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Elon Reeve "Ted Faro" "Chief Twit"^[2] Musk^[3] (born 1971) is a high-profile businessman, best known for his S3XY electric vehicles and his "plans" to colonise Mars,^[4][5][6] and is currently the 2nd wealthiest person in the world, beating out Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at the beginning of 2021^{[7][note 1]} and being beaten by Bernard Arnault in December 2022.^[8] He is also the embodiment of the hi-tech messiah complex of the 21st century with a detailed history of terrible Twitter shit-posting.^[9]

Musk is notable for massively promoting several firms that have pushed cutting-edge innovation forward in the fields of green technology, cars in space, artificial intelligence, hyperloop, and space travel, and several charities including the Tesla Museum. He is considered by some as one of the world's most influential people and a major player in alternative-energy technology and future spaceflight. Musk is, however, also notable for defending questionable labour and anti-union practices^[10][11] at his manufacturing companies and having a strange view of modern capitalism. In the last couple of years, Musk has found endless controversy (and legal problems) with bizarre and even despicable tweets ranging from COVID-19 misinformation and anti-lockdown stubbornness^[12], market-destabilizing comments and libeling a Tham Luang cave rescue diver as a pedophile.^[13]

Youth[edit]

Elon Musk was born wealthy, as are so many billionaires. His father co-owned an emerald mine in Zambia, and Elon lived a lavish lifestyle in his youth because of this. To avoid a mandatory stint in the South African military, which would have required him to uphold the apartheid regime that he has at times claimed that he despised and other times not mentioned it as a rationale for leaving South Africa.^[14]:43 He left South Africa to attend college in Canada and the United States; while certainly a display of privilege, it was also a very real move to avoid upholding white supremacy at the point of a gun but not at the point of a krugerrand.^[15][16]

Business ventures[edit]

Rendering of the SpaceX Dragon 2 reusable space capsule. The Dragon 2 comes in two variants, one for human spaceflight and the other for cargo.

• Zip2: started in 1995, a company that produced city guides for newspapers, sold in 1999 to Compaq.
• PayPal: long story short - in 1999 Musk (using his Zip2 cash) and a few other men founded X.com, an online bank, which subsequently merged with its competitor Confinity in March of 2000. Confinity had already developed an early version of PayPal and released it in 1999. Musk was able to become CEO of the newly merged company but because the board found him to be a total shitgibbon^{[note 2]} they fired him in October 2000 while he was flying to Australia for his honeymoon; he was replaced by Peter Thiel. In subsequent litigation over his firing, he was able to negotiate that he be listed as one of the founders of PayPal (which is what Confinity was renamed in 2001), despite that, as noted, he didn't find himself listed as an official founder. Additionally, because he kept his stock holdings (about 11% of the total, making him the largest shareholder), when eBay bought PayPal in 2002, he made about $180 million in the deal.
• SpaceX: started in 2002, a company that researches, develops, and manufactures spacecraft and (reusable) launch rockets,^{[note 3]} including to develop the most powerful launch vehicle currently in use and test it by putting a car in solar orbit^{[note 4]}. Alongside Boeing, SpaceX enables NASA to send American astronauts into space on American rockets, from American soil, for the first time since the final Space Shuttle mission in 2011.^[17]
• Tesla Motors: founded in 2003 by Musk^[18] Martin Eberhard (who was shoved out by Musk)^[19] a company that designs and manufactures semi-automated electric cars.
• SolarCity: started in 2006, a company that manufactures and installs rooftop solar panels.
• Hyperloop, announced in 2013, an as-yet-unfeasible rapid transit method that is basically a maglev train inside a vacuum tube. Musk wants this to compete with conventional high-speed rail.
• OpenAI: started in 2015, a nonprofit intended to generate a general artificial intelligence (and avoid Roko's Basilisk).
• Neuralink: started in 2016, a company intended to produce software and devices that can interface with the human brain. As of 2022, Neuralink is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.^[20] Musk has advocated both bad management practices (by telling employees to work faster by imagining a bomb strapped to their heads), and bad science practices (employees have alleged that "Neuralink launches tests in quick succession before fixing issues in earlier tests or drawing complete conclusions.").^[20]
• The Boring Company: started in 2016, a company intended to reduce the cost of boring tunnels. This could come in handy if the Hyperloop succeeds. In 2018, it was awarded a contract to provide an express train service from the O'Hare International Airport to downtown Chicago, scheduled to open in 2021.^{[21][note 5]} By September of the same year, however, nothing has been done, and the future of the project remains in doubt.^{[22][note 6]} So far, the Boring Company is not very exciting.
• Thud: started in 2018, a company intended to produce comedic/satirical articles similar to The Onion, which Musk had attempted to purchase after it wrote satirical articles about him. After Musk pulled the rug out after 6 months, Thud made a muffled sound on the ground and did not come back up.^[23]
• pravduh.com: started in 2018, a website intended to let people vote on the reliability of media sources, created after Musk received much negative media coverage in the same year.^[24] This turned out to be a minor temper tantrum, as there's no evidence the site ever had any content.^[25] Not to be confused with Pravda.ru, which actually has content of the bovine fecal variety.

