What are some of the most common phrases used by the co-leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, CEO, billionaire Elon Musk?
“Interesting.”
“💯”
“Population collapse.”
Business Insider analyzed Musk’s X account replies and identified these three common fragments. They don’t seem like much, but X is Musk’s outlet, a path to work toward his dream of “free speech” (which doesn’t need to include truth, apparently). Replies allow him to connect directly with the general public, and he often engages with small accounts with few followers.
I wanted to figure out how Musk chooses who to reply to, and spent painful hours scrolling through over two months of Musk’s X activity. At first, nothing surprised me. Musk responds to users who tweet about what we might expect: AI, the promising future of DOGE, and Starships.
Then, I noticed another pattern. Musk boosts tweets about women, and if we look carefully, his replies show exactly who he is.
“Interesting.”
When someone has 207.4 million followers, a single “interesting” turns a formerly irrelevant post into headline news.
Take this tweet, for example, initially posted by an account on September 2, 2024. It features a screenshot from 4chan, an internet site known for offensive posts and far-right pipelines.
“Only high T alpha males and neurotypical people…are free to parse new information with an objective ‘is this true’ filter,” the tweet says, claiming that women cannot “defend themselves physically” and therefore must be unable to defy the status quo. The post calls for a “Republic of high-status males,” a “democracy only for those who are free to think.”
Musk’s two-word reply?
“Interesting observation.”
Now, the post has 20.5 million views and 108 thousand likes. The comment section features disturbing posts that at best echo conservative male podcasters and worse call for a return to Social Darwinism.
“Make masculinity great again.” “Things started to fall apart when women won the vote.” “Survival of the fittest should have remained the rule.”
With two words, Musk did exactly what he loves to do: he made a clear statement while pretending to remain passive and blameless (I could bring up his not-so-“Roman salute” as another blatant example). I can picture him defending himself with a vapid expression, giving a shrug that says, “I only said it was interesting, not that I agreed.”
Musk’s replies to similar tweets supporting Trump, the far-right, and the abolishment of abortion and gender-affirming care have the same nebulous tone. They also have the same impact. They spark conversations that give people the license to say anything they want, and women pay the price.
“💯” “🤣” “🔥”
Interesting.
Grok, one of Musk’s XAI models, launched back in 2023. Since then, Musk has been boosting posts that show off the model’s capabilities. They also overwhelmingly feature AI-generated women wearing minimal clothing and with a very specific body type– large breasts, tiny waists, and thin arms, often exaggerated until completely unrealistic.
Now, this is not to say that none of these body types exist, or that there is anything wrong with a woman’s choice to wear revealing clothing.
The problem lies in the fact that in nearly 30 minutes of scrolling, I only found one repost where Musk shared an image of a woman without her breasts exposed. There was one image of a woman who wasn’t white. There were no images of women without symmetrical, pore-less faces, or small noses, and none of the women over what seemed to be 25 years old.
To be fair, I also analyzed Musk’s few reposts of Grok-generated men. I found one image of a man without his shirt on. The rest were fully clothed.
The tweets I saw were the tweets Musk chose for me, and all his other followers, to see.
AI models have to be trained. Who is training Grok, how are they doing it, and what are they saying behind the scenes?
Grok’s “boob fetish,” as one X user called it, originates with Musk himself. He is obsessed with making jokes about breasts. In 2021, he posted a crude joke about starting a university called the Texas Institute of Technology and Science.
In 2023, he painted over the “w” on the “Twitter” sign outside headquarters in San Francisco, bragging about it online. He’s even acknowledged Grok’s tendencies with a meme that has been the subject of numerous jokes.
First, Musk boosts posts that call for the abolishment of the 19th Amendment. Flame, flame, laugh emoji. Musk then spreads images of his AI-boosted breasts. His third common phrase only gets weirder.
“Population Collapse.”
Here’s an interesting list of tweets:
The birth rate in the United States has declined, largely due to a decrease in teenage pregnancy. More women are also waiting to have children. However, the global population continues to increase and is projected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050, according to the United Nations.
Population collapse is a myth. Musk’s obsession is real. He talks about population collapse all the time. It influences his companies and plans for the future. It influences his decision to keep having more and more children (11 so far). And it’s likely indicative of some other underlying fear. If the global population is rising but he cries “population decline,” what does that say about which “populations” he deems important, and which ones he deems threatening or worthless?
Musk’s tweets aren’t “interesting.” They’re not “fire.” So, what are they?
