10.That Time He Got Into An Argument About Stealing A Farting Unicorn
Despite being the CEO of two major companies and one of the richest people on the planet, it’s nice to know that Elon Musk has enough free time to argue about a farting unicorn. In 2018, Lisa Prank accused Musk of using his father’s artwork without permission. She claims that she stole a unicorn design from her father, Colorado potter Tom Edwards. One of Edwards’s mugs features a cartoon unicorn collecting its farts to power an electric car. Elon Musk first tweeted about the mug in 2017. A few months later, he used a similar image to illustrate Tesla’s sketchpad software. Later that year, he used it again as a Christmas card design. Edwards never received a penny, so the potter’s daughter reached out to Musk on Twitter. At first, the CEO told Prank that he would “trade it for something else if your dad wants to,” but she said that suing would be “kind of silly.” But the couple resolved their argument a month later. The agreement was never made public but, according to Edwards, it was reached “in a way that everyone feels good about.”
9.That Time He Produced A Motivational Dance Song
In January 2020, Elon Musk released his debut single as an electronic music producer, uploading a song to SoundCloud called Don’t Doubt Ur Vibe. The CEO’s dance tune is a strange mix of European trance music and motivational mantras. “Don’t doubt your vibe because it’s true,” he repeats against a backdrop of rising synths. “Don’t doubt your vibe because it’s you.” But the oddities of audio don’t stop there. If you listen past the end of Musk’s track, the SoundCloud algorithm starts playing a rap song about erectile dysfunction. For some reason, the entrepreneur’s uplifting electronics has been linked to an almndjoy song about the struggle to lift it up. Don’t Doubt Ur Vibe isn’t Musk’s first foray into music. In 2019, he released a trap song about the Harambe gorilla shooting. The ape was killed by zookeepers after a young child climbed into his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo.
8.That Time He Started A Fight Over Tequila
Alcohol has a habit of making people violent, but few people fight alcohol itself. Nonetheless, Elon Musk has declared war on tequila, tweeting: “We will fight great tequila!” Why did the South African billionaire start a fight with an alcoholic drink? In 2018, Musk tried to register his own brand of tequila: Teslaquila. The concept behind Teslaquila started as an April Fool joke. But when he tried to create the real drink, the Tequila Regulatory Council stepped in and asked him to change the name. The word tequila has a strict definition. Only drinks made with blue agave in specific areas of Mexico can be called tequila. Eventually, Musk was forced to change the name to Tesla Tequila, but managed to make his fictional drink a reality. The forty percent strength drink comes in a lightning bolt bottle and retails for $ 250.
7.That Time His Tweets Inspired Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories
Elon Musk’s social media posts are fueling new coronavirus conspiracy theories, and anti-lockdown activists praise the CEO for “being a thorn in the side of the narrative.” In November 2020, Musk tweeted that he had performed four antigen tests in one day. Two were positive, he told his followers, and the other two were negative. “Something extremely false is happening,” he wrote. He then compared covid-19 to the flu and blamed false positive tests for the high number of cases in the U.S. Skeptics were quick to applaud the billionaire for speaking out against a lockdown that one described as “ inhuman beyond all possible reason. ” Musk had previously called the lockdown “fascist” and ordered Tesla staff to work at the height of the pandemic. He said that the coronavirus would end at the end of April 2020. Clearly, Musk was wrong about that.
6.That Time He Accused A Diver Of Being A Paedophile
British diver Vernon Unsworth had just rescued thirteen people from a flooded cave when Elon Musk called him a pedophile. In the summer of 2018, he helped save a young soccer team and their coach from the Tham Luang Caves in northern Thailand. The group had set out to explore Tham Luang, but were trapped after heavy rains caused the caves to flood. Musk offered to provide a submarine to help with the team’s rescue. But Unsworth dismissed it as a publicity stunt, explaining that his underwater vehicle “had no chance of working.” This infuriated the billionaire. Shortly after the heroic rescue mission, Elon Musk called Unsworth a “fart boy” in a sudden outburst on Twitter. Musk did not provide evidence to support his accusation. Unsworth took the South African to court and sued for $ 190 million in damages. In December 2019, the jury found Musk not guilty of defamation.
