About

Chinese Elon Musk, also known as Yi Long Musk or Elong Musk, refers to a Chinese lookalike or doppelganger of Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The man first went viral on Douyin, China's version of TikTok, in late 2021. He trended going into 2022 due to his uncanny resemblance to the billionaire, however, many online believed he was a deepfake using AI technology to replace his face with Musk's.

Origin

On December 3rd, 2021, a Douyin^[10] user named masikexiaomi posted a video that received roughly 6,500 likes in four months, revealing himself as a Chinese lookalike of Elon Musk, standing in the driver-side door of a sports car and speaking Mandarin to the camera, smiling and not moving much.

On December 8th, 2021, Facebook^[1] user Kcho How reposted the video to the Facebook group KL娱乐站, which included a screen-recording of the TikTok, captioning it, "The Chinese Mountain Elon Musk is still the same." Over the course of four months, the post received roughly 1,000 reactions and 1,900 shares (shown below). It can also be seen in the post that the TikTok received roughly 78,600 likes by December 8th.

In the comment section of the Facebook post, the user John Joemarie Muyco commented "Yi Long Musk," being the first to associate the nickname with him (shown below). Additionally, users in the comment section were already skeptical, labeling the video as a deepfake.

Spread

On December 13th, 2021, the video was reposted to 9GAG, ^[2] earning over 530 upvotes in four months. Internet users continued to insist it was a deepfake despite there being no evidence to support the claim.

Memes were made about Chinese Elon Musk relating him to other, Chinese versions of western celebrities like John Xina and memes about China's Social Credit System. For instance, on December 15th, 2021, Redditor Shinigami42069 posted a meme to /r/shitposting^[8] that earned roughly 1,700 likes in four months (shown below).

On December 18th, 2021, the man behind Yi Long Musk created a new TikTok account with the username mayilong0, uploading his first TikTok^[3] on that day, receiving roughly 97,500 plays and 1,400 likes in four months (shown below).

On December 19th, 2021, Twitter^[4] user imoriginalankit replied to an Elon Musk tweet with a side-by-side image of him and his doppelganger, earning roughly 2,500 likes in four months (shown below). Elon Musk then replied^[5] to his reply, stating, "Maybe I’m partly Chinese!" earning roughly 9,000 likes in the same amount of time (also shown below).

Chinese Elon Musk's TikTok went dormant for roughly two months, finally uploading a follow-up TikTok^[6] on February 7th, 2022. The video (shown below, left) received roughly 568,700 plays and 16,000 likes in one month. On February 19th, 2022, Yi Long Musk, now going by Elong Musk, uploaded another video to TikTok,^[7] wherein he speaks English for the first time. Additionally, he started the video wearing sunglasses, taking them off early in the video, most likely as an attempt to disprove deepfake skepticism. The video (shown below, right) received roughly 366,000 plays and 13,500 likes in one month.

Elong Musk continued to post TikToks going into March 2022, making jokes about starting "SpaceY" ^[9] among other reversals of Elon Musk's life. Elong Musk has also continued his presence on his original Douyin^[11] account.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References