12 of Elon Musk’s most bizarre and controversial moments

For nearly 20 years now, Elon Musk has been at the forefront of technology and engineering.

After making his fortune with PayPal, Musk’s SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company and Neuralink have all produced incredible advancements in energy, health and travel both here on Earth and in space.

The 49-year-old South African entrepreneur is undoubtedly one of the most influential people on the planet and a potential genius however many people probably won’t know him for his accomplishments in engineering.

Despite all the praise that should be showered up Musk, he has instead become something of a divisive figure who on the surface is more interested in memes and s**t posting on Twitter than actual science.

‘Troll,’’Edge Lord,’ ‘Prankster’ are all words that have undoubtedly been thrown at Musk in recent years and many wouldn’t argue that he doesn't deserve it despite the honours and accomplishments he has achieved in his line of work.

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So, after his appearance on Saturday Night Live, we’re looking back at Musk’s weirdest and most controversial moments – because you often cant’ celebrate the good in someone without being reminded of the bad too.

Calling Tesla cars S.3.X.

An early indication that Musk was all about the lols was him naming Tesla cars after sex jokes like he was a cast member of The Inbetweeners.

In 2017 Tesla announced that the three cars in their Model 3 series were going to be called Model S, Model E and Model X. However, Ford threatened to sue over the Model E name so that was changed to Model 3

Anyway, what happens when you rearrange those letters? Yep ‘S.3.X’. Tesla didn’t even try to hide it when promoting the cars.

If you thought that was cringe wait until you learn that his SpaceX rocket ‘BFR’ stands for ‘Big F**king Rocket.’

Smoking weed on the Joe Rogan Podcast

Musk loves a good meme but how about when he became an actual meme following an appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast, one of the most-watched podcasts on the planet in 2018. During his appearance on the show, Musk took a puff on a joint from Rogan, who is a marijuana enthusiast.

However, Musk didn’t seem to really know what he was doing when smoking the bifta and didn’t inhale any of the smoke or get any effects from it. However, his reaction was priceless and will live on in internet infamy in gif form.

via GIPHY

Musk later revealed on 60 Minutes that he really didn’t know what he was doing with the joint. He told Lesley Stahl: “I am somewhat impulsive. I don’t really want to try to adhere to some CEO template. I do not smoke pot. As anyone who watched that podcast can tell I have no idea how to smoke pot, or anything.”

Other highlights of the podcast included him claiming that he was an alien as he has ‘boundless energy.’

During the SNL gig, Musk referred to the incident, “A lot of times, people are reduced to the dumbest thing they ever did. Like one time I smoked weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast,” he said.

“And now all the time I hear ‘Elon Musk, all he ever does is smoke weed on podcasts’. Like I go from podcast to podcast, lighting up joints. It happened once, it’s like reducing OJ Simpson to murderer.”

His Iron Man 2 cameo

The MCU has given us many memorable characters from Tony Stark to Steve Rogers and from Loki to Thanos. Sadly Elon Musk won’t be joining that list even though he did appear in a Marvel movie.

Back in 2010, he made a blink-and-you’ll miss it cameo in Iron Man 2, which is admittedly one of the least memorable Marvel movies. He did have a few lines though such as telling Stark that he has an idea for an “electric jet.”.

Musk’s cameos don’t end there as he’s also popped up in The Simpsons, South Park,The Big Bang Theory and Rick and Morty.

Being flummoxed by Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is one of the cinema’s great filmmakers and has been known to go to incredible lengths to get his films and documentaries made. Pulling a huge boat over a hill? Yep, he’s done that. Hypnotising his entire cast? Done that too. Visiting a volcanic island that was due to erupt? Bingo.

For his 2016 documentary about the internet Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, Herzog paid a visit to Musk as SpaceX keen to learn more about the South African’s plans to colonise Mars.

During their conversation Musk complained about how hard it is to get just one person to Mars. Without hesitation, Herzog volunteers himself to go on the voyage on a ‘one-way ticket.’ Musk seems briefly stunned that this 70+ year-old German man would be willing to go through with such a journey, which probably wouldn’t even be the most audacious thing Herzog has ever done.

That being said, Herzog would later compare Musk’s plans for Mars to ‘fascism’ so perhaps he wasn’t that keen after all.

His bonkers tweets costing Tesla money

Musk is seemingly on Twitter 24/7 and when he’s not talking about the latest SpaceX launch or arguing with Bernie Sanders he is often tweeting nonsense and memes. Here is just a small example of his many strange tweets that would be fine if they were coming from a 15-year-old but not one of the richest men in the world.

