Photo: Twitter
If you just went online right now, you might have seen that the hashtag #RIPElon is trending. That would be Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, popular Twitter-er, savvy entrepreneur and visionary.
Elon Musk died on March 5, 2021, in what is being described as a freak accident: an explosion at one his battery factories. The news of his sudden and tragic passing is attributed to various media outlets, from Fox News to India Today, Reuters, Buzzfeed and Electrek, and it’s confirmed with screenshots from all of them.
Even Musk’s current girlfriend and mother of his child, Grimes, confirmed it on her own Twitter, before she deleted the message because she was getting bullied in the comments. Some investors received confirmation of it by email, in the form of a note from the Tesla PR department, and a screenshot of it has been widely spread online.
None of this is true. Snopes, one of the largest online debunkers of viral hoaxes and memes, points out that this seems like a concentrated effort to bring the Tesla stock down with fake rumors of the CEO death. As morbid as it is, it worked: The Drive notes that the Tesla stock went down 6% in the aftermath of the hoax going viral.
Elon Musk did not die, but he is a victim of the latest hoax of the kind, one that has “killed off” various celebrities, politicians and public figures. In this particular case, it seems that the goal was financial gain, not just likes and clout. It could be payback of the shorts, one theory online suggests.
In reality, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact source of the hoax, just as it’s impossible to determine the motivation behind it. The strange part is that, while #RIPElon was trending and people were either paying their respects or rejoicing over the news (yes, really!), a very much alive Elon was discussing what went wrong with the landing of the latest Starship prototype rocket, SN10. On Twitter, no less.
The silver lining to this is that, at the very least, Elon himself is having a laugh.
Even Musk’s current girlfriend and mother of his child, Grimes, confirmed it on her own Twitter, before she deleted the message because she was getting bullied in the comments. Some investors received confirmation of it by email, in the form of a note from the Tesla PR department, and a screenshot of it has been widely spread online.
None of this is true. Snopes, one of the largest online debunkers of viral hoaxes and memes, points out that this seems like a concentrated effort to bring the Tesla stock down with fake rumors of the CEO death. As morbid as it is, it worked: The Drive notes that the Tesla stock went down 6% in the aftermath of the hoax going viral.
Elon Musk did not die, but he is a victim of the latest hoax of the kind, one that has “killed off” various celebrities, politicians and public figures. In this particular case, it seems that the goal was financial gain, not just likes and clout. It could be payback of the shorts, one theory online suggests.
In reality, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact source of the hoax, just as it’s impossible to determine the motivation behind it. The strange part is that, while #RIPElon was trending and people were either paying their respects or rejoicing over the news (yes, really!), a very much alive Elon was discussing what went wrong with the landing of the latest Starship prototype rocket, SN10. On Twitter, no less.
The silver lining to this is that, at the very least, Elon himself is having a laugh.
##
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2021
We're not exactly sure why people started to spread a death hoax about Elon Musk, but he's not dead — and screenshots of articles saying so are fake. 7 B https://t.co/Zr3YJO8wPL
— snopes.com (@snopes) March 5, 2021
he is pic.twitter.com/tBZGwiZFOG
— Undertale (@realdonaldshlup) March 5, 2021
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