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Elon Musk unwisely went after The Onion, whose CEO reminded Twitter of their 2022 "Please Like Me" skewering of him [View all]
Link to and excerpt from that Onion piece below, but it helps to know how Elon set himself up for this.
It had started with Musk tweeting this whine on the 1st, commenting on a Newsweek story about whether he could be deported for his immigration violations:
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
A lot of people still don’t believe me when I say that the Dems will do everything in their power to destroy me if they win on Nov 5th
@elonmusk
A lot of people still don’t believe me when I say that the Dems will do everything in their power to destroy me if they win on Nov 5th
That got a mocking response from Onion CEO and former NBC reporter Ben Collins, using his Tim Onion account on Twitter:
Tim Onion
@oneunderscore__
Oh no not that
@oneunderscore__
Oh no not that
Elon didn't respond to that till nearly 24 hours later, and his response was pretty lame, though it was immediately echoed by a lot of his followers, many of which are bots:
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
The Onion is less funny than a clown in a @StephenKing novel!
Defeat the woke mind virus to make comedy legal again.
@elonmusk
The Onion is less funny than a clown in a @StephenKing novel!
Defeat the woke mind virus to make comedy legal again.
And half an hour later The Onion's Twitter account responded with what they'd published in March of 2022...and despite Elon's overwhelming advantage in followers (202M to 11M), and more than 5 times as many views for his tweet as The Onion's has, this tweet from The Onion has roughly as many likes and retweets as Elon's:
Link to tweet
There's no paywall - you can read all of it, and I don't remember it being posted on DU when it was published 2-1/2 years ago. I hope you will read all of it. Just a few paragraphs:
Please Like Me
Published: March 24, 2022
-snip-
I spent nine hours on Twitter today. For a few of those hours, I was reading and responding to tweets while on my private jet being whisked from Austin to San Francisco and back again. Picture me, if you will, sitting in a comfortable seat on my own airplane, zooming through the clouds from one important meeting to another. I should be sipping a cocktail and loving life, right? Instead, I’m up there growing more and more depressed as I read hundreds—nay, thousands—of replies, quote tweets, and subtweets from people insulting me and my projects. Why? Why do people do this? Why don’t you like me?
-snip-
Even my children don’t really seem to like me. Although to be fair, I’m not sure how many of them there are. One or two of them might like me.
-snip-
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.
Because look: Frankly, it’s not enough to have spent my childhood wanting for nothing due to my father’s massive wealth, to have struck it rich off of a fairly dull money-transfer service idea that I didn’t even come up with, to have alienated and berated everyone I’ve ever worked with, to lie repeatedly that I was the original founder of Tesla, to amass enormous wealth off of taxpayer-funded subsidies while insisting that I’m self-made, to wield my influence and inane ideas for unworkable projects to prevent actual functional improvements in multiple cities, to receive uncritical adulation from the fawning business and tech presses, to foster a repressive and even racist workplace in my factories replete with numerous labor violations, all in the name of making cars that don’t even really fucking work—no. It’s not enough. What I desperately, desperately need is for you to think that I’m cool and funny. I need this. Please give me that satisfaction.
-snip-
Published: March 24, 2022
-snip-
I spent nine hours on Twitter today. For a few of those hours, I was reading and responding to tweets while on my private jet being whisked from Austin to San Francisco and back again. Picture me, if you will, sitting in a comfortable seat on my own airplane, zooming through the clouds from one important meeting to another. I should be sipping a cocktail and loving life, right? Instead, I’m up there growing more and more depressed as I read hundreds—nay, thousands—of replies, quote tweets, and subtweets from people insulting me and my projects. Why? Why do people do this? Why don’t you like me?
-snip-
Even my children don’t really seem to like me. Although to be fair, I’m not sure how many of them there are. One or two of them might like me.
-snip-
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.
Because look: Frankly, it’s not enough to have spent my childhood wanting for nothing due to my father’s massive wealth, to have struck it rich off of a fairly dull money-transfer service idea that I didn’t even come up with, to have alienated and berated everyone I’ve ever worked with, to lie repeatedly that I was the original founder of Tesla, to amass enormous wealth off of taxpayer-funded subsidies while insisting that I’m self-made, to wield my influence and inane ideas for unworkable projects to prevent actual functional improvements in multiple cities, to receive uncritical adulation from the fawning business and tech presses, to foster a repressive and even racist workplace in my factories replete with numerous labor violations, all in the name of making cars that don’t even really fucking work—no. It’s not enough. What I desperately, desperately need is for you to think that I’m cool and funny. I need this. Please give me that satisfaction.
-snip-
3 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read