“Go fuck yourself.”
Thus spoke Elon Musk during a conversation with Dealbook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday. Amidst a wide-ranging conversation with the New York Times sponsored event, the increasingly unhinged Tesla CEO said that he wouldn’t be “blackmailed” by advertisers who—in response to his recent, controversial comments—might want to pull their money from his flailing social media platform, X.
Elon Musk just told advertisers who have pulled out of Twitter to go fuck themselves. This is going great.
— Read Let This Radicalize You (@JoshuaPHilll) November 29, 2023
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Instead, Musk said that advertisers who were concerned about his more colourful ideations (including, specifically, Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger) should consider fucking off instead.
Sporting, for some reason, a leather jacket that looked like it was culled from some sort of 1980s action movie, Musk proceeded to go off after Sorkin questioned him about how his recent comments might be hurting his business.
MUSK: “I hope they stop.”
SORKIN: “You what?”
MUSK: “Don’t advertise.”
SORKIN: “You don’t want them to advertise?”
MUSK: “If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go fuck yourself.”
SORKIN: “But—”
MUSK: “Go…fuck…yourself.”
I’d say I was shocked but, to be honest, Musk’s comments are very, very on-brand for him. In recent weeks, the unrepentant billionaire’s mouth has caused X (formerly Twitter) a good deal of trouble. In addition to a tweet that kicked off widespread accusations of antisemitism, he also, just yesterday, decided to tweet about pizzagate, which raised more than a few eyebrows. Advertisers have, in the case of the “Jewish” episode, responded by pulling their ads from the platform, thus costing the struggling site important financing.
But, as ever, Musk clearly isn’t interested in a mea culpa (or, apparently, in salvaging the wounded cash flows of his company). Instead, he wants to stick to his guns—even if it tanks X as a result.