Elon Musk Alt Burner Account

About

Elon Musk Alt Burner Account refers to the purported alternate Twitter account under the handle @ermnmusk and the username Elon Test. In late April 2023, it was revealed to be the second account of the Twitter owner due to an April 24th screenshot that showed the account's picture in Elon Musk's profile. The account appeared to be posting under the imagined persona of Musk's son, X. Posters picked up on the account as it went viral and joked about it in the days after as word spread of his burner profile.

Online History

On April 24th, 2023, Elon Musk's purported alt or burner account was first revealed to the world because of a post he made promoting the "subscription" feature of Twitter. That day, Musk shared a screenshot of his subscriber count, which also showed the icon for the alt account (shown below). Users in his replies then hunted it down, presumably based solely on the profile picture, finding it within 17 minutes.^[1]

According to the creation timestamp on the profile, Musk is speculated to have started the account in mid-November 2022, less than two weeks after he officially bought the company and took charge.^[1] During the same timeframe (around November 11th) as the alt account's first post, Musk was occupied with laying off many of Twitter's employees and expressing concern that the company would go bankrupt.^[2]

For most of its history, the account seems to have had few or no followers. The account occasionally lamented and complained about this (seen below, left).^[3] For the most part, the alt account has posted in what appears to be the voice of Musk's toddler son with Grimes, X. Musk then seemingly confirmed this in a post created an hour after the account was publicly revealed (seen below).^[4]

Online Presence

Following the public unearthing of the purported alt account of Elon Musk on April 24th, 2023, the discovery went viral and trended online, with several media outlets reporting on it^[8] and users reacting to it on social media. For example, on April 25th, Twitter user @JUNIPER submitted a post joking about the account, earning almost 30,000 likes in three hours (seen below).^[5]

Particular replies from the account attracted attention, such as a series of posts in the toddler voice (seen below, left) and an example in which the alt replied to a tweet posted by Musk's main account (seen below, right).^[1]

Many also found the "age play" aspect of the account off-putting and odd. For example, on April 25th, Twitter user @baddestmamajama reveled in the drama and connected it to a day full of other events like the Tucker Carlson's firing (seen below, top) ^[6]. Others were simply overwhelmed by the news, like user @dynosaur5, who expressed a need to "lie down" (seen below, bottom).^[7]

In April of 2024, Musk admitted that he operated the "ermnmusk" account in a court deposition.

Search Interest

External References