DEEP DIVE

Elon Musk’s Instagram Is More Humble Than You Might Assume of a Billionaire CEO

The enigmatic billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has a sense of humor online.


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Elon Musk/Instagram

Elon Musk has been pretty busy lately—from launching rockets to potentially getting back together with ex-girlfriend Amber Heard, he’s likely never been less bored.

On December 22, residents of southern California looked up in the night sky to witness what many thought to be a UFO sighting (especially after a recent report in The New York Times that semi-confirmed the existence of a government program dedicated to UFOs), but turned out to be none other than a project from eccentric billionaire inventor Elon Musk.

“Scared the s— out of me. If this isn’t one of Elon’s Rockets I swear to God I’m gonna jump into the ocean,” wrote Lana Del Rey in a video she captured of the launch.

Before he was committed to scaring the living daylights out of the residents of Los Angeles with the launch of his SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Elon Musk, the billionaire inventor of the Tesla has spent plenty of time on the side cultivating a sometimes comedic and always weird online presence on Twitter and Instagram.

Of course, as a space rocket enthusiast, Musk has an Instagram that is typical of someone who is obsessed with tech and science, which is to say, he shares a lot of photos of spacecraft and cars.

This one is described as “a red car for the red planet” because he actually plans to launch this Tesla vehicle all the way to Mars while blasting “Space Oddity” by David Bowie because subtlety does not exist in Musk’s world. Oh, and also, this car is supposedly going to orbit Mars for a billion years. It is a step towards his goal of reducing the risk of human extinction by moving us all to Mars, eventually.

Jumping into the weird world of Tesla creator Musk’s Instagram is also a lesson in excavating any personal information about the enigmatic master of futuristic inventions. Somehow, his Instagram isn’t too braggadocios for someone who is the closest thing to a real life Tony Stark we have. Instagram is a space to show off what all of your private funds can afford you, but Musk never takes it too far with the excess.

First, he describes himself as a “hat salesman” in his bio. Upon further investigation, it became clear that Musk really does sell hats.

It turns out that these hats, labeled “The Boring Company,” are not just a sartorial statement of ennui, but rather merch being sold from Musk’s infrastructure and tunnel company. He’s committed to privately funding the development of tunnels to alleviate traffic. And this whole time, we just thought he was a merch-loving hypebeast.

A shirt with Santa Claus blasting off into the stratosphere on top of a unicorn might signal fantasy to anyone but Elon Musk, who would absolutely transform the narrative behind this shirt into a reality if he could.

The billionaire’s Instagram account also functions as a graveyard for one of his most high profile relationships with actress Amber Heard—a breakup that broke Musk’s heart so badly he went on the record as saying it caused “severe emotional pain.”

Even though he plans to get us all on Mars so that our species doesn’t die out, Musk apears to enjoy planet Earth just enough for now.

We should probably listen to him on this one.

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