Twitter[edit]

Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion on October 28, 2022,^[26] after first engaging in the deal, then backing out, then going to court, and then reversing course and forking over the cash. It might be an elaborate ploy to make money out of Twitter (somehow) or serve other interests, but even as a libertarian it is hard to believe he cares about 'anything goes' free speech. In any case the whole process has been fraught with his typical attention seeking derp behaviour, highly manipulative tactics, and weird and douchey tweets/comments including personal attacks on well known figures. He claims there will still be moderation, so we're not sure what that means for "protecting free speech". Predictably, his adoring fans have eaten up everything he has done so far, praising every move he has made as "genius" and believing that Musk actually cares about anyone but himself.

As for how the site is post-acquisition, it's gone about as well as you'd expect.^[27] In a short time, he's fired the CEO, CFO and CLO,^[28] and this happened. Not great, to say the least.

Trashing Twitter's verification system[edit]

Shortly after the acquisition, Musk used his genius skills to roll out a plan to supposedly shore up Twitter's revenue, by allowing anyone to get a "verified" check mark simply by paying $8 a month. Previously, this check mark was only available to public personalities in order to help distinguish Twitter accounts actually run by a public person, instead of being one of the many parody and troll accounts that run rampant on that social network.^[29] Predictably, by changing the requirements to only a small cash payment, this allowed for trolls to easily create fake "official" Twitter accounts for shitposting... such as "Official" Nintendo tweeting a picture of Mario giving the middle finger, "official" professional sports players "announcing" fake trades, and "official" accounts of Tony Blair and George W. Bush musing on how they "miss killing Iraqis".^[30][31][32] Unsurprisingly, some of those impersonating celebrities went beyond shitposting to promote cryptocurrency scams.^[33]

Musk, who previously tweeted that "comedy is now legal on Twitter" after purchasing the company (in reference to—before he bought the company—the Babylon Bee getting suspended from Twitter for transphobia),^[34] used his "free speech absolutist" principles to permaban the impersonation accounts off the platform.^[35] Consequently, an especially popular permaban speedrun during this period, particularly among comedians and Internet personalities, was for people with already verified accounts to rename themselves as Elon Musk and start trolling the "Chief Twit".^[33][36]

Shitposters vs. advertisers[edit]

Two days after the acquisition, Hillary Clinton tweeted a condemnation of a recent assault of Nancy Pelosi's husband. As the alleged suspect was reportedly fueled by conspiracy theories and misinformation, Clinton also accused the "Republican Party and its mouthpieces" of regularly spreading "hate and deranged conspiracy theories", linked the assault to the misinformation, and demanded accountability. Musk responded back with a tweet containing a "news article"... an article that happened to be a completely deranged, hateful conspiracy theory about Pelosi's husband from a well known fake news site,^[37][38] essentially proving Clinton's point.

Although a re-evaluation of contracts is not unusual whenever leadership changes, Musk's buyout caused quite a bit more concerns than you typically see during an acquisition. Before the buyout, Musk had built up a following among the generally right-wing "shitpost" crowd due to Musk's "free speech absolutist" philosophy and, starting in the early 2020s, increasing amounts of tweets dabbling with fringe right-wing memes, including a tweet with the "red pill" meme and the use of "woke" as a snarl word.^[39][40] Some of these shitposters (some who have had their accounts suspended on Twitter and elsewhere for things like transphobia, COVID-19 misinformation, the Big Lie of Donald Trump, and racist and homophobic slurs) therefore cheered when Musk bought Twitter.^[41]

Advertisers, however, make up 90% of Twitter's revenue, and advertisers have long considered "brand safety" to be of utmost importance. Many companies do not want to see their advertisements placed next to any inappropriate content, which includes fake news, extremism, and hate.^[42] When even the "Chief Twit" CEO is tweeting out hateful misinformation from a fake news site, it is no surprise that many advertisers paused their spending on Twitter shortly after the buyout in order to evaluate what direction Musk will take with Twitter's content moderation policy.^[43]

