The elite is the part of society who either through happenstance or personality are in the center of it fulfilling are coordinating role. This does mean that they have an outsize influence on society and also are at risk of becoming out of touch with the periphery. This fuels anti elite sentiment. At the same time because everyone talking to everyone doesn't scale we can't do without an elite. Also many members of the elite do have genuinely excellent qualities. This fuels pro elite sentiment. Because many people want to only consider either the pro or anti side of it there is a lot of confused discussion about the elite.

I think rather than dragging a HN thread off topic it may be beneficial for you to read about the topics - both the HN post and the idea of elites as it pertains to your question. Sorry to be a killjoy.

Rich/powerful people. But they don't use Twitter to coordinate anything; way too public. They just use it to speak to the masses.

The ones in charge. Also known as The Powers That Be.

This. "Elites" is a motte-and-bailey term[0]. If you ask what it means, you'll hear all kinds of reasonable definitions like self-reinforcing networks of people, created by happenstance (e.g. everyone graduating the same prestige college the same year) and thus inaccessible to randos like you and me, that end up ruling things. Etc. But then the way the term is actually used by the anti-elite crowd, is mostly to mean "anyone with a reasonable argument I want to disagree with anyway, but who has qualifications or credentials that make them hard to be dismissed outright".

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[0] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-wor...