What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Elon Musk’s Fake Stories
Online peddlers of misinformation have, for some reason, focused their energy and algorithms on one man this week: Elon Musk. In real life, Musk is the richest man in the world and has been named head of the newly created Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE) during the upcoming Trump administration, so it’s no surprise people are talking about him. But why so many people tell such elaborate lies about this guy remains a mystery.
Below are 25+ lies about Elon Musk.
Elon Musk didn’t buy Ford
This rumor is more than a one-time tweet. The information came via YouTube, where the WealthUp channel posted a nearly 40-minute video describing the Ford-Tesla merger. The video presents numbers and suggests what the merger will mean for the stock market and consumers, just like a real news release. This is also supported by tweets and news reports . But this is all nonsense. The video is completely created by artificial intelligence, is not based on anything and is created to generate traffic. It works, too: it had been viewed 22,000 times at the time of publication.
WealthUp appears to only publish AI-generated videos about Elon Musk, including a story about Elon Musk helping a homeless woman , giving his first class airline seat to ” black seniors “, confronting Oprah Winfrey , Ellen DeGeneres , Robert DeNiro , Jimmy. Kimme l, Michelle Obama and Meghan Markle .
Elon Musk did not reunite the girl lost on the bus with her mother and buy them a house
Videos about Elon Musk’s good deeds are not only on YouTube. On Facebook, an account called Elon Videos actively publishes completely fake videos about St. Elon. This is around the time Musk was riding a public bus (seriously) and noticed a lost little girl with a torn up teddy bear. Musk found her mother and bought them a house. Heartwarming, touching and 100% fake. This heroic act has previously been attributed to Keanu Reeves, Eminem and others, and is partly based on a true story , but it did not become popular until Musk was cast as the hero.
Elon Musk is not going to publish the Epstein files and Diddy files
The version of Elon Musk presented on the SpaceX fan club Facebook page is not spontaneously giving to “black seniors” or anyone else. He’s a vengeful Musk who’s going to release ” Diddy and Epstein’s Client List ” on January 20, block “pride content” on Twitter , and destroy Dreamworks for being too woke . This musk is pure “take revenge on the damn liberals” musk.
Elon Musk is not buying CNN
The rumor that Elon Musk is buying CNN comes from Musk’s own Channel X. Included is a simple community note saying “this is not true” so that’s good. But Argentine President Javier Miley did not appear to have read the memo, as he mentioned the rumor to the Argentine Chamber of Commerce on November 7, and it was also reported by Argentina’s largest newspaper .
Elon Musk didn’t ‘storm a small town’ to help a bullied teenager
This fake video from The Crow’s YouTube channel has been viewed 760,000 times. This provides an origin story for Elon’s fake news business. When Alex, a promising student at Tesla STEM High School, is bullied because of his interest in rockets, Elon shows up at school to tell Alex that he, too, was bullied as a teenager. This inspires Alex to “present his work at the regional science fair”, where he wins first prize, a scholarship for the top engineering student, and an internship at Tesla!
More things Elon Musk didn’t do
Elon Musk didn’t buy McDonalds, ABC or Disney World. Elon Musk didn’t ban Stephen King from X and didn’t develop robots capable of carrying human babies .
So why all this fake news related to Musk?
It’s tempting to think that Musk’s stream of fan fiction is Elon using bots to improve his image among the nation’s chatterboxes (not that the guy is no stranger to spreading misinformation ), but I think it’s more simple than that. The flood of fake news about Elon Musk probably boils down to an engagement. For cultural reasons that are hard to fathom, many of the dumbest people you went to high school with want fake news about Elon Musk to prop up the AI website industry and churn them out.
But they don’t just want stories about Elon Musk. The most popular fake news about Musk isn’t the one where he’s taking revenge on cultural enemies like Jimmy Kimmel; they’re the ones where a billionaire with a heart of gold swoops in to save the day and change the life of a waitress at Waffle House (Musk always eats at Waffle House) or reunite a lost child with his mother. It has over 1.4 million views on YouTube alone . People need a hero, and for reasons that defy logic, they chose damn Elon Musk to play the role.
Even though it all started with Elon Musk riding a public bus (a clear hint that it’s fake), people (or AI agents, anyway) on YouTube seem to be eating it up. Top-voted comments include: “We love our sweet Elon, sir. He is a friend to all children” and “Wow Sir Elon, you are the ANGEL GABRIEL who brought good news to Maddie’s world!! Tax.” Taxes indeed.
Elon Musk: the disturbing Messiah
My favorite part of the fake Musk stories are the ones that seem designed to hide the difference in values between the real Elon Musk and the people who consume the fake media.
Ilona is a tough sell to the “your auntie MAGA Facebook” crowd. No matter what you think of him, he’s a weird guy. He has publicly stated that he is a ” cultural Christian “, but is not sure whether he believes in God. He had 12 children from three different women , and gave them names like Techno Mechanicus. He’s not the middle American family man people want. But that’s okay, because you can just create some AI videos to turn Elon into anything you want. Like this story about Musk visiting a church in Las Vegas (ha!) and witnessing a miracle that made him convert to Christianity. And not “cultural Christianity”; the real thing. At least one of Musk’s children won’t speak to him, and his former partners haven’t been very kind to his interest in raising children. But it’s cool, because here’s a video about how Elon Musk is a great parent and all his many children love him very much .
The Mask virus infects us all
It’s not just right-wing people who are selling Musk: left-wing dummies have their own version of Musk that they can read about. Dark Mask does not help disabled dogs cross the street; he is using his vast network of satellites to rig the 2024 elections . He’s paying for Donald Trump’s extravagant inauguration. He’s fat, too —a burly, James Bond-level supervillain who’s destroying the United States.