The fake-verified-blue-check debacle added the concerns of advertisers, as trolls not only impersonated celebrities, they also impersonated corporations. Probably the most notable corporate impersonation was a fake "official" account created to impersonate Eli Lilly, which made a shitpost tweet on November 10 2022 that declared that "insulin is free now". This tweet possibly caused a stock price plunge that day that erased billions in Eli Lilly's market cap. Of further concern to companies was Twitter's slow response time to complaints that demanded that these fake accounts be taken down, largely because of Musk's massive headcount reduction in Twitter's communications department. This further pissed off advertisers, causing more of them to pause advertising due to concerns over "brand safety".^[44][45]

Musk's initial reaction to the advertiser pause, of course, was to deflect. First, he blamed "activists" for the revenue drop (claiming "they're trying to destroy free speech in America"),^[46], and then he threatened to "thermonuclear name & shame" advertisers who were "boycotting".^[47] Then he used his "free speech" principles to block a prominent marketing executive^{[note 7]} who questioned how brand safety can be maintained when Musk "just laid off 75% of the moderation team."^[49]

Musk, however, equally pissed off the shitposters by insisting that "Twitter will continue to combat hate & harassment & enforce its election integrity policies" and actually agreeing to talk with civil rights leaders.^{[50][note 8]} Pissing off the shitposters further, Musk also defended and stood by Twitter's head of safety and integrity Yoel Roth,^[52] who was a previous target of the MAGA crowd when fact-checking labels started to be added to Donald Trump's tweets, and old tweets made from Roth resurfaced that called Trump a "racist tangerine".^[53]

Musk vs. Twitter employees[edit]

Musk, however, wasn't done pissing people off: the next step he undertook was to try to piss off Twitter's employees. On November 10 2022, Musk sent his first email to all Twitter employees as CEO. In the email, Musk warned that the "road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed" and painted a bleak picture of Twitter's future. In the process, he nixed Twitter's previous generous work-from-home policy instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic.^[54] (Of course, the letter failed to mention that a significant portion of Twitter's financial woes at the time were Musk-inflicted damage, caused by Musk massively overpaying for Twitter and adding $13 billion in corporate debt, meaning Twitter was on the hook to pay $1 billion in interest payments annually.)^[55][56]

Multiple Twitter executives (including the aforementioned Roth) that made it past Musk's initial firings expressed confidence in the genius of Musk's plans by handing in their resignation papers that week.^[56][57] Later that week, Musk fired multiple employees for the cardinal sin of responding to Musk's super-genius public tweets explaining how, when it came to his tweets about the technical details of Twitter, Musk had absolutely no clue what he was talking about. ^[58]

The next week, on Wednesday November 16, Musk sent a mass email ultimatum to all employees, declaring that Twitter was shifting to an "engineer-driven operation" of whom the employees "will need to be extremely hardcore" going forward, "working long hours at high intensity". Within that email was a button asking them to commit to Musk's "hardcore" vision. Those that disagreed with Musk's genius visionary management style (e.g., seemingly a "slave-driving" karoshi-style work environment where one must also be an ass-kissing yes-man to Musk) could resign from Twitter at 5PM on Thursday November 17, with three months severance pay.^[59][60]

The result was predictable, given Musk's callous and disrespectful attitude towards his employees: a reported mass exodus, to the point where Twitter had to shut its doors on Friday November 18 in order to protect its systems and data.^[61] Initial reports estimated the exodus to include at least 1200 full-time employees,^{[note 9]} including 96% of the "core services" team and several entire departments.^[62] The team dedicated to countering child sexual abuse on the platform was cut in half, leaving behind an "overwhelmed skeleton crew".^[63] One former Twitter executive commented that with so many employees leaving, Twitter "will struggle just to keep the lights on".^[61] "#RIPTwitter" became the #1 trending topic on US Twitter in reaction to this news.^[64][65]

On December 13 2022, reports emerged that Twitter was not paying any rent for the offices Musk was requiring employees to work from, and was discussing denying severance payments to the thousands of people who had been laid off since the takeover.^[66] Twitter was later sued by its landlord for allegedly failing to pay its rent.^[67] Twitter employees were evicted from the company's office in Singapore — noted as its headquarters for the Asia-Pacific region — for unpaid rents as well. Reportedly, this fate was set to hit about a dozen Twitter offices for the same reason.^[68][69] Around the same time, the company began auctioning off supplies from its offices such as coffee machines, chairs, statues, and sculptures.^[70][71]

