2024 Shitheel Of The Year: Elon Musk
That was an easy choice!
How do we count the shitheel-ness of Elon Musk, the skipping dipshit of outer space? There are oh so many ways! How about a Buzzfeed-style list of the 75 most despicable and/or annoying things about the guy that led him to this Wonkette honor? After all, he’s no shitheel-come-lately. He’s been an asshole for a long, long time!
Musk has never invented anything, or designed anything. Not electric cars or the Tesla, not rocket ships, nor Twitter, nor brain implants. He has built his fortunes on securing funding and investing in other people’s work, with billions in help from US government subsidies.
Took credit for naming his car company “Tesla,” tweeting “we named Tesla after Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest engineers ever.” But the car already had its name before he invested in the company, and was named by the company’s founder, Martin Eberhard, who sued Musk for calling himself the “founder” when he was actually an “investor.”
Claims to be self-made, but his father Errol says he subsidized his son’s move to the US and pocket money in college with the proceeds of a Zambian emerald mine.
He’s allegedly an illegal immigrant, who came from Canada on an F1 student visa, but violated the terms by not attending school.
Re-named Twitter “X,” to be edgy.
Pledged $6 billion (2 percent of his net worth at the time) to anyone who could end world hunger. When the United Nations World Food Program took him up on it and issued a report on how they would do it, he was like, never mind, then donated to his own foundation instead (see #35).
Tweeted “actual truth” in comment to a post that accused Jewish communities of pushing “hatred against whites.”
He was a crap husband to his first wife and mother of his first five kids, Justine, allegedly manipulating her into a postnuptial agreement, treating her like an employee during the marriage, urging her to go increasingly blonde, then dragged their divorce through the courts for years. Justine also said that he lied about holding their son Nevada when he died.
He’s reportedly a neglectful father to all of his 12 children, and was especially hateful to his trans daughter Vivian, who he says was “killed” by the “woke mind virus; she says he was a “cruel,” “cold,” “narcissistic” and “uncaring” father.
Claimed he moved X headquarters to Texas out of anger over transgender youth privacy laws. Considers “cis” a slur, had the term banned from Twitter.
Tweeted that his pronouns were “Prosecute/Fauci.”
Offered up a mini-submarine for cave rescue in Thailand. When Vernon Unsworth, a British recreational caver, criticized the submarine as a PR effort with no chance of success, Musk called Unsworth a “pedo.” Unsworth sued Musk, and Musk was found not liable, because he claimed “pedo guy” was a common South African insult.
Named his child X AE A-XII. Other unfortunate names of his kids: Exa Dark Sideræl, Techno Mechanicus.
Carries X AE A-XII around with him and calls him an “emotional support human.” When X was two years old, his mother Claire “Grimes” Boucher, said Elon was “seeing him as a protégé.” Seems kinda unhealthy!
In spite of dragging him around, is not terribly responsible as a parent to X as well, taking him to adult parties, forcing him to watch his rocket launches (according to Grimes, watching his dad’s Starship rocket explode had given X “like, a three-day PTSD meltdown”), and dragging him along and bouncing him on his knee to meet puzzled Turkish authoritarian prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson wrote that he witnessed [X] at 10 p.m. climbing on a moving spotlight during a solar-roof construction.”
In spite of being the world’s richest man, according to then-girlfriend Grimes, he made her sleep on a mattress with a hole in it, and eat “peanut butter for eight days in a row.”
Had two test-tube babies with Shivon Zillis, an executive at his brain-messing enterprise, while at the same time expecting a child with Grimes.
Apparently refused to let Grimes see their children; she tweeted “Tell Shivon to unblock me and tell Elon to let me see my son or plz respond to my lawyer. I have never even been allowed to see a photo of these children until this moment, despite the situation utterly ripping my family apart.”
Got sued by the SEC for making false and misleading statements about taking Tesla private. Musk settled the fraud charges with the SEC in 2018, agreeing to pay a $20 million fine and stepping down as Tesla's chairman.
