Elon Musk Escalates Beef With Russian Government And Changes His Name On Twitter To 'Elona,' Stirring Up A Flurry Of Memes

By Aidan Walker
1438 views
• Published 2 years ago

Published 2 years ago

Elon Musk, the notorious troll and tech entrepreneur, has escalated his feud with the Russian government and changed his Twitter name to "Elona Musk" in a turn of events that has led many online to wonder what he would look like as a woman and what exactly is going on with the world right now. On Monday, Musk challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a single-combat fight, leading to a response from Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechen Republic, calling Musk “effeminate” and using the name “Elona” to refer to him in a Telegram post. Musk, puckishly taking the bait, changed his display name to Elona soon after.


Ramzan Kadyrov is a very-online crony of Vladimir Putin, whose father was installed as dictator in Chechyna, an autonomous region within Russia, following the bloody Second Chechen War from 1999-2003. During that war, Russian forces inflicted massive civilian casualties and bombed urban areas much like they are currently doing in Ukraine. He is famously very active on Instagram, with a page that often features him posing with cute animals, but he has also come under criticism for his regime’s brutal oppression of LGBTQ+ people.


On Tuesday, Musk also feuded on Twitter with Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s Space Chief and another very-online crony of Vladimir Putin. Rogozin threatened Musk with quotations from Pushkin, Russia’s national poet. The two men have a relationship stretching back years because Musk’s company SpaceX has been a frequent target of Rogozin’s memes and envy. Two weeks ago, Rogozin also threatened to let the International Space Station crash into the U.S.


Much of the non-Russian-government-associated internet’s reaction to the Elona news, however, took the form of photoshopped pictures imagining what Elon Musk would look like as a woman.


Even Elon Musk’s mother got in on the memeing, sharing an image of her “pretty Elona.”


Elon Musk’s rebranding as Elona was not without backlash, however. Some were uncomfortable with his joking about a sensitive issue and with his profiting off a war. Musk’s Twitter fame is partly key to his business success, and he uses the account to keep his name in the conversation, promote the products he sells and attract investors for his companies and cryptocurrency ventures.


Unsurprisingly, no concrete plans have been made for a fight between Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk, but the participation of high-level Russian government figures in Twitter beef with a prominent American billionaire demonstrates that social media is a bizarre theater of war as surely as real-life land, sea and air are. The competition over shaping the public perception of the war and the leaders involved is ongoing and fierce.


Whatever the outcome of Elona Musk’s Twitter beef with the Russian government, it proves that Musk is one of the most inventive and canny users currently on Twitter. Musk has figured out both how to capture the attention of memers on the platform, and how to monetize that attention.

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