However, in 2018 Musk’s tweets were become so erratic and bizarre that Tesla investors had to tell him to basically ‘shut up’ as he was costing them money. This was after Musk tweeted about the Shortseller Enrichment Commission, a regulator that had just made a multi-million dollar settlement with him over alleged security fraud.

This might not have stopped him from sharing memes but he’s almost definitely a bit more measured about sensitive material these days.

Musk referred to this on SNL, saying: “Look I know I sometimes say or post strange things but that’s just how my brain works.

“To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say ‘I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship, did you also think I was going to be a chill, normal dude?’”

Fair point.

The name of his and Grimes baby

Musk and his indie-pop star partner Grimes had a baby in May 2020, which they called X Æ A-12 Musk, which was off even for their standards. People were a little confused as to how to pronounce the name at first until Grimes went ahead and tried to explain it.

However, even she appeared to be a bit confused as Musk later corrected her.

Even Gwenyth Paltrow, who called her child Apple, thought the name was controversial. As it turns out, under California law, no numbers are allowed in a person’s name. Therefore the couple had to change the name to: X Æ A-Xii which is probably even more confusing.

Musk referenced the confusing during his SNL monologue, saying: “It’s pronounced cat running across keyboard.”

Calling a man who rescued children from a cave a ‘pedo guy’

The June 2018 rescue of 12 boys trapped in a cave in Thailand was one of the most dramatic moments of that year. However, a row erupted between Musk and Vernon Unsworth, an experienced cave diver who was recruiting experts to help in the rescue effort.

Musk sent a team of engineers and a small submarine to Thailand but they weren’t used in the effort. Unsworth later accused Musk of carrying out a PR stunt and told CNN that he could “stick his submarine where it hurts.” Musk hit back with a series of insulting tweets to Unsworth which included calling him a ‘pedo guy.’

Eventually, Musk managed to win a defamation case against Unsworth after arguing that the term is a common insult in South Africa that is synonymous with “creepy old man [and] aimed at insulting one’s appearance and demeanour.”

‘RIP Harambe’ song

In 2016, the biggest meme of the planet was Harambe, the dead gorilla who became an internet sensation. Of course, Musk has to get involved somehow but rather than post memes like everyone else he went ahead and produced an extremely auto-tuned song about the deceased primate.

For some reason, he released this on a Soundcloud called Emo G Records three years after the meme was everywhere as part of an April Fools prank. A year later he dropped another song called ‘Don’t Doubt ur Vibe’ which is perhaps marginally better.

Spreading Covid-19 conspiracies

Perhaps inevitably Elon Musk has begun engaging in conspiracy theories and in 2020, like many tin-foil hate wearers he was very keen to share his thoughts on the coronavirus pandemic.

On 13th November 2020, he began suggesting that not everything was quite right about Covid testing. As he managed to get different results from four tests on the same day.

Musk was widely condemned for the tweet but that was far from the only misinformation he spread about the disease.

Mocking pronouns

Another moment that shone Musk in a less than favourable light last year was when he decided to mock pronouns for no reason whatsoever other than not liking them.

Initially, this was seen as an attack on trans people but Musk did clarify his position as being pro-trans but anti-pronouns, which were not sure really helps anyone.

Inventing tunnels

Aside from SpaceX and Tesla, Musk’s other big venture right now is The Boring Company which he believes will be the future of inner-city travel by car. His plan is to essentially build high-speed tunnels under major cities, which is basically what a subway does. He even said so much when launching the project in 2018:

“If you do hundreds of tunnels and have dozens of small stations woven throughout the fabric of the city, you can actually, without even the city appearing different, you could solve the transport problem. Compared to an above-ground system or compared to a flying car, you don’t have to worry about bad weather. You can’t see it, hear it, feel it, you’re not dividing communities with lanes, and we think we can make this really fun.”

Surely this wasn’t going to be an actual tunnel?

Well, an early example of the project was launched in Las Vegas earlier this month and yes...they would appear to just tunnels with fluorescent lights.

Sending his car into space

We've saved possibly the strangest until last. When SpaceX launched their Falcon Heavy rocket into space in February 2018 musk put a special package aboard...his own car, complete with a dummy in spacesuit listening to David Bowie.

The car is still out there somewhere in the solar system but your guess is as good as ours as to what state it is in now.