Neuralink employees have complained that pressure from Musk to accelerate development at his brain-messing lab has led to botched experiments and unnecessary, gruesome animal deaths, leading to a probe from the USDA.
The SEC is now investigating Neuralink also, says Musk. Possibly because he tweeted, “No monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant,” which the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine says is very not true.
Tesla’s autopilot system has been responsible for hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths, including people who were trapped in the car and burned alive.
Wants to get rid of car crash reporting, probably because his cars keep crashing. And he’d love it if the government couldn’t investigate and regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems, too!
The Cybertruck looks like a dumpster, or one of those maxi-pad trashcans.
The Cybertruck is such a POS that some insurance companies refuse to cover it as a private passenger automobile, citing the expense of replacement parts.
Some of the issues with the Cybertruck: locking drivers out of their cars, the trim falling off, the enclosed mud flaps encouraging plant life to grow, the battery range not as promised, trunk closing in fingers and accelerator pedals getting stuck, YIKES. The Cybertruck had six recalls in 2024.
Bought Twitter in part because his former wife, raw-milk-drinker Talulah Riley, pleaded with him to “stop woke-ism.”
Instituted a monthly fee for check marks on Twitter, making the check mark somewhere between meaningless and a badge of shame.
Made Twitter the fastest false-information proliferation machine in human history by gutting the company's Trust and Safety Team and removing visibility filters on government-propaganda accounts from hostile governments like Russia, China and Iran, and slapping “government-run media” filters on NPR, PBS, and the BBC. When NPR asked Musk about this, he replied with a poop emoji. Said a former Twitter executive, “We talked to experts and researchers. And now, these decisions get made because Elon Musk sees a tweet from Catturd and decides that's what Twitter is going to be like.”
Musk sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Media Matters for pointing out that extremist content has proliferated on X, and blaming them for advertisers fleeing his hellsite. His suit against the CCDH was thrown out, but the Media Matters lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in April.
Changed Twitter terms of service so that lawsuits have to go to his favorite court, the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas, even though his company is not headquartered in that district.
Takes copious amounts of Ketamine.
Mass layoffs at Tesla and Twitter, including 80 percent of Twitter’s workforce, singling out employees who criticized him. Replaced laid-off workers with foreign workers with H-1B visas.
Is being investigated by the National Labor Relations Board for violating labor laws at SpaceX, and the UAW has asked for an investigation after he and Trump haw-hawed together about firing striking employees.
Started the Musk Foundation non-profit as a tax dodge. Reporting by The New York Times found that in 2022, the Musk Foundation gave away $230 million less than the minimum required by law to maintain tax-deductible status, and that in 2021 and 2022 over half the foundation's funds went to causes connected to Musk, his family, or his businesses.
Repeats Replacement Theory-type conspiracies about immigrants.
Borrowed at least $1.4 billion from banks controlled by the Chinese government to help build Tesla’s Shanghai factory, which was responsible for more than half of Tesla’s global deliveries in the third quarter of 2024.
He sure ♥️ s that Chinese government! He’s said that it was “inevitable” that Taiwan would become a part of China, suggested Taiwan should be a “special administrative zone,” has made Starlink unavailable in Taiwan, and has reportedly asked SpaceX suppliers to move out of Taiwan.
Founded his own music label, Emo G Records, to release two tracks by himself, “Don’t Doubt ur Vibe,” and “RIP Harambe.” They are terrible.
Banned the account ElonJet from Twitter, because it was posting publicly available information about his jet’s travels, banned the accounts of journalists who posted stories about him banning the account, and claimed he was going to take legal action against the college student that ran it.
Is an accelerationist who drools at the possibility of American economic collapse.
He’s endorsed the neo-Nazi AfD party in Germany.
He’s compared Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.
Called Texas mall shooter Mauricio Garcia a “psyop.”
Disgustingly reposted a story that the attack on Paul Pelosi happened because Pelosi was drunk at the time of the assault and “in a dispute with a male prostitute.”