In early February 2023, around the time a major global outage occurred on the platform,^{[note 10]} Twitter also managed to piss off developers of third party clients, maintainers of non-nefarious bots, celebrities that use tools for social media management, social media researchers, and more by announcing that third party access to the Twitter API that made this third party ecosystem possible would no longer be free for anyone.^[73][74] Meanwhile, in a sign of Musk's continuing god complex, a report emerged around that time that Musk fired an engineer simply for suggesting that his declining engagement numbers on the platform were simply because public interest in his shitshow was waning.^[72] The company shed more employees in February 2023, leaving Twitter with a little less than 2,000 employees (down from around 7,500 in October 2022).^[75]

Musk, content moderation dictator[edit]

All of the pandering to advertisers about content moderation (including a previous assertion in early November that Musk would not make major decisions about restoring banned accounts before setting up a "content moderation council" with diverse viewpoints)^[77] ended up being a bunch of bullshit. By November 19 2022, Musk's Twitter had reinstated several previously accounts banned for hate, harassment, and election conspiracy bullshit. These names included manosphere grifter Andrew Tate (suspended in 2017 for advocating that women should "bare [sic] some responsibility" for being sexually assaulted), Jordan Peterson (suspended for transphobic tweets about Elliot Page), Babylon Bee (suspended for transphobic tweets about Rachel Levine), and Donald Trump (banned for inciting violence in early 2021, and still promoting the Big Lie 2020 election conspiracy at the time of his reinstatement).^[78][79][80]

On November 29 2022, Twitter announced that it would no longer enforce its policy against misleading information about COVID-19, potentially opening up the platform further to scam artists and grifters pushing anti-vaccination or potentially dangerous alternative medicine woo.^[81] To no one's surprise, this category includes Musk himself, who managed to combine a tasteless transphobic joke with a baseless call to prosecute Anthony Fauci (based on bullshit repeated ad nauseam by extremist Republicans like Rand Paul and Jim Jordan) in a couple of tweets made in mid December 2022.^[82]

On December 12 2022, Musk's Twitter dissolved its Trust and Safety Council, an advisory group of around 100 independent civil, human rights, and other organizations formed in 2016 to address hate speech, child exploitation, and other problems on the platform.^[83] In addition, on this same day, reports emerged that the once cordial relationship between Yoel Roth and Musk had developed into a feud after Roth left the company. This culminated in Musk releasing internal documents concerning Roth managing Donald Trump's ban, and (using a tired tactic of his) calling Roth a pedophile. Musk's baseless pedophile claim resulted in an escalation of threats against Roth, forcing him to flee his home.^[84]

Reports emerged that Musk used his "free speech absolutism" to ban activists who documented extremism and violence among the alt-right, under the guise of them being "antifa". Reportedly the bans were enacted at the request of the notoriously whiny anti-left agitator Andy Ngo.^[85] In addition, again unsurprisingly, some users claimed to be banned from Twitter simply for being even remotely critical of Musk in a tweet.^[86] A Twitter bot account that tracked the location of Musk's private jet (using public information), which made headlines in January 2022 when the operator refused a $5000 payment from Musk to delete the account,^[87] was, in the name of "free speech absolutism", banned from Twitter on December 14 2022.^[88] Musk's "free speech absolutism" became suspect when he banned the Twitter accounts of several mainstream media journalists who had been covering Musk,^[89] as well as the Twitter account of rival social network Mastodon.^[90] On December 18, Musk further dented his "free speech absolutism" claim when he banned links to content on several other social networks, as well as some link aggregators.^[91][92] One month later, Musk continued to demonstrate how his "free speech absolutist" claim was bullshit (particularly perhaps when it came to appeasing authoritarian demands) when in late January 2023 Twitter censored links to a BBC documentary critical of Narendra Modi (a documentary which in particular highlighted Modi's troubling connections to the 2002 Gujarat riots.)^[93]

As one would expect, more companies continued "pausing" their Twitter commitments due to the chaos, including pauses that went beyond advertising, such as a decision by CBS News to (very temporarily)^[94] step back from Twitter on November 18 2022.^[95] By one account, half of Twitter's top 100 advertisers had paused advertising on Twitter by mid November 2022;^[96] this figure had increased to 72 out of 100 by December 17 2022.^[97] Also during that month, advertisers started to be told that they "needed to become comfortable" with Musk's unpredictability and uncertainty.^[98]