When numerous harassment complaints are released, Musk’s reposts of AI breasts suddenly seem less childish and more sinister. Tweets aren’t just tweets. Musk’s online presence is a manifestation of his personality and values. Under his leadership, his companies have become toxic and abusive environments.
In June of 2024, eight SpaceX employees filed a harassment case that blamed Musk for their negative experiences at the company.
“Musk trumpets SpaceX as the leader to a brave new world of space travel, but runs his company in the dark ages – treating women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size,” the case reads.
Ashley Kosak, a former intern and employee, also came forward and described a culture that relies on victim-blaming rather than punishment. She met with HR after being groped and harassed by “countless men” at the company. Nothing came of her complaints.
For Jessica Barraza, the story was the same at Tesla. She brought forth allegations in 2021. Her statement read: “Tesla’s factory floor more resembles a crude, archaic construction site or frat house than a cutting-edge company in the heart of the progressive San Francisco Bay Area. The pervasive culture of sexual harassment which included a daily barrage of sexist language and behavior, including frequent groping on the factory floor, is known to supervisors and managers and often perpetrated by them.”
Population Myth
Musk has forced his “population decline” madness on women too. He brought it to an exit negotiation where he asked a female employee to “have his babies.” He brought it to dinners with acquaintances and friends when he offered them his sperm, and, in a viral tweet, he told Taylor Swift that he’d give her a child.
Incredibly, Musk’s cut-and-dry approach to the “let’s have kids!” conversation has worked before. His 2015 biography, written by Walter Isaacson, detailed his relationship with top Neuralink employee Shivon Zilis. She told Isaacson that Musk’s arguments about population collapse persuaded her to have children. Having kids, Musk told her, is a “social duty” especially required of “smart people.” His reasoning worked and they promptly had two children through IVF treatment.
The problem with people like Musk is that they don’t want to stop with their own lives. They need to bring their golden ideas to the rest of us, and in Musk’s case, a net worth of over $400 billion sure helps.
Musk brought the population myth nationwide, funding the entirety of a political action committee that argued that Ruth Bader Ginsberg would have agreed with Trump’s stance on abortion. His $20.5-million donation went towards ads that promoted the false claim.
Clara Spera, Ginsberg’s granddaughter and an abortion rights lawyer, responded to the ads in an official statement. “The RBG PAC has no connection to the Ginsburg family and is an affront to my late grandmother’s legacy,” she said. “The use of her name and image to support Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, and specifically to suggest that she would approve of his position on abortion, is nothing short of appalling.”
Appalling.
Finally and unsurprisingly, Musk has been the harasser and the abuser.
Musk initiated an inappropriate sexual relationship with a college intern at SpaceX. In 2017, years after the end of their relationship, she rejoined the company and spent her time avoiding Musk’s incessant texts, which made her uncomfortable enough to leave the company in 2019.
In their sexual harassment case, employees alleged that Musk had yet another sexual relationship with a female employee, and used his power to force her to leave the company when it ended. They also detail an instance when Musk exposed himself to a female flight attendant, attempting to bribe her to perform sexual favors.
But How?
This is the world’s richest man. This is the man who’s conquered business and has squirmed his way into politics.
How is this possible?
It’s because the abusers work together. Trump’s time in politics has been riddled with sexual assault scandals. The American people elected him twice. He and his followers spewed the same misogyny again and again until it wasn’t quite so shocking anymore, and by the time Musk rolled around, people didn’t blink twice. It was all normal.
Musk gave Trump money. Trump gave Musk power. And now that he’s got the power, Musk is doing what Musk does: hiding his true intentions behind jokes.
The assault allegations were made a while ago; there’s always something new in the news cycle. Musk tweets about population decline? Cue reactions ranging from incredulous reposts to indifferent comments like, “Interesting.” Musk posts yet another AI photo of breasts? Cue passive amusement. Ahhhh, that’s just Musk back at it again. Boys will be boys.
In the end, public responses, from indifference to anger, have been inconsequential. They have one thing in common: they last no longer than the time it takes to hit “post”.
That’s the way the world works when it revolves around the abuse of women by powerful men. Jokes, (abuse), and more jokes.
With one hand, Musk rapid-fire-spams the flame emoji, and with the other, he grabs the world by the throat.
What does this mean for the future of women?
It’s impossible to know.
What can anyone do?
The first step is to stop saying “interesting,” and start calling it what it is.
