Business
How Elon Musk Uses Internet Slang to Marshal His Army of Online Fans
In 2010, a woman in Sakura, Japan, posted photos of her well-manicured Shiba Inu to her digital journal. The dog, Kabosu, shot her owner a wide-eyed glance, a comic image that quickly jumped from Tumblr to Twitter to Facebook and to the rest of the internet.
A meme legend was born. Someone on Reddit called the dog “DOGE,” a nonsensical nickname that stuck. Another minted a cryptocurrency in DOGE’s name.
Now, 15 years later, in the fast churn of internet culture, DOGE is considered very old. But try telling that to Elon Musk, who has co-opted “DOGE” for the name of his effort to gut the machinery of the federal government — more formally, the Department of Government Efficiency.
It is one of dozens of old-internet ephemera that are baked into his everyday vocabulary. A brief scroll through Mr. Musk’s X feed reveals a menagerie of aging memes and lingo — dad jokes for the very online. They include:
-
Frequent references to “420,” a half-century-old slang term for smoking marijuana said to have started in a high school in Northern California. (After smoking what looked like a blunt live on the Joe Rogan podcast, Mr. Musk briefly changed his Twitter bio to “420.”)
-
Regularly including the number “69,” a slang term for a sex act that has been around since at least the Kama Sutra. (Mr. Musk, who is 53 years old, is quick to point out that his birthday falls 69 days after 4/20.)
-
Calling things that he supports “epic” or “based.” These are adjectives favored by frequent users of Reddit and popularized by fans of Joss Whedon, a director who created the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” television series in the late 1990s and went on to direct two of the Avengers movies. (Mr. Musk has said he wants to create “based” artificial intelligence with his chatbot, Grok, and recently told Tesla investors he expected an “epic” 2026 ahead for the company.)
Mr. Musk’s slang may seem inscrutable to people who aren’t steeped in online culture. But to his fans, Mr. Musk’s dated sensibilities are a kind of internet comfort food — and a nod to a shared, aggrieved worldview.
Mr. Musk’s posts are full of the language of warfare and conquest portrayed in video games. That loaded language is a rallying cry for gamers and others from Mr. Musk’s very online world who — if they have a common political ideology — see in him someone who shares their skepticism of authority and their belief that America has gone too “woke.” To them, Mr. Musk’s online updates about what DOGE is up to come across as far more honest than a press release or news conference or — worst of all — something they read in the mainstream media. (It’s a strategy that recalls Donald Trump’s use of Twitter to signal authenticity during his first administration.)
“We’re living in the revenge of the nerds era,” Hasan Piker, a popular, politically progressive online personality who is not a fan of Mr. Musk, said in an interview. “This is the real, actual revenge of the nerds.”
Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Every photo of Mr. Musk wielding a chain saw while wearing “deal with it” sunglasses indoors (another meme) represents a triumph of the nerd culture he has long identified with. On Wednesday, he attended the first meeting of President Trump’s new cabinet wearing a T-shirt that said “Tech Support.”
His fans speak back to him in his language. They send suggestions on how DOGE can fix the government by dismantling entire sections of it, often coded in the language of images typically found on Reddit. (Wojak, a crudely drawn character popularized on the message board 4chan, is a perennial favorite.)
Mr. Musk prods his more than 200 million X followers for help with decisions in online polls. And he listens. The conversation becomes a feedback loop of insider jokes for the billionaire, who once hosted “Saturday Night Live” and prides himself on his sense of humor. (Mr. Musk sometimes overestimates his popularity in the comedy world. Once he joined the comedian Dave Chappelle on a stage in San Francisco. He was booed.)
“Anyone can find their own community, even if it’s a community frozen in 2010,” Brian Feldman, an internet culture writer who has long followed Mr. Musk’s exploits, said in an interview.
But to those steeped in modern internet culture, Mr. Musk’s communication style is far from on trend. That is especially so when even current terms like “no cap” (translation: no lie) or “lowkey fell off” (waned in popularity or relevance) are already showing their age. As with recent questions about Mr. Musk’s claims of superior video game skills, they see cracks in his supernerd facade.
“More than people would like to admit, they often become trapped in the internet they first encounter,” Mr. Feldman said.
Last week, Mr. Musk appeared at a conservative political conference wearing dark sunglasses, a big gold chain and a T-shirt that said he was “not procrastinating” but instead working on “side quests” (a common practice in sprawling role-playing games). He played off the quote from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita that Robert Oppenheimer said was going through his mind as he tested the first atomic bomb: Now, I am become Death. The destroyer of worlds.
“I am become meme,” Mr. Musk said to a mostly mute crowd. “There’s living the dream and there’s living the meme, and that’s pretty much what’s happening.”
Even some of his most fervent followers on X recoiled. “Elon Musk fell off lowkey,” one user wrote.
Mr. Musk’s online vocabulary is a reminder of 2010, when nerd culture was ascendant. Reddit was a meme factory for favorites like Lolcats and icanhazcheeseburger. Gamers gathered in web forums or on online role playing games to hang out and fight through digital dungeons.