Musk, however, was also still pissing off some shitposters due to announcing what effectively was a shadowban system ("Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized") on November 18, and refusing to reinstate Alex Jones's Twitter account.^[99]

Musk, just another right-wing edgelord troll[edit]

Musk continued his descent from futuristic tech CEO into just another shitposting edgelord troll on November 28 2022. The overnight tweetstorm included tweets with a Pepe the Frog image, an image of Baked Alaska that was quickly deleted, and a fake "CNN headline" created by a small right-leaning satire site called Genesius Times (tweeted, of course, without any context to the real source whatsoever).^{[100][101][102]} Musk continued to be Very Concerned about what he called "free speech", ^[103] while also simultaneously displaying "concerns" in other tweets about there needing to be a "counter-narrative" for supposed "far left San Francisco/Berkeley views"^[104] as well as a supposed "woke mind virus has thoroughly penetrated entertainment and is pushing civilization towards suicide."^[105] Of course, all those advertisers who paused Twitter ads, in Elon's mind, also hated "free speech" as well, because apparently "free speech" in Muskland means "paying Elon Musk money".^[106] Meanwhile, Twitter's radically reduced anti-propganda team experienced noticeable difficulty stopping an apparent pro-China spam campaign that was attempting to flood out any information on Twitter regarding the 2022 COVID-19 protests in China.^[107]

An analysis of Musk's replies and exchanges on his Twitter account by Le Monde, published on November 28 2022, indicated that increasingly Musk was living in a right-wing "filter bubble". Musk's approving chats heavily consisted of accounts associated with Gamergate and/or alt-right figures, conservative activists, crypto bros, and Tesla "fan groups" that praised every announcement he made and LOLed at every shitpost he tweeted. On the flip side, Musk tended to mock and act flippantly towards criticisms coming from Democratic politicians, as well as making fun of the mainstream American media in general (the later probably due to Musk's thin-skinned inability to handle criticism.)^[108]

The future[edit]

Musk's Twitter problems were so significant, they affected his primary company Tesla as well. Between April 4 2022 (the date Musk first disclosed he took a 9% stake in Twitter) and December 15 2022, Musk's primary company, Tesla, lost a staggering $705 billion in market capitalization. The Twitter purchase was not the only reason for the decline, however it was clear that Twitter played a significant factor. Many investors were not happy with Musk seemingly abandoning Tesla in order to badly mismanage Twitter. Investors also were not happy at Musk using Tesla stock as a "piggy bank" to help finance propping up his favorite shitposting platform.^[109] Many analysts also noted that Tesla's previously sky-high stock price relied, in part, on Musk's reputation as a genius futurist. Musk's mismanagement misadventures at Twitter cracked that facade, and thus damaged the Tesla brand and helped damage Tesla's stock price. As an added headache, Musk's increasingly hyper-partisan conspiracy theory and political oriented tweets added additional Tesla brand damage. Particularly considering that the left-leaning people that Musk is obsessively attacking were always the ones most likely to buy a Tesla, while conservatives are the least likely to do so.^[110]

Perhaps with this in mind, on December 18 2022, Musk posted a Twitter poll asking whether or not he should continue as CEO of Twitter, claiming he would abide by the results. The poll closed on Monday, with the result (57.5%) clearly showing most voters in favor of him leaving the CEO position.^[111] After initially appearing to want to move the goalposts and change the rules for the poll,^[112] on Tuesday December 20 2022, Musk gave in... sort of. Musk tweeted that he would "resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!", while still maintaining that he would run the "software & servers teams".^[113] Of course, this was seen by many as mere "window dressing", and that he would retain significant influence over the company regardless of whether he was CEO or not.^[114]

Even with the above, what the future holds for the platform is uncertain, but more than likely it will become even more of a lawless wasteland than it was before. If it manages to still exist, that is.

