even a smart one at a heavily subsidised school for the artistic children of rich financial planners in Kew. Our prime ministerial geniuses Malcom and Kevin have been doing some of their best work lately bagging Donald Trump and destroying our delicate trade relations because in the words of Descartes, ‘I think and have a social media account therefore I am.’ Revealing that feisty mix of high IQ and low emotional intelligence that abruptly ended both political careers, it’s a reverse Dumb and Dumber approach though I see Kevin has rediscovered his old Sunrise Kid gravitas by deleting older tweets, slipping on some ill-fitting plus fours and taking up golf.

Former Victorian premier Dan Andrews is getting a statue as a statement of his political genius or at least longevity which is the same thing. His successor Jacinta Allan is doing a reboot of Back to the Future by toughening bail laws her government previously softened and pretending none of it ever happened.

West Australian Premier Roger Cook just achieved a massive state election win. Genius politics, though I’m not sure if shooting fish in a barrel qualifies you for Mensa.