Parody Elon Musk Twitter Accounts

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About

Parody Elon Musk Twitter Accounts refer to accounts on Twitter impersonating Elon Musk. Like many prominent online personalities, Musk has attracted satirists, but in the summer of 2018 a trend of people changing their display names, profile avatars, and posting habits to parody him, often by giving him other nationalities, gained particular attention. At the time, Musk appeared to approve of the impersonations. Following Musk's purchase of Twitter in the summer of 2022, a series of parody accounts impersonating and mocking the new CEO generated further viral posts.

Origin

On June 15th, 2018, Twitter user @alexqarbuckle began posting as "Italian Elon Musk," spoofing Musk by posting as him with an Italian accent^[1] (examples shown below).

Spread

On June 17th, Twitter un-verified @alexqarbuckle's account. A month later, Twitter began automatically locking accounts with "Elon Musk" in the display name, allegedly in an effort to stop scammers who used Musk's profile and name to bait people into sending cryptocurrency.^[2] Musk, aware of this phenomenon, said the creator of the bots had "mad skillz" (shown below).

Once news of the automatic locks spread, multiple accounts started doing a similar parody as "Italian Elon Musk" but with different nationalities. The most popular of these was French Élon Musk, which launched on July 27th, 2018 and gained over 61,000 followers in a week (shown below, left). Other parodies include Irish Elon Musk , Bored Elon Musk, and South African Elon Musk, which tweets popular tweets from the other accounts without the accent (shown below, right).

The phenomenon was covered by Select All,^[3] Fortune,^[4] Junkee,^[5] and others. Daily Dot^[6] reported on Twitter users reacting to the auto-lock policy, saying that they would auto-lock accounts with "Elon Musk" in the display name but not Nazi buzzwords illustrated their priorities.

2022 Elon Musk Parody Accounts

In November 2022, following Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and announcement of various changes to the platform, accounts parodying the CEO sprung up in droves early that month. For example, one by Twitter user @ChrisWarcraft using Musk's name and profile picture tweeted about drinking urine on November 4th and earned over 100,000 likes before getting suspended (shown below).^[7]

On November 5th, another account under the username @JephJacques tweeted about a variety of topics including Musk's relationship with Grimes and the meme that he could end world hunger if he wished to, earning hundreds of likes on each tweet before also being suspended (seen below).^[8]

In a November 6th, 2022 post, Musk then decreed that all Twitter accounts impersonating somebody without explicitly labeling themselves "parody" accounts would be permanently suspended, purportedly in response to the accounts parodying himself (shown below).^[10]

Established comedian Kathy Griffin then changed her account to impersonate Musk and was banned from the platform shortly after (see below), leading to much backlash from posters as a viral debate ensued over the bans.^[9]

Ethan Klein of h3h3productions also changed his account in early November to a parody of Musk, which he labeled as such in both a banner image and in replies to tweets posted while "Elon Musk" was his username (seen below left). The @h3h3productions tweets focused on mocking Musk for his personality, attempts at humor and connections to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell (seen below right).^[11]

Following the suspensions of the Elon Musk parody accounts, particularly the high-profile h3h3 and Kathy Griffin suspensions, some users on Twitter questioned Musk's previous statements about his commitment to free speech. They argued that the new CEO, unable to take a joke at his expense, had lashed out unjustly at the people around him. Musk, defending himself, doubled down on his $8 verification scheme but did not address the backlash or reiterate that protecting free speech includes protecting speech that makes fun of Musk.

Posters in the reply to Musk's tweet decreeing the suspension of parody accounts then posted memes referencing Musk's perceived evolution of the comedy issue, from declaring that "Comedy is legal" earlier in 2022 to banning comedians on the platform he owns. For example, Twitter user @holyrobit posted a Putting On Clown Make Up meme (seen below) on Musk's views on comedy, earning almost 500 likes in a few hours on November 7th, 2022.^[12]

On November 7th @JimMFelton (seen below, top) took the opportunity to point out that verification, the Twitter blue checkmark feature which Musk planned to reform and charge $8 for, existed exactly to prevent parody accounts and misinformation and Musk was discovering what it was for. He earned over 12,000 likes in a few hours.^[13] @westtexastwit posted a meme mocking Musk's commitment to free speech on the same day, earning just under 4,000 likes in a few hours.^[14]