The Mass Humiliation Of Elon Musk

Billionaire Elon Musk appeared on stage with comedian Dave Chappelle in San Francisco on Sunday night, and was savagely booed by the crowd, to the point where the billionaire was subdued into silence.

Chappelle introduced Musk near the end of his set at the Chase Center, asking the crowd to make some “make some noise for the richest man in the world.” The crowd complied, but not in the way that Chappelle expected, erupting in a mixture of cheers and boos, the latter growing louder as Musk awkwardly held the microphone, seemingly unsure of how to handle the situation.

Footage of Musk’s disastrous appearance was soon uploaded onto Twitter, before being mysteriously deleted. Of course, the footage soon reappeared and spread throughout multiple accounts, as word of Musk’s public humiliation spread (you can watch the full footage here).

Musk’s popularity appears to have plummeted ever since he bought Twitter, as the mercurial billionaire made a series of ill-advised tweaks to the social media platform, imposed mass layoffs, inadvertently sparked an advertiser exodus, and regularly lashes out at his critics online, often coming across as thin-skinned and out-of-touch.

Musk’s Twitter posts are often derided and mocked by the site’s userbase, but it was unclear how much public animosity towards the billionaire was reflected in the real world. On stage with Chappelle, Musk faced a rude awakening, catching a glimpse of how unpopular he really is, facing an audience who had paid to see Chappelle (who is now considered a politically incorrect comedian), and would presumably share Musk’s distaste for pronouns.

Chappelle, typically a master of smooth crowd control, desperately attempted to control the situation by cracking a joke or two, hinting that Musk’s haters didn’t have enough money to pay for the best seats, stating:

“It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience … All these people who are booing, and I’m just pointing out the obvious, you have terrible seats.”

Chappelle seemed to win the crowd back, after cracking more jokes about Musk’s ambition to visit Mars, saying: “[Musk’s] whole business model is f**k Earth, I’m leaving anyway. What kind of p*ssy they got up there? That’s what we’ll be doing …. The first comedy club on Mars.”

Chappelle went on to joke that Musk had given him a jetpack last Christmas, hinting that a booing crowd didn’t mean a thing to someone in Musk’s lofty position. But when Musk attempted to speak up, he was instantly drowned in boos, again, at which point even Chappelle lost his composure, and started growing defensive.

A visibly uncomfortable Musk asked Chappelle: “Dave, what should I say?”

Chappelle responded: “Don’t say nothing. It’ll only spoil the moment. Do you hear that sound, Elon? That’s the sound of pending civil unrest. I can’t wait to see what store you decimate next, motherf**ker. You shut the f**k up.”

The hostility toward Musk continued to grow as the billionaire remained on stage; Musk closed his appearance by halfheartedly yelling an old Chappelle catchphrase into the microphone, “I’m rich, b*tch.”

On Monday morning, a humiliated Musk lashed out, writing a post about “the woke mind virus” posing an existential threat, and responded to a Twitter user who suggested that the world is facing societal collapse, writing “exactly.”

For a self-described “free speech absolutist,” and a futurist who has expressed a desire to colonize space, Musk’s horizons certainly seem to have shrunk!

Amusingly, Musk responded to a critic who mentioned him being booed on stage, and attempted to paint his haters as a disgruntled minority, even going so far as to describe them as “unhinged leftists,” seemingly attempting to reframe the personal as political.

Musk’s dismissal of his critics as “leftists” echoes the hysterical rhetoric of right-wing culture warrior Ben Shapiro, who once stormed out of a confrontational interview with journalist Andrew Neil (a well-known conservative in the UK), after accusing Neil of being “on the left.”

Twitter users took delight in mocking Musk’s extremely defensive tweet, comparing him to The Simpson’s Mr. Burns, a billionaire despised by the public whose assistant, Smithers, tries to spare his boss’s dignity by claiming a booing crowd was really chanting “boo-urns.”

The “Mr Burns” comparison proved so apt that “boo-urns” and “The Simpsons” soon began to trend on Twitter.

Musk’s plummeting reputation has started to resemble a parable, illustrating how money can buy anything in the world, except for public approval and popularity.

For Musk, winning the respect of the public seems like an impossibility at this point; colonizing Mars might just be a more attainable goal.