5.That Time He Claimed A Monkey Could Play Video Games With Its Mind
A monkey who can play video games with his mind. It sounds like something out of a fake version of Black Mirror. But Elon Musk claims to have created the technology for mind-controlled primate video games. He told interviewers that his company Neuralink implanted a small chip in a monkey’s skull and then connected it to his brain. The tech-savvy entrepreneur says he wants to find a way for primates to play Pong with each other using their minds. “That,” he said, “would be great.” Neuralink specializes in brain implant technology. Elon Musk founded the company to create a computer chip for the human brain. He claims that the device will help people merge with artificial intelligence. It could cause a person to become telepathic, the CEO explained, or allow his consciousness to survive after his body has died.
4.That Time He Gave His Baby A Ridiculous Name
By now, we should all be used to celebrities giving their kids silly names. Let’s not forget that Jay-Z and Beyonce have a young daughter named Blue Ivy. Or that Gwyneth Paltrow named her eldest Apple. But perhaps the strangest baby name of all belongs to the son of Elon Musk and Grimes: X Æ A-Xii. The couple created the offbeat name by fusing their mutual love of mystery, artificial intelligence, and the CIA planes of the 1960s. According to Musk’s partner, Canadian musician Claire Boucher, the “X” in the name of your baby represents the unknown variable. The “Æ”, she tweeted, is the elven form of the word love and artificial intelligence. As for “A-Xii”, it refers to the Lockheed A-12 OXCART, a reconnaissance vehicle used by the CIA. “No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but not violent, ”explained Boucher. The “A” is also said to be short for Archangel, a bass-heavy dance floor from south London dubstep producer Burial.
3.That Time He Claimed To Have Created A Bionic Pig
We’ve already heard of Elon Musk’s bionic gamer monkey. But Neuralink claims to be altering more than just monkey brains. In August 2020, Musk unveiled Gertrude, a sow who says she has a working computer chip in her brain.In an online demonstration, Gertrude poked some straw with her snout, causing it to light up. a graph of your brain activity. Musk claimed that his Neuralink chip was transmitting impulses from Gertrude’s brain to a computer. “It’s like a Fitbit in your skull with little wires,” he explained. Not everyone was convinced. “Neuralink is a neuroscience theater,” proclaimed a journalist. Another called it an elaborate publicity stunt, writing that the billionaire “needs care in the same way that mortals need oxygen.”
2.That Time He Got Into A Surreal Rivalry With Azealia Banks
Disputes between celebrities are pretty rare at best. But when a musician camped out at an entrepreneur’s house demanding to record a song with his partner, something truly strange happened: In 2018, Elon Musk and Grimes found themselves caught in an absurd feud with New York rapper Azealia Banks. It all started when Banks was supposed to collaborate with Musk’s partner Grimes for her second album. She flew to Los Angeles to stay at the couple’s house while she and Grimes did their run together. There was only one problem: Grimes never showed up. Bank sat in Musk’s house for days on end, posting increasingly bizarre messages on social media. . Banks accused the businessman of asking her out for a threesome, tweeting while she drank acid, and if that wasn’t weird enough, being a humanoid mutant caveman. Musk denied meeting her. People began to speculate if Grimes had invited the rapper or if she had just shown up at her house. Their rivalry faded after that summer, though it flares up from time to time for the strangest reasons. Banks has enough problems of his own right now. In January 2020, the rapper went viral on Instagram after recording herself digging up her dead cat and cooking her corpse.
1.That Time He Possibly Committed Security Fraud For A Laugh
You know a joke has gone too far when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) takes you to court for it. In August 2018, Musk announced that he was thinking of turning Tesla into a private company. The CEO and his partner are regular marijuana smokers. So, for a laugh, he set the stock price at $ 420. As soon as his tweet came out, the electric car company’s stock soared. But the SEC said they had not discussed any of this with the South African businessman and sued him for fraud. Musk said he calculated the share price himself at $ 419. But the CEO had recently learned about the connotations of the number 420 in drug culture. So he decided to round up the price to impress his partner. This Musk later admitted, “It’s not a good reason to pick a price.”
