Elon Musk is undeniably a king of the contemporary Internet, with Twitter as his primary domain.
Whether he’s putting his Tesla shares up for relative auction via public polls or airing the laundry of his on-again, off-again relationship with Canadian musician Grimes, Musk’s tweets consistently attract hundreds of thousands of shares and likes from fans and critics alike.
In early November of 2021, he shot out a set of viral tweets pledging $6 billion to the U.N.‘s plan to end world hunger if the organization was able to present him and the public a feasible strategy to do so— and if they were able to share exactly how his donation would be spent.
Earlier, in May 2020, Musk sent his own company’s stock crashing down with the simple tweet: “Tesla stock is too high [in my opinion.]” This admittance on Musk’s part led to a personal multi-billion dollar loss, as Tesla investors began to pull out of the company in response to the unconfident statement.
While many of Elon’s Twitter interactions leave supporters and haters equally perplexed, he occasionally uses his online power for simple, universal good.
In one 2017 Internet exchange, this goodness came in the form of fighting the Flat Earth Society.
Elon fought Flat Earth-ers with a simple tweet that gained great attention.
“Mars sky is the opposite of Earth/ Blue sunrise and sunset/ Red during the day,” Musk shared with his followers in November of 2017. In the following tweet he asked, “Why is there no Flat Mars Society!?”
This rhetorical question, of course, opened way for some of the Internet’s most famed conspiracy theorists to enter the chat. The verified Flat Earth Society Twitter account was quick in its response to Musk, retorting: “Hi Elon, thanks for the question. Unlike the Earth, Mars has been observed to be round.”
While Musk himself never responded, fans came to his defense in the replies, enumerating the plethora of scientific and photographic evidence confirming the spherical shape of planet Earth.
And although Elon chose not to continue the online exchange with the Flat Earth Society, he may have answered them on a more… universal… scale just a few years later.
In May of 2020, Musk’s company SpaceX achieved in launching two NASA astronauts into orbit. The launch, documented visually on an international broadcast, showed the astronaut’s view from the rocket.
What did their stream consist of, you may ask? Nothing but video of our perfectly round Earth.