Has maintained that companies should not receive subsidies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Tesla has received billions in government subsidies, including $9 billion in zero-emissions credits.
Bitches about having to pay taxes (“Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you”) in spite of Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink being propped up by billions in government subsidies. Also ProPublica found that with the use of various deductions he pays taxes at a rate of about 3.27 percent.
Has argued that stock short-selling should be illegal, then encouraged the GameStop short squeeze. (“Gamestonk!”)
In 2022 pledged to not sell Tesla shares, went on to sell $23 billion in Tesla shares that year, causing the stock to drop 61 percent.
Had regular phone calls with Putin for two years.
Donated Starlink units to Ukraine, then demanded that the Pentagon pay $400 million for the service.
Hampered a Ukrainian attack on Russian-held Crimea by shutting off Starlink services.
Has called artificial intelligence the greatest existential threat to humanity, then invested in developing artificial intelligence.
SpaceX has repeatedly been fined for dumping polluted water in Texas from its Starbase launch facility.
SpaceX was fined repeatedly by the FAA for unlicensed rocket launches.
SpaceX launches have hurled chunks of concrete into a nesting and migration site important to at least 10 endangered species, including ocelot, the aplomado falcon, and Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle.
He endorsed Kanye West’s 2020 political campaign, and in 2024 Ron DeSantis, before joining the Trump train.
In 2011 he said he’d be to Mars in 10 years, why the fuck isn’t he there?
When the studio that owns the rights to “Blade Runner 2049” refused to let him use their images, he allegedly just made his own in AI.
Tiny tummy shirts, skinny jeans.
Has been reportedly offering his sperm to people at dinner parties, and RFK Jr.’s former running mate.
Creepily offered to “give” Taylor Swift a child.
Claimed to have built robots that can “do anything you want,” neglected to mention that his Optimus robots were actually remotely operated by humans.
After Trump was shot at, Musk Xitted “no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.”
Hampered Hurricane Helene relief work by posting that “FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own” and “FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.”
The stupid Department of Government Efficiency Department that Trump gave to him, Vivek Ramaswamy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Stephen Miller’s wife to “run,” which is not a department of the government.
Spent at least $277 million to get Trump and Republicans elected, not counting about $24 million of free advertising he gave Trump on Twitter.
Ran a fake lottery to register voters.
Claimed homelessness was not real. “It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.”
He derailed a recent 2024 continuing resolution to fund the government by posting more than 100 tweets against the bill, full of lies about its content, such as that it included a 40 percent raise to Congress, funded an NFL stadium, funded mask and vaccine mandates, and funded “bioweapons labs.”
When the continuing resolution was passed, it magically pulled all funding from the Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit that tracks disinformation campaigns from foreign adversaries like Russia and China, which Musk has a particular hatred for (gee, wonder why?). The State Department now has no dedicated office for tracking and countering disinformation.
The continuing resolution also scrapped notification and limits to American investments in China, which helps his investments there.
Told Americans they’re too stupid and lazy to work for him.
Finds it “concerning” that MacKenzie Bezos donates to charity.
Has been known to use fake accounts to praise himself on Twitter.
What did we forget? Oh yeah, he was such a dick he made Chloe Fineman cry. Has moved into a Mar-a-Lago bungalow. Oop, he just changed his “X” handle to “Kekius Maximus” and changed his pic to an AI Pepe frog. He’s shitheeling at the rate of double cringes a day, and maximizing the output of his douchebaggery! Shitheel of the year, shitheel of the decade, and now more powerful than ever, with exponentially multiplying loser-shitheel energy.
[Autopia archive link/ Vox/ Investopedia/ San Francisco Chronicle archive link/ The Verge/ Futurism/ Truthout/ Washington Post archive link /BBC / Marie Claire/ Vanity Fair/ New York Magazine archive link/ Rolling Stone archive link/ Wired/ New York Times archive link/ People Magazine ]
Happy New Year from NYC!
And with that, I've officially seen one hundred films given general releases in cinemas or streaming in the United States in the year 2024.