In a late Friday night post, Elon Musk opened a new front in his trolling wars against his critics when he tweeted an apparently self-created meme comparing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and the new "pregnant man" emoji along with some...original commentary.
in case u need to lose a boner fast pic.twitter.com/fcHiaXKCJi
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2022
Oof. It's difficult to unsee a bit of similarity.
Musk followed up his tweet with a subsequent post poking fun at Twitter's censors who are frequently accused of shadow banning users for comments that don't technically break its rules but are problematic to the liberal narrative.
shadow ban council reviewing tweet … pic.twitter.com/cawjtwc7CW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2022
The self-awareness is part of what makes Musk's Twitter trolling so entertaining. He knows exactly what he's doing, does it anyway, and then has a chuckle about it.
The tweets from Musk come after Bill Gates apparently tried to get his fellow billionaire involved in giving money to fight climate change, according to a text message thread that Musk confirmed as authentic. The conversation included Gates telling Musk that he "would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities" and Musk quipping back with a question about whether Gates still had a "half billion dollar short position against Tesla."
"Sorry to say I haven't closed it out," Gates replied to Musk's question about the stock position. A bit awkward.
"Sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change," Musk texted back of his work to make electric vehicles actually palatable — as opposed to the previous Toyota Prius-type cars — and in-demand.
So apparently Bill Gates hit up @elonmusk to discuss “philanthropy on climate change” but Elon asked if he still had a half billion dollar short position on $TSLA.
— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) April 22, 2022
Bill said he hasn’t closed it out, so Elon told him to get lost. No idea if this is true lol pic.twitter.com/iuHkDG3bAd
When asked if the screenshots were real, Musk confirmed them but said he wasn't the source of the leak.
Yeah, but I didn’t leak it to NYT. They must have got it through friends of friends.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2022
I heard from multiple people at TED that Gates still had half billion short against Tesla, which is why I asked him, so it’s not exactly top secret.
Elon Musk continues to move ahead with plans for his hostile takeover of Twitter, though the social media company's board adopted a poison pill in attempts to dissuade Musk. Clearly, though, those working against Musk are not causing him to lose his sense of humor or love for trolling folks on Twitter.