We were overdue for some inane Elon Musk drama. It’s been a little less than a year since his beef with rapper Azealia Banks, and more than a year since he accused the hero diver who rescued those trapped Thai students of being a pedophile. Twitter demands entertainment! And Musk delivers.
The latest starts with Musk tweeting out some fan art. (Specifically a picture of a character called 2B from the role-playing game Nier Automata.) Musk posted the image without crediting the artist, Meli Megali: “2B,” the now-deleted tweet read in full.
Musk declined to credit the artist and later doubled down in a series of increasingly nonsensical tweets. “Always credit everyone,” read the first. “No one should be credited with anything ever,” the second. And, finally, “I wish people would stop crediting artists on Twitter when any fool can find out who the artist was in seconds. It’s destroying the medium.” All of those tweets have since been deleted. (Kotaku has a good breakdown if you need further detail.)
This happened on Sunday. Early Monday morning, Musk tweeted that he had deleted his Twitter account. Which is odd given that his account still appears active and the tweet is visible. Also, sending said tweet in the first place is a weird thing to do if you’re, you know, deleting your account. In addition to the fan-art debacle, Musk’s so-called deletion announcement comes after the SEC’s Robert Johnson spoke at a conference about the need for more social-media rules for executives like Musk.
Muskbros, before you spam my DMs and my Twitter mentions and my email, please save yourself the time. Instead, perhaps get in touch with Musk with some instructions on how to properly delete a Twitter account.
