Elon Musk explains why he posts so many ‘complex’ memes, and how he gets them from ‘dealers’

Elon Musk has said that he has said that he has “some pretty kickass meme dealers” and that he “started [going] crazy on Twitter”.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO made the comments in a Q&A on the invite-only voice-chatting app Clubhouse.

“A picture says 1000 words, and maybe a meme says 10,000 words”, Mr Musk said. “It’s a complex picture with a whole bunch of meaning in it.

“It [aspires to be] funny, I don’t know, I love memes. I think they can be very insightful. Throughout history I think the symbolism has positively affected people.”

Mr Musk has posted numerous memes to his Twitter account, which has 44.7M followers at time of writing.  

“I don’t really follow memes. I make some of them. Some of them are sent to me. I have some pretty kickass meme dealers. My friend Mike is a good meme dealer. I am the lucky recipient of very interesting memes.”

The “meme dealers” Mr Musk refers to are people who use various political platforms and professionally repost others’ content, Idil Galip, a meme researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, told The Independent.

“While Elon Musk’s meme-fluency is a consequence of his proximity to digital culture, it is also dependent on these meme curators”, Galip also said.

“By signaling that he’s meme savvy, he also shows that he is part of the zeitgeist. I think his meme-fluency is definitely one of the biggest reasons why he’s so well loved in certain online communities.”

Mr Musk has posted numerous memes on a variety of subjects which, with his reach, can have vast effects.  

“A picture says 1000 words and maybe a meme says 10,000 words, it’s a complex picture with a whole bunch of meaning in it”, he said in the chat.

“There’s a little bit of truth to it, in that – what influences the zeitgeist? How do things become interesting to people. Memes are a complex form of communication.”

Last month, Mr Musk tweeted a ‘Domino Effect’ meme to tie the inception of Facebook to the insurrectionists that stormed Capitol Hill on 6 July, an apparent reference to the accusation that social media sites did not do enough to curtail the organisation of the rioters. 

However, Mr Musk has also been criticised for posting content that many have seen as transphobic. The CEO had previously tweeted “Pronouns suck” in July 2020, which prompted criticism from the musician, and Mr Musk’s girlfriend, Grimes.  

In a now-deleted message, Grimes told Mr Musk: “I love you but please turn off ur [sic] phone or give me a [c]all. I cannot support hate. Please stop this. I know this isn’t your heart.” 

Mr Musk posted similar content in December 2020, posting a meme of a British Redcoat during the American Revolutionary War, rubbing blood-covered hands on his face. The tweet was captioned: “When you put he/him in ur [sic] bio.” 

The CEO has “a huge following and that comes with a responsibility, whether or not he wants to admit it”, Galip said, positing that Mr Musk “posts things knowing the effect it will have” and that “the real question might be his own politics, rather than the posting itself.”

Reflecting on his history of Twitter, the CEO’s primary platform, Mr Musk said that he was on the social media app “in the very early days when there were less than 10,000 users … so I deleted my Twitter account”, Mr Musk said, but re-joined Twitter so he could “speak directly to people”

“My early tweets are pretty racy”, he added. “Other people think: ‘He’s gone crazy on Twitter’. I’m like: ‘No, I started [going] crazy on Twitter’.”