Tesla Motors[edit]

Either the logo of the most valuable car manufacturer in history or the drawing of a uterus

Tesla Motors is a car company figure-headed by Elon Musk. It is famous for being the only company with a commercially available car floating in space. It makes electric cars, which made the news for catching fire.^[116][117] As it turns out, though, while Teslas caught fire, they did so at a much lower rate than the cars relying on controlled explosions of flammable material.^[118] However, putting out EV car fires is far more difficult than putting out internal combustion car fires, sometimes requiring more than 20,000 gallons of water.^[119] Tesla also makes cars that can drive themselves, but they often seem to crash while driving on their own.^[120]

Coins for Cars[edit]

In late 2020, Tesla hinted that they would begin accepting Bitcoin for cars, which sent the already overpriced Bitcoin even higher. In early 2021, Tesla bought $1.5 billion in Bitcoin,^[121] and then in March made the actual announcement they'd sell cars in Bitcoin. Bitcoin skyrocketed even further, making Tesla's Bitcoins even more valuable. Then Tesla began selling off their Bitcoins,^[122] whereas Musk loudly insists didn't happen,^[123] just before refusing to accept Bitcoin for their cars in May 2021.^[124][125]

But there's another explanation that doesn't involve insider trading or market manipulation. During those two months, numerous problems with Bitcoin purchases became apparent, at least for the consumer. To purchase a Tesla, you have to place a deposit of $2500 or equivalent value in Bitcoin. If you cancelled before the car was made you got a refund, but if the deposit was made in Bitcoin, Tesla got to choose whether to pay you Bitcoins or cash. I.e., if Bitcoin went down, you got Bitcoin, but if it went up, you got cash. The US also has "lemon laws" for defective cars, colloquially known as "lemons", where you can be compensated if the manufacturer gives you a lemon. But if you paid for your car in Bitcoin, you guessed it, Tesla could compensate you in whichever currency was worth less.^[126] Purchasing itself was a hassle; when given a quote, you had 30 minutes to complete the purchase or you would have to get a new quote.^[127] This was needed because of Bitcoin's notoriously volatile price, as otherwise the purchaser could change their mind as Bitcoin fluctuated. Most charitably, this whole debacle was such a miserable experience for everyone involved, and not the image that Musk wants for Tesla.

Sociopathy[edit]

Compensating much?^[128]

For someone who has ostensibly created some ventures that could be called good for society (pioneering electric vehicle manufacture, installing rooftop solar, more questionably others), Musk and Tesla have exhibit repeated and disturbing signs of narcissistic sociopathy^[130][131] (superficial charm, lying, intentionally causing harm to others).

Musk believes in the theory that all of existence is a simulated reality and has dedicated millions of dollars towards proving an unfalsifiable hypothesis true,^[132] rather than using that money to do something beneficial. Presumably, he believes in this theory because he believes it could absolve him of any accountability regarding his actions. Musk's apparent belief that reality is a simulation would appear to be a rationalization for Musk doing whatever the fuck he wants. When one is the richest person on the planet one can do a very good job of creating a walled garden to keep out things that one doesn't want to confront by just throwing money at them.

Musk, himself[edit]

Musk either thinks that he is a big gorilla, or he knows that is a manospherian, declaring to his first wife at their wedding in 2000, "I am the alpha in this relationship." He later treated her like a slightly privileged employee, later telling her often, "If you were my employee, I would fire you."^[133] In 2020, Musk tweeted a call to "Take the Red pill 🌹".^[134] The term "red pill" was popularized by the manosphere and absorbed into the larger alt-right. It is possible however that Musk was referring to the original use in the film series The Matrix, which would agree with his simulated reality belief. Years after The Matrix was released, the filmmakers revealed in 2016 that films were actually a reflection of their transsexuality.^[135] Although the red rose in Musk's tweet is a symbol of social democracy, Musk is known to be strongly against this ideology.

On March 6, 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when vaccines were not available, Musk said, "The coronavirus panic is dumb".^[136] By March 17, state and local officials were ordering lockdowns to prevent further spread of COVID and the overburdening hospitals that did eventuate. On March 19, Musk stated, "Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in the US too by the end of April".^[137] Contrary to what the boy genius predicted, daily case counts have yet to drop to zero as of December 2021, and the daily peak was 218,000 in January 2021 before vaccines were widely available.^[138] By April, Musk was complaining about lockdowns.^[139] In May 2020, Musk opened his Fremont, California Tesla factory in defiance of Alameda County health orders. As a result, he personally caused 450 COVID cases.^[140]

Tesla engineer: "You mean, program the robot? Or design that tool?"

Musk: "Did you fucking do this?"

