Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been trying his best to play it cool amid his turbulent transition into running one of the largest social media platforms today. A series of new guidelines, vanishing accounts and childish behavior from the man himself have all contributed to the controversy surrounding this new era of Twitter, and it just doesn’t seem to end.
On Sunday night, Musk made an appearance at Dave Chappelle‘s stand-up show at the Chase Center in San Francisco. Upon joining his fellow provocateur on stage, the crowd erupted into a deafening chorus of “boos,” making it clear exactly where the comedian’s fans draw the line.
During another such unprompted cameo on a separate night, Chappelle even asked his guest to unban Talib Kweli from Twitter. According to Stereogum, the rapper and CEO were standing just feet away from one another, so the latter gave in and agreed. Kweli was banned from the social media site two years ago after “repeated violations of the Twitter rules,” which involved him allegedly harassing a student and activist named Maya Moody. Soon after, he sued the feminist news website Jezebel for “emotional distress” after they published a story titled “Talib Kweli’s Harassment Campaign Shows How Unprotected Black Women Are Online and Off.”
In other news, Musk has remained in character by saying things with the intent of winding people up. Occasionally, he gets defensive and lets his guard down — these are the moments his critics live for. When Twitter user James Yu tweeted that most of the stadium was booing at Musk during Chappelle’s performance, he responded with the following post: “Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter). It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.”
Turns out Twitter can, in fact, be real life. https://t.co/FFpups1yEy pic.twitter.com/41jcZgdDR4
— Steven Goffman (@SteveGoffman) December 12, 2022