When it comes to wit and charm, Elon Musk just doesn’t measure up

If I was one of the richest men on the entire planet I wouldn’t tweet. I wouldn’t write anything. I’d hire a team of the greatest comedic minds on the planet to write all my public communications to create the false impression that I’m charming and funny. After all, if you can’t present the best version of yourself to an adoring public, what’s the point in even being a billionaire?

What I probably wouldn’t do is what Tesla CEO and perpetually online edgelord Elon Musk did on Twitter this week, when he called out fellow ultra-wealthy reptilian Mark Zuckberg in a series of cringe-inducing tweets, which included calling the Meta owner a “cuck” and challenging him to “a literal d*** measuring contest”.

The tweets come in the wake of Zuckerberg launching his new social media platform Threads, which shares many similarities to Twitter and has attracted users who have become sick of Musk’s increasingly erratic behaviour and destructive mismanagement of the site. Despite only existing for around a week, Threads has already amassed more than 100 million users, making it the fastest-growing app ever.

Musk probably won’t ever make it to Mars, but he’s exploring new frontiers in being embarrassing. One day it’s going to turn out that cringing at a 52-year-old divorcee who won’t stop talking like a teenager on 4chan actually produces a form of renewable clean energy, and then we’re all going to look really stupid.

Musk has more money than God, and despite being the subject of some of the dumbest headlines I’ve ever had to write in my career, as the CEO of multiple Fortune 500 companies he is – in theory – smart. But the way he’s conducted himself over the past few years has meant that the number one thing he’s going to be remembered for when he’s gone isn’t the space stuff or the cars. It’s being a complete charisma vacuum. A black hole of levity and jest. The kind of person you’d only invite to a party if you were trying to set a Guinness world record for vibe-killing.

He’s so painfully, head-scratchingly unfunny, and it’s driving me insane. He has access to an unlimited number of resources and advisers to help him craft the most appealing version of himself, and he’s somehow settled on “stale internet memes created by high schoolers” as his entire personality. Why? Remember when he was “the real-life Tony Stark”, and shows like The Big Bang Theory and The Good Place would use his name as shorthand for extremely cool and sexy inventor? What happened?

I can’t say for sure, but based on the cultural references he makes and his increasingly unhinged Twitter takes, I’m pretty sure that he’s just too online. At some point in the distant past, he stumbled on 4chan or KiwiFarms or some other unmoderated edgy cesspit, and he got stuck there like Artax in the Swamp of Sadness. The use of the word “cuck” in his anti-Zuckerberg tirade was particularly telling – that was a very popular insult among far right internet users about seven years ago, which is right in line with Musk’s tendency to be a) extremely problematic and b) severely out of touch with current trends.

It’s a scary thought, because it means that not even our (supposedly) best and brightest are immune to being lured in by the siren song of crap, recycled internet jokes. Politics aside, memes are such a boring, obnoxious form of humour. They’re fine for a kid who doesn’t know any better since they’re the comedy equivalent of jingling your car keys in a baby’s face to make them laugh, but you should really have grown out of them by the time your first armpit hairs start to come in.

The fact that an adult – and not just any adult, but an adult with a net worth in the 12-figure range – could be that devastatingly basic is the stuff of nightmares. I don’t want to sound like half of the people Elon follows on Twitter, but things like this really do make it feel like we’re living through the collapse of civilisation. It won’t be long until we have a prime minister who knows what the Skibidi Toilet meme is, and frankly I find that thought terrifying (do not google the Skibidi Toilet meme).

Our celebrities used to be cool. They used to be funny. And if they weren’t cool or funny, they at least had the good sense to pay a PR team to project the illusion that they were cool and funny. The internet has taken that away from us. Now celebrities and captains of industry are free to show us who they really are, and all we can do is sit there in slack-jawed horror as the myth of a meritocracy crumbles before our eyes. That’s right, these are the guys with all the money. They make more in a week than you will in your entire lives, and they’re out here posting Anchorman gifs and quoting Step Brothers.

Maybe it’s wrong to pine for the days when the one per cent would deceive us even more than they do now, but I don’t care. Give me the artifice. Lie to me. I don’t care if Bill Gates is putting microchips in the Covid-19 vaccine – you’d never catch him using the cry-laugh emoji on Twitter, and that’s why he’s the only good billionaire. I want my social betters to feel like ethereal beings of pure light, not greasy teens with too much time on their hands.

Maybe Elon should think twice before challenging anybody to that kind of contest. He’s made it very clear that he just doesn’t measure up.