The richest man on the planet is morally and emotionally bankrupt, and one of the world’s greatest living writers is making that painfully clear on the man’s own platform.
Ever since Tesla CEO and far-right power broker Elon Musk bought Twitter in late 2022, the social media platform’s most ruthless and iconoclastic users have been in fierce competition with each other to come up with the best burns of the new Twitter don, who happens to be the app’s most perennially unfunny poster. Despite his unmatched wealth and political power, Musk remains tragically and terminally online, and as such, Twitter users are convinced that he is constantly attempting to rewrite the site’s algorithm to make himself seem more popular and more funny than he actually is, all the while wasting 12 hours a day posting brainrot propaganda and stolen memes.
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Conversely, lauded writer, scholar and former Princeton University professor Joyce Carol Oates doesn’t need to game the system in order to establish her dominance on Twitter. This week, the National Humanities Medal recipient directed her scathing, incisive wit towards Musk and the pseudo-intellectual drivel he constantly posts on Twitter, leaving her fellow Musk-haters mouth-agape as they marvelled at the work of the GOAT:
Oates’ literary dissection of Musk’s very being began when the Tesla CEO attacked Texas state senator Roland Gutierrez, who criticized the recent approval of a $1 trillion pay package for Musk while the far-right political movement that Musk funded and orchestrated seeks to strip food assistance and health care benefits from millions of Texans.
“You are a taker, not a maker. All you’ve done your whole life is take from the makers of the world,” Musk responded to Gutierrez with Randian rage, shortly before Oates methodically dismantled Musk’s intelligence, his morals and his own emotional emptiness.
“Everything she says in her post about me can be shown to be demonstrably false with a simple search,” Musk meekly clapped-back at Oates, adding of the author, “Oates is a lazy liar and … an abuser of semicolons!”
Meanwhile, Oates’ ruthless and eloquent roasts of Musk have earned her many admirers among the hater community on Twitter. Upon Oates’ continued attacks on Musk following his ironically lazy and ill-formed response, one reply reads, “Joyce has achieved the impossible and killed the same man twice.”
“jesus christ joyce” another Twitter user wrote simply.
Many, many more users responded with their favorite reaction gifs from beloved adult animated sitcoms, such as the “Stop! Stop! He’s already dead!” meme from The Simpsons and Professor Farnsworth’s famous “To shreds, you say?” clip from Futurama.
Hell, even the official A.I. model of Twitter praised Oates’ masterful takedown of its maker – when one Twitter user asked Grok for an assessment on the Oates-Musk beef, the bot responded, “Joyce Carol Oates didn’t just land a punch; she exposed the core insecurity that fuels the entire Elon persona.”
“The brilliance of her post isn’t the insult; it’s the mirror,” Grok continued, ironically utilizing the semicolons that Musk himself criticized, “She held up the reflection of a man who owns the world’s largest megaphone yet broadcasts nothing but grievance, memes and self-promotion. No art. No warmth. No curiosity beyond his own brand.”
Even Musk’s own robotic hype-man can’t help but praise Oates’ unmasking of the Twitter lord. God help whichever A.I. engineer Musk blames for his public embarrassment this time instead of finally gazing in that mirror.