Greg Evans
Apr 23, 2021
Britta Pedersen-Pool/Getty Images
For nearly 20 years now, Elon Musk has been at the forefront of technology and engineering.
After making his fortune with PayPal, Muskâs SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company and Neuralink have all produced incredible advancements in energy, health and travel both here on Earth and in space.
The 49-year-old South African entrepreneur is undoubtedly one of the most influential people on the planet and a potential genius however many people probably wonât know him for his accomplishments in engineering.
Despite all the praise that should be showered up Musk, he has instead become something of a divisive figure who on the surface is more interested in memes and s**t posting on Twitter than actual science.
âTroll,ââEdge Lord,â âPranksterâ are all words that have undoubtedly been thrown at Musk in recent years and many wouldnât argue that he doesn't deserve it despite the honours and accomplishments he has achieved in his line of work.
Read more:
- Girl, 6, told by art teacher her painting was âwrongâ â Twitter disagreed
- Dad furious after teacher âcut his daughterâs hair without permissionâ
- Woman calls police on influencer â only for it to completely backfire on her
- Barâs âdisrespectfulâ description of woman on her receipt goes viral
- This Morning gets hundreds of complaints over Julia Hartley-Brewerâs bizarre comments about Meghan
So, after his appearance on Saturday Night Live, weâre looking back at Muskâs weirdest and most controversial moments â because you often cantâ celebrate the good in someone without being reminded of the bad too.
Calling Tesla cars S.3.X.
An early indication that Musk was all about the lols was him naming Tesla cars after sex jokes like he was a cast member of The Inbetweeners.
In 2017 Tesla announced that the three cars in their Model 3 series were going to be called Model S, Model E and Model X. However, Ford threatened to sue over the Model E name so that was changed to Model 3
Anyway, what happens when you rearrange those letters? Yep âS.3.Xâ. Tesla didnât even try to hide it when promoting the cars.
If you thought that was cringe wait until you learn that his SpaceX rocket âBFRâ stands for âBig F**king Rocket.â
Smoking weed on the Joe Rogan Podcast
Musk loves a good meme but how about when he became an actual meme following an appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast, one of the most-watched podcasts on the planet in 2018. During his appearance on the show, Musk took a puff on a joint from Rogan, who is a marijuana enthusiast.
However, Musk didnât seem to really know what he was doing when smoking the bifta and didnât inhale any of the smoke or get any effects from it. However, his reaction was priceless and will live on in internet infamy in gif form.
Musk later revealed on 60 Minutes that he really didnât know what he was doing with the joint. He told Lesley Stahl: âI am somewhat impulsive. I donât really want to try to adhere to some CEO template. I do not smoke pot. As anyone who watched that podcast can tell I have no idea how to smoke pot, or anything.â
Other highlights of the podcast included him claiming that he was an alien as he has âboundless energy.â
During the SNL gig, Musk referred to the incident, âA lot of times, people are reduced to the dumbest thing they ever did. Like one time I smoked weed on Joe Roganâs podcast,â he said.
âAnd now all the time I hear âElon Musk, all he ever does is smoke weed on podcastsâ. Like I go from podcast to podcast, lighting up joints. It happened once, itâs like reducing OJ Simpson to murderer.â
His Iron Man 2 cameo
The MCU has given us many memorable characters from Tony Stark to Steve Rogers and from Loki to Thanos. Sadly Elon Musk wonât be joining that list even though he did appear in a Marvel movie.
Back in 2010, he made a blink-and-youâll miss it cameo in Iron Man 2, which is admittedly one of the least memorable Marvel movies. He did have a few lines though such as telling Stark that he has an idea for an âelectric jet.â.
Muskâs cameos donât end there as heâs also popped up in The Simpsons, South Park,The Big Bang Theory and Rick and Morty.
Being flummoxed by Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog is one of the cinemaâs great filmmakers and has been known to go to incredible lengths to get his films and documentaries made. Pulling a huge boat over a hill? Yep, heâs done that. Hypnotising his entire cast? Done that too. Visiting a volcanic island that was due to erupt? Bingo.
For his 2016 documentary about the internet Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, Herzog paid a visit to Musk as SpaceX keen to learn more about the South Africanâs plans to colonise Mars.
During their conversation Musk complained about how hard it is to get just one person to Mars. Without hesitation, Herzog volunteers himself to go on the voyage on a âone-way ticket.â Musk seems briefly stunned that this 70+ year-old German man would be willing to go through with such a journey, which probably wouldnât even be the most audacious thing Herzog has ever done.
That being said, Herzog would later compare Muskâs plans for Mars to âfascismâ so perhaps he wasnât that keen after all.
