Elon Musk makes every effort to distinguish himself from every other executive.
In particular, he sets his own standards for public remarks. The obvious example is his new content-management policy on Twitter, the social network he purchased on Oct. 27 for $44 billion.
The Tesla (TSLA) chief executive has said that one reason he bought the microblogging platform was to remake it into the center of free speech. He describes himself as a free-speech absolutist.
By banning accounts, Musk argues, Twitter 1.0 violated the very principle of free speech. Musk has therefore reactivated most of those banned accounts, including that of former President Donald Trump. He also reinstated accounts that had been suspended for comments against transgender people.
The principle he has set is that any message is acceptable on the platform as long as it does not violate the law of the state or country where it is posted.
Musk Has His Rules. Others Have Theirs.
The problem is that this principle varies according to the moods of the Techno King, his title at Tesla. And this has prompted some prominent people, like Musk's fellow billionaire Mark Cuban, to demand more transparency about what is or is not free speech.
Musk, for example, temporarily shut the accounts of journalists from mainstream media who had criticized him; the account of a student who'd been tracking his jet, and the accounts of comedians and others who'd impersonated him on Twitter.
"In reality, there is only one person that decides and he decides who is naughty or nice." Cuban so criticized Musk on Dec. 6.
These criticisms do not bother Musk, who continues to push the limits of what he can say. The billionaire has just insulted a Twitter user with language that could cost any CEO in the U.S. their job.
Musk Asserts: 'I'm Not Brainwashed'
It all started with a message he posted in which he once again attacked wokeism.
"I’m not brainwashed!!" the tech mogul wrote on Dec. 28, accompanying his message with a drawing showing two characters.
One of the characters tells the other that they have been brainwashed. The second character responds "really?"
This answer is key: The second character seems to be telling the first that they are the one who's been brainwashed since they do everything that social networks, like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter 1.0 and others tell them to do and follow everything that CNN and Google convey.
The same character is also the one who follows Black Lives Matter ideologies, defends LGBTQ+, and gets vaccinated because the media inevitably hammer those messages at them.
A Twitter user then commented:
"Maybe not, but you've got the impulse control of a toddler," the user tweeted at Musk. "I really hope you've got some secret plan, but as it stands now, you paid the most ever to be the biggest internet troll."
The billionaire did not like being compared to a child. And he took badly the user's remark that he paid too much for Twitter, a criticism many analysts have advanced.
"And you have tiny testicles!" Musk replied.
The response prompted a sarcastic comment from Gary Black, one of Tesla's investors.
"Advertisers will be lined up to come back after that response," Black said. Black referred to the advertisers who left the Twitter platform, waiting to see in which direction Musk takes Twitter 2.0.
Black and other prominent Tesla individual investors, like Ross Gerber and Leo KoGuan, have been saying for several weeks now that Musk's acquisition of Twitter is a major reason for Tesla's stock market rout this year.
Since finalizing the Twitter deal, Musk almost on a daily basis has attacked progressives, who make up a good portion of consumers who buy Teslas, according to many analysts.
Through it all this is almost surely not the last time the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX will resort to vulgar language.
Last April he'd used another vulgarism in tweeting at Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft (MSFT).
"In case u need to lose a boner fast," Musk wrote at the time.
In summer 2018, as the world sought to rescue children trapped in a cave in Thailand, Musk called Vernon Unsworth a "pedo guy" on Twitter.
That's because the British diver accused him of "a publicity stunt" by sending a miniature submarine to help extract the Thai schoolboys.
The billionaire then successfully defended himself against a defamation lawsuit Unsworth brought against him in Los Angeles.
