Elon Musk chose a suspiciously convenient time to start a puzzling beef with Wikipedia, using his social media website to shift focus away from his car company’s disappointing financial performance
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Elon Musk, the head of Tesla and X, formerly Twitter, is up to his old tricks again, picking a strange public fight with Wikipedia in the wake of a difficult week. The executive has offered the online encyclopedia $1 billion to change its name to “Dickipedia.”
The offer appears to have been prompted by Musk’s exasperation with the website’s call for donations, about which he tweeted on Sunday, October 22. At 10:30 a.m., he asked why the website needs so much money, claiming that all of the site’s text can fit on the average smartphone.
Readers used the community notes function on X to point out that the very public fact that the company has significant costs. In addition, Wikipedia also pays for engineering improvements, legal support, training, administration, and more.
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Read: Tesla Q3 Earnings Are Not The Disaster Some Predicted, But Still A Concern
About 15 minutes after sending the tweet asking why Wikipedia needs money, Musk said he would
give them “a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia.” While the message reads as an intentional joke, the last time he offered billions to a website, he was forced to go through the transaction.
While all of this might make Musk appear somewhat unserious, it could actually work in his favor. This barrage of attention-grabbing posts comes on the heels of, and might serve as a distraction from, a week of unfavorable news for the CEO.
His other company, Tesla, whose stocks have made him the richest man on earth and allowed him to buy Twitter, had a difficult earnings call last week. While the company’s performance caused its share prices to slide, Musk was accused of acting like “a little baby” during the call, which was described as “terrible,” by an investor who spoke to Yahoo.
The CEO also admitted that Tesla is facing big issues with an upcoming vehicle. Musk said that the company “dug [its] own grave with the Cybertruck,” and that it faces “enormous challenges” in ramping up production for the long delayed project.
Musk is also embroiled in a number of legal cases over the purchase of Twitter shares in 2022, and the perks he received from Tesla.
While the accusations of corporate corruption, in addition to Musk’s confusion over the basic operation of a major website, might lead some to question his aptitude for running another major site (among other companies), the constant flurry of minor controversies may work to his advantage by shifting focus from serious issues to his childish language.
