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Welcome to Musk Watch, where we examine what Texas’ richest (and perhaps most divisive) citizen is up to this week.
If you were looking for proof that Elon Musk stans will fork over their hard-earned cash for anything bearing his name (or the name of one of his myriad companies), stop digging (pun intended). The Boring Company is now selling burnt- hair scented perfume, and Musk says that the ewww de toilette is flying off the shelves at what is very likely a dystopian fulfillment center in Williamson County. He claims that he sold $2 million of the stuff in 24 hours.
The product isn’t just the latest meme-generated ephemera for thirsty technocrats, joining 2018’s flamethrowers and 2020’s Tesla shorts, the latter a perceived dig at investors who “shorted” the company’s stock. If you already believed that Elon Musk is really a snake -oil salesman instead of what his Twitter bio now reads — “Perfume Salesman” — this item should seal the deal, and not just because it’s pointless and rather gnarly.
The Boring Company was founded as a Twitter joke about traffic. It’s operations are very real, in the sense that people get paid money to build monstrous digging machines all over Texas. But the company has yet to solve traffic problems and has, in fact, caused some of its own out near Bastrop. It’s unclear if the Boring Company — like SpaceX and Starlink and, to an extent, Tesla — will ever reach its intended goal, which, if you believe Musk, is to altruistically solve an existential engineering puzzle . Now it’s making money on a small container of wet garbage, at $100 a pop.
Oh, and if you’re still interested in the perfume, you’ll have to wait. Boring will take your money now, but won’t send you anything until the first quarter of 2023, which absolutely won’t be delayed, right ? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Ukraine-Brained
Last week, I wrote about Musk’s entrance into global politics when he began masquerading as The Guy Who Could Solve Ukraine. He had answers about Crimea and other annexed regions, waxed existential on the possibility of nuclear war, and more. But then on Friday, he said that his Starlink internet, which had appeared in Ukraine and had been a boon to the country’s army in Russian-occupied territory, wouldn’t be funded indefinitely.
As if this weren’t disappointing enough, the famously small government-obsessed, bailout hating, pseudo-libertarian Musk was exposed as, well, a dirty rotten communist, asking the Pentagon to pay for Starlink’s operation in Ukraine. When the tides turned, folks online criticized Musk as both a hypocrite and a Russian sympathizer, especially after his comments about permanently ceding Crimea to Putin.
Of course, Musk reversed course and decided to pay for Starlink, albeit begrudgingly.
A (very) small part of me wants to root for Musk. Before you click that little X on the tab, let me explain. In a vacuum, all of Musk’s endeavors appear to be part of some world-solving narrative for the billionaire. He lives on friends’ couches or in a tiny home, he doesn’t take vacations, and so all of this money he has is ostensibly used to fund endeavors that will make humanity better. We’re going to space, we’re going to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, we’re going to punch traffic in the face for all time, we’re going to end nuclear war.
But when it boils down to it — and especially in moments like this one — it appears that Musk suffers from the same thing many of us do. He just wants to be liked, he’s obsessed with the appearance of being funny, and, saddest of all, is addicted to his permanent role as the internet’s main character. It’s almost like social media is bad for your brain. Hey, at least Musk isn’t in a protracted legal battle to buy one of the larger networks on the planet!
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