In San Francisco, the location of Twitter’s headquarters where the richest person in the world recently let many of its employees go, Elon Musk joined Dave Chappelle on stage on Sunday. As expected, it went about as well.
The audience at the Chase Center booed Musk loudly after he spent a significant portion of the weekend engaging in the culture wars, making transphobic remarks, and presumably parroting QAnon cliches.
People in the audience recorded video of the event at Sunday’s Chappelle performance, which shows the controversial Twitter owner entering the stage and saying in Chappelle’s trademark Rick James voice, “I’m rich, b***h.” Musk was then booed repeatedly for a while.
Chappelle, who has been criticism for making jokes about transgender people, was inspired by the response to warn Musk that it “seems like some of the folks you fired are in the audience.”
Musk started to talk at one point, but Chappelle cut him off by stating, “Don’t say anything. Elon, do you hear that noise? The sound of impending civil turmoil is that.
Chappelle completed his performance with a rebuke and a prayer after receiving more jeers.
The greatest thing you can do, he advised, is not to boo. “May your search of happiness set you free. I wish everyone in this audience the delight of feeling free. Amen.”
Monday, in response to a fan tweeting to him about “a crowd full of booing,” Musk appeared to nod in recognition of the occurrence. It was “90% cheers & 10% boos (except during calm intervals),” according to Musk, but even so, “that’s a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (often on Twitter).”
Several users who uploaded footage of the incident said that Chappelle gave Musk several chances to address the audience, but Musk simply remained on stage without much of a response.
Following Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, the wealthy owner implemented a variety of cost-cutting initiatives. He has fired about half of the company’s employees, which has prompted a group of former workers to file a lawsuit, saying that the mass firings constituted several labour rights abuses.
The remaining employees were required to accept “very tough” labour, which may have resulted in some of them sleeping at Twitter’s offices. San Francisco is looking into claims that Musk turned numerous office spaces into improvised bedrooms.
Musk, who is known for his erratic behaviour and explosive outbursts, completely engaged in the cultural wars throughout the course of the last weekend, which culminated in the incident at the Chase Center. Musk wrote in a tweet that his “pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” that the departing director of the National Institutes of Health and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, should be brought to justice. Regarding Fauci’s response to the COVID pandemic, particularly the lockdowns that have affected his Tesla operations, Musk has been outspoken.
Musk also parroted a QAnon conspiracy theory cliche by erroneously asserting that Yoel Roth, a former executive in charge of trust and safety at Twitter, was an advocate for child sexification based on his doctoral research. These tweets made Roth the target of online harassment and other forms of abuse.
On Monday, Musk continued his cultural warfare effort by issuing a new warning against the spread of what he refers to as “the woke mind virus.”