About

This Is Elon Musk is a dramatic reaction video of a male, British voice (Tony Hirst) introducing Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk with his arms crossed as Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" plays in the background. It was originally posted to YouTube in 2020 but trended on both Twitter and TikTok in 2021 and 2022, often paired beneath another video to satirically emphasize the meme creator's genius or brilliance.

Origin

On June 13th, 2020, YouTuber monacoroom posted a video that used multiple clips of Elon Musk surfaced from interviews like 60 Minutes and compiled them into an emotional edit using the song "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio, but more specifically, a remix of "Gangsta's Paradise" called "180 Million Dollar Dance" by Soundcloud ^[1] user Mikael Kun. Over the course of two years, the YouTube video received roughly 2.1 million views and 75,000 likes (shown below, left). The original "This Is Elon Musk" video with the narrator was surfaced from a 2017 National Geographic video about Tesla (shown below, right).

It is currently unknown which meme creator used the video first, however, tweets^[5] from November 2020 allude to its use on Twitter around that time. The trend took off en masse, however, sometime in mid-September 2021 within French Twitter^[2][3] circles. Currently, the earliest known posting of the "This Is Elon Musk" video template was tweeted on September 21st, 2021, by the French Twitter^[4] account repertoire_meme, earning roughly 82,700 views and over 195 likes in one year (shown below).

This is Elon Musk meme pic.twitter.com/LW88ayoSop

— Le répertoire à meme (@repertoire_meme) September 21, 2021

Spread

On September 24th, 2021, French TikToker^[6] sofianeeeeeeeeeee posted the "This Is Elon Musk" video, receiving roughly 139,900 plays and 6,400 likes in one year (shown below, left). On January 22nd, 2022, French TikToker^[7] rythmind_official posted a video of him recreating the narrator's voice with his own voice, earning roughly 43,800 likes in eight months (shown below, right).

Continuing into June 2022, the video trend became increasingly viral on TikTok. For instance, on June 8th, 2022, TikToker^[8] 7.rm4 posted an iteration that placed the video beneath an oddly satisfying DIY invention video to humorously portray the inventor's genius. Over the course of three months, the video received roughly 32.9 million plays and 1.5 million likes (shown below, left). On July 28th, 2022, TikToker^[9] amixedits0 placed the video beneath another video showing the "Save the Dog" mobile app game, earning roughly 15 million plays and 1.1 million likes in two months (shown below, right).

The TikTok memes spread quickly to other video-hosting platforms. For instance, on June 21st, 2022, YouTuber DJ Laby uploaded a compilation video of "This Is Elon Musk" memes, earning roughly 86,400 views in three months (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References