Engineer: "I’m not sure what you’re referring to? (apologetically)

Musk: "You’re a fucking idiot! Get the fuck out and don’t come back!"^[141]

After resigning, a Tesla employee returned to work just to say goodbye to colleagues. Musk shoved and threatened the employee by saying "I will nuke you."^[142]

Regarding alleged rampant racism against African Americans at a Tesla factory, for which Tesla is being sued by the State of California, Musk advised that victims of racism should get a "thick skin".^[143]

On a private jet, Musk allegedly offered a flight attendant a horse in exchange for sex after he had exposed his erect penis and touched her. The attendant refused and was awarded $250,000 in an out of court settlement.^[144]

Musk told the UN he would donate much of his fortune to end world hunger if they told him exactly how they would spend it, and then, when they gave him precisely what he wanted, a detailed program explaining exactly what they would use his money for, he refused.^[145] Of course, he reneged on his part of the deal.

Companies, by proxy[edit]

Tesla has repeatedly rolled out new and potentially-dangerous (a not fully-functional 'auto pilot',^[146][147] 'Insane' mode^[148]) or on-its-face features (driver-accessible video games^[149]) that are tested on existing car owners rather than going through extensive in-house testing.^[130] Tesla has 3 times the number of driver deaths compared to other vehicles in its car class (BMW, Lexus, and Mercedes).^[146]

In 2021, Tesla was sued by six women who worked at Tesla factories, alleging that there was "rampant sexual harassment" and "nightmarish conditions" at the factories.^[150] The lawsuit alleged that the abuse is effectively encouraged by Musk's lewd tweets.^[150] A woman who was an engineer at SpaceX has also said that she suffered sexual harassment there and that there was rampant misogyny.^[151]

A former contract worker at Tesla was awarded $137 million in a discrimination suit against Tesla that had alleged racist epithets, discrimination and a hostile work environment.^[152]

Being a whistleblower seems to be grounds for immediate termination at Tesla despite it being illegal for Tesla to do so.^{[153][154][155]}

As part of Musk's shambolic 2022 takeover of Twitter, the entire Twitter office in Ghana was terminated, the only office in the entire continent of Africa except for one employee. The employees were not mentioned by name and not offered severance pay,^[156] thus the employees were being treated like objects and not like people.

Elon and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Tweets[edit]

Musk in 2012,^[157] right before he told his friend not to come to school the next day

Despite being a rock star of scientific progress and innovation, a busy professional with a million things to do and a good understanding of the essential importance of good communication, Elon still finds time to tweet stupid shit every now and then. He apparently loves Tweeting so much, he bought 9.2% of Twitter, making him the single largest shareholder of the company.^[158] You might also notice Twitter has 11 board members, and 9.2% is more than 1/11th of the company, enough to permanently make yourself a board member without any voting necessary. Which is exactly what happened.^[159]

"Marx was a capitalist"[edit]

Taylor Harris: What would you proclaim yourself as? Anything specifically?^[161]

Musk: A socialist^[162]

Musk: Marx was a capitalist. He even wrote a book about it.^[163]

Musk makes the common mistake of mixing up Marxist socialism with modern welfare social democracy. While he may be somewhat right in his interpretation of Marxist socialism as "the greatest good for all", modern welfare social democracy concerns itself with reducing poverty and misery and funding a large range of basic social services without abandoning capitalism. In either case, he describes socialism in a way that neither makes sense in Marxist socialism nor modern welfare social-democracy "the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive, pretending to do good, while actually causing harm". This is a gross misrepresentation of Marxist socialism and doesn't remotely resemble modern welfare social democracy.

Unions[edit]

Musk: If you must know, I am a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks [a leftist writer]^[164]

Cory Doctorow: Iain Banks was an ardent trade unionist, @Elonmusk^[165]

Musk: Iain certainly wasn’t pro-union in the Culture books. At all. And wouldn’t be in the case of Tesla. Banks was about freedom through & through. Maybe for a single buyer (monopsony) vs single seller (monopoly), I would be too, but that’s a special case.^[166]

Doctorow: Banks consistently endorsed the freedom of workers to form collective bargaining units. The existence of a thought experiments in which this was obviated by eg FTL [faster-than light travel] is by no means an indication that a marginal improvement in EV tech would have turned him into a strikebreaker^[167]

Musk: I endorse freedom to form a union too, as well as freedom not to do so if they feel Tesla is a good company. UAW has major conflicts of interest & failed our car plant already when they abandoned us in 2010. Tesla can only hire 5% of applicants, so must be doing something right.^[168]

David Slack: Unions don’t exist only at “bad” companies, Mr. Musk. They exist to provide workers with a voice to negotiate with management, insuring that conditions do not become intolerable or unsafe, that good companies do not become bad ones. Good companies should welcome unions.^[169]

Musk: You think all companies are bad and all unions good? That’s a very bigoted position.^[170]

Boring boneheads[edit]

After his flagship company, Tesla, posted a massive loss it could be imagined that analysts would want to know why. Musk was busy telling everyone that things were fine when he said:

"Boring bonehead questions are not cool. Next," ... "We're going to go to YouTube. Sorry, these questions are so dry. They're killing me."^[171]

This briefly bummed out the investors and Tesla stock dropped 5% (about $3 billion).^[172]

Tesla[edit]

In 2019, Musk tweeted that the company may go private.

Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.^[173]

For whatever reason he did this (who knows?), he broke the law as it was of a speculative nature. While the company wasn't destined to go private, the market took the tweet seriously, and some investors lost millions in the speculation game. Investors initiated a lawsuit, which is still in the courts.^[174] Somehow Musk survived this colossally stupid move. Though in fairness, Tesla is currently worth about 10x what it was when Musk made that tweet; had he gone through with the deal it would've been the greatest business deal in modern history.

However, clearly, this wasn't enough. In 2020, while he was busy denying the serious nature of COVID-19, he also made a casual claim that his company was "over-valued".^[175]

Tesla stock price is too high imo^[176]

This led to a huge drop in market value with himself losing billions in value. It is unlikely any of this will stop Musk from making stupid, pointless, destructive comments in the future about the value or future of the company.

Transphobia[edit]

Elon Musk, despite his brainchild Tesla being well-known for its inclusiveness of LGBTQ+ people,^[177] has also made quite a few attacks on the use of pronouns for non-binary individuals. After facing much backlash after infamously tweeting "pronouns suck",^[178] Musk went on to make the following even-more damning follow-up tweet a few months later:

It also didn't help Musk's case that he additionally shared a meme of a soldier rubbing his face with bloody hands and a hat with the words "I Love To Oppress", with the caption ""when you put he/him in ur bio"^[179][180] The meme is known as "The Eternal Anglo"^[181] The term 'The Eternal Anglo' is based on the anti-semitic 1940 film The Eternal Jew produced in Nazi Germany. The Eternal Anglo meme is purportedly primarily used by fascistic German and Slavic speakers to demonize English-speaking countries^[182] but has morphed into other usage within the larger alt-right.

Musk's transgender daughter has cut ties with him, saying "I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form". She has legally changed her surname to Wilson.^[183] In response, Musk blamed "full-on communism" in universities.^[184][185]

Donald Trump[edit]

Musk was very critical of Donald Trump until Trump became President. Musk then changed his mind and joined Trump initiatives including a council of business advisors and a project to promote manufacturing in the US.^{[186][note 11]} Musk's attacks on the media seemed in accord with Trump's complaints about fake news and were supported by Trump's son Donald Trump Jr.^[187] He also supported Trump's campaign to shift global tariffs on car imports and exports to be more favorable to American car exports.^[188] He left Trump's presidential council in June of 2017, citing Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.^[189]

Pedophilia accusations[edit]

Elon's most ghastly batshit-insanity is the accusation of a child-rescuing hero of being a pedophile. While several young soccer players were stuck in a cave, Musk flew to Thailand and tried to offer help however he could.^[190] Regardless of whether or not the suggestion that his mission to help out was nothing but a PR stunt, it seemed his help was rather useless and was getting in the way.^[191] A semi-professional spelunker, Vern Unsworth helped bring the trapped children to safety.^[192] He was critical of some of Elon's efforts to help including criticism of the feasibility of Elon's proposed amazing-cave-submarine-child-rescue-awesome-mobile.^[193] Unsworth risked his life to reach the boys, comfort the scared children and rescue them.^[194] As thanks for this he was accused of being a pedophile by Musk.^[195] Elon's petty hissy-fit in the form of a vague accusation of pedophilia didn't go away even after Elon deleted the tweet and gave a half-hearted retraction.^[196] A week later, Elon sprayed a full out pedophile on social media...twice.^[197][198]

In September 2018, Unsworth filed suit for defamation, with Musk somehow winning,^[199] despite none of his accusations having a shred of truth to them - the Private Investigator hired by Musk having scammed him.^[200]

During the trial, he essentially defended his right to be a Twitter troll.^[201]

See also[edit]

• Nikola Tesla — from whom the name came. Although ironically, Musk identifies more with Nikola Tesla's nemesis, Thomas Edison, than with Tesla himself – despite buying the company named after him.^{[202][note 12]}

External links[edit]

• Elon Musk Today — Bullshit Musk has said

Notes[edit]

References[edit]