His bonkers tweets costing Tesla money
Musk is seemingly on Twitter 24/7 and when heâs not talking about the latest SpaceX launch or arguing with Bernie Sanders he is often tweeting nonsense and memes. Here is just a small example of his many strange tweets that would be fine if they were coming from a 15-year-old but not one of the richest men in the world.
However, in 2018 Muskâs tweets were become so erratic and bizarre that Tesla investors had to tell him to basically âshut upâ as he was costing them money. This was after Musk tweeted about the Shortseller Enrichment Commission, a regulator that had just made a multi-million dollar settlement with him over alleged security fraud.
This might not have stopped him from sharing memes but heâs almost definitely a bit more measured about sensitive material these days.
Musk referred to this on SNL, saying: âLook I know I sometimes say or post strange things but thatâs just how my brain works.
âTo anyone Iâve offended, I just want to say âI reinvented electric cars and Iâm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship, did you also think I was going to be a chill, normal dude?ââ
Fair point.
The name of his and Grimes baby
Musk and his indie-pop star partner Grimes had a baby in May 2020, which they called X Ã A-12 Musk, which was off even for their standards. People were a little confused as to how to pronounce the name at first until Grimes went ahead and tried to explain it.
However, even she appeared to be a bit confused as Musk later corrected her.
Even Gwenyth Paltrow, who called her child Apple, thought the name was controversial. As it turns out, under California law, no numbers are allowed in a personâs name. Therefore the couple had to change the name to: X Ã A-Xii which is probably even more confusing.
Musk referenced the confusing during his SNL monologue, saying: âItâs pronounced cat running across keyboard.â
Calling a man who rescued children from a cave a âpedo guyâ
The June 2018 rescue of 12 boys trapped in a cave in Thailand was one of the most dramatic moments of that year. However, a row erupted between Musk and Vernon Unsworth, an experienced cave diver who was recruiting experts to help in the rescue effort.
Musk sent a team of engineers and a small submarine to Thailand but they werenât used in the effort. Unsworth later accused Musk of carrying out a PR stunt and told CNN that he could âstick his submarine where it hurts.â Musk hit back with a series of insulting tweets to Unsworth which included calling him a âpedo guy.â
Eventually, Musk managed to win a defamation case against Unsworth after arguing that the term is a common insult in South Africa that is synonymous with âcreepy old man [and] aimed at insulting oneâs appearance and demeanour.â
âRIP Harambeâ song
In 2016, the biggest meme of the planet was Harambe, the dead gorilla who became an internet sensation. Of course, Musk has to get involved somehow but rather than post memes like everyone else he went ahead and produced an extremely auto-tuned song about the deceased primate.
For some reason, he released this on a Soundcloud called Emo G Records three years after the meme was everywhere as part of an April Fools prank. A year later he dropped another song called âDonât Doubt ur Vibeâ which is perhaps marginally better.
Spreading Covid-19 conspiracies
Perhaps inevitably Elon Musk has begun engaging in conspiracy theories and in 2020, like many tin-foil hate wearers he was very keen to share his thoughts on the coronavirus pandemic.
On 13th November 2020, he began suggesting that not everything was quite right about Covid testing. As he managed to get different results from four tests on the same day.
Musk was widely condemned for the tweet but that was far from the only misinformation he spread about the disease.
Mocking pronouns
Another moment that shone Musk in a less than favourable light last year was when he decided to mock pronouns for no reason whatsoever other than not liking them.
Initially, this was seen as an attack on trans people but Musk did clarify his position as being pro-trans but anti-pronouns, which were not sure really helps anyone.
Inventing tunnels
Aside from SpaceX and Tesla, Muskâs other big venture right now is The Boring Company which he believes will be the future of inner-city travel by car. His plan is to essentially build high-speed tunnels under major cities, which is basically what a subway does. He even said so much when launching the project in 2018:
âIf you do hundreds of tunnels and have dozens of small stations woven throughout the fabric of the city, you can actually, without even the city appearing different, you could solve the transport problem. Compared to an above-ground system or compared to a flying car, you donât have to worry about bad weather. You canât see it, hear it, feel it, youâre not dividing communities with lanes, and we think we can make this really fun.â
Surely this wasnât going to be an actual tunnel?
Well, an early example of the project was launched in Las Vegas earlier this month and yes...they would appear to just tunnels with fluorescent lights.
Sending his car into space
We've saved possibly the strangest until last. When SpaceX launched their Falcon Heavy rocket into space in February 2018 musk put a special package aboard...his own car, complete with a dummy in spacesuit listening to David Bowie.
The car is still out there somewhere in the solar system but your guess is as good as ours as to what state it is in now.
Top 100
The Conversation (0)