Elon Musk’s ‘F*** you’ attitude may be the death of his empire

The Tesla CEO has already driven advertisers away from his social media platform, writes Chris Blackhurst. But it may not be long before they abandon his other ventures, too

Musk may soon discover to his cost that the world’s richest person still needs the little people (AP)

When Elon Musk hosted Saturday Night Live he addressed the elephant in the studio – namely, his personality. “To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars on a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?”

That was in 2021. Here we are, two years later, and Musk, owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, has just gone and told advertisers to “go f*** yourself”. He doesn’t mean any old businesses that will pay to sell their wares either, but some of the world’s biggest, mightiest corporations. 

He’s aiming at the likes of Apple, IBM and Disney, all of which have deserted the social media platform after Musk was accused of posting his support for an antisemitic conspiracy theory. He did say the post was the “worst and dumbest thing I’ve ever done”.