Elon Musk Buys and Deletes refers to a series of mock news stories that state that Tesla-founder Elon Musk has purchased something and eliminated it. The meme rose to prominence after Musk himself shared the image proclaiming that he bought and deleted the video game Fortnite.

The earliest known usage of the meme was posted in the /r/funny subreddit on October 19th, 2018 by Redditor^[1] The-shadowxz. The post, a parody of an article written by MarketWatch writer Mike Murphy, features the headline "Elon Musk buys Fortnite and deletes it." It also contains the fake quote, which is attributed to Musk: "I had to save these kids from eternal virginity." The post received more than 11,000 points (87% upvoted) and 560 comments in less than three weeks (shown below).

That day, Musk tweeted ^[2] the photograph and added the comment, "Had to been done ur welcome." The tweet received more than 400,000 retweets and 1.2 million likes (shown below, left).

Over the next month, people parodied the post by changing what Musk bought and what he did with the item. On October 21st, in the /r/Kanye subreddit Redditor^[3] harrymcg96 posted, "Elon Musk buys Yandhi and releases it." The post received more than 3,500 points in less than one month (shown below, center).

The following day, Redditor^[4] Glenny08 posted a photoshopped version in the /r/HistoryMemes subreddit. The post shows Musk in a Roman helmet and the caption "Elon Musk buys Italy and restores the Roman Empire." The post received more than 34,000 points (89% upvoted) and 245 comments in less than three weeks (shown below, right).