This was also the beginning of Mr. Musk’s metamorphosis from mere billionaire to internet celebrity. That year, he appeared as himself in the second “Iron Man” film. His online fans ate it up.
All of this also coincided with the rise of Web 2.0, a more social version of the internet. Twitter — long before Mr. Musk bought it and renamed it — was a town square. Facebook moved beyond likes and status updates with “Groups,” a feature that allowed people to form their own smaller communities. The chat forum 4chan was full of anonymous, often angry online trolls who bonded over vulgar behavior.
While online groups had existed for years, the newer social networks were more tightly knit and rewarded the behavior that Mr. Musk often displays today. The right kind of posts could pick up steam and shoot across the internet.
Provocateurs moved beyond small-scale trolling to aggressive mass movements, such as Gamergate, a targeted harassment campaign against a female game designer by video game players who claimed she represented a lack of ethics in games journalism. It morphed into a social movement that fought diversity, feminism and what gamers saw as overly progressive values in film, television, literature and the video game industry — a viewpoint that Mr. Musk shares.
Gamergate also signaled that digital demonstrations could, for better or worse, lead to real-world change.
Mr. Musk’s tweeting style changed from anodyne company updates to more overt trolling. In 2018, he tweeted that he had secured a buyout offer for Tesla for a stock price of $420. Once, when a competing car company tried undercutting him on price, Mr. Musk said that he would drop the cost of his Tesla Model X to $69,420.
“The gauntlet has been thrown down!” he proclaimed on Twitter. “The prophecy has been fulfilled.”
Unlike other tech billionaires, who seemed to live lives far removed from regular internet folk and became less online the richer they got, Mr. Musk was making himself relatable with memes, absurdity and relentless posting. And parts of the online world embraced him.
“Many people find him off-putting, I think,” said coldhealing, a pseudonymous cultural commentator who regularly follows Mr. Musk and other social movements online, in an interview. “But there are many people who he resonates with, and even though I think it’s 10 percent of the population max, it’s an influential 10 percent.”
Mr. Musk’s online life became even more bombastic after the Covid pandemic began in 2020. He attacked Tesla short-sellers and California state officials who wouldn’t let him reopen a Tesla factory. In 2023, he even live-tweeted photos of himself driving to Mark Zuckerberg’s house, threatening to wrestle the chief executive of Facebook. (They were, at the time, in the throes of organizing a real fighting match between them. It never happened.)
He posted himself playing Elden Ring, Path of Exile and other video games like Diablo IV. One of the world’s wealthiest men was telling gamers that he was one of them.
Mark Kern, a former video game executive at Blizzard, wrote in a post to X last week that people should not mess with gamers. “We’re forged by endless boss battles against impossible odds. We do not give up. We do not stop. We are the terminators of the culture war.”
“Yes,” Mr. Musk wrote, quoting the post.
Conservatives who don’t spend a lot of time online have also embraced the image of Mr. Musk taking a chain saw to what they see as a bloated federal government, even if many of them aren’t exactly sure what he’s trying to say or when they’re supposed to laugh.
“It’s validation from people who have no idea what he’s saying, but still think he’s speaking this expert language,” said Mr. Feldman, the internet culture writer.
But Mr. Musk may be finding his online limits. It was difficult for some of his followers to shake off last week’s stage appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which reminded them that it is hard to stay cool when you are, in fact, not very young. (Kabosu did not live to see the meme she inspired enter American political life. The 18-year-old Shiba Inu died last year.)
“Anyone else feel the vibe-shift in tpot/tech?” one X user wrote, referring to an online community called “This Part of Twitter,” which is largely composed of tech workers who have historically warmed to Mr. Musk. In other words, Mr. Musk was starting to look a little out of touch and increasingly unpopular.
Nonetheless, Mr. Musk seems to be doubling down. His posting to X has increased in recent weeks, some days numbering in the hundreds. And he is still being validated by his fans.
On Thursday, Mr. Musk posted another meme to his X account — one of dozens of posts he had made that morning. In it was a photo of Mel Gibson as Mad Max in “The Road Warrior,” the early-1980s action thriller about a shotgun-toting nomad navigating a postapocalyptic world. In bold lettering, the meme said: “Ladies, it’s time to start thinking whether the guy you’re dating has postapocalyptic warlord potential.” (Film buffs may note that Max’s wife and son were killed by a biker gang in the first “Mad Max” film.)
One follower replied with a photo of a man wearing a Trojan helmet and body armor with an assault rifle in one hand and a spear in the other. It was one of more than 7,000 replies.
“Yup,” the follower said, adding a fire emoji.
Layoffs have continued with another tech company saying it was cutting people to enable it to use more artificial intelligence.
Groupon announced in a security filing this month that it will cut up to 400 jobs, or nearly 25% of its worldwide workforce, as part of a broader restructuring plan to make the platform AI-native. The Chicago company plans to carry out the layoffs in the coming months.
Earlier the company’s Chief Executive Officer Dušan Šenkypl had said the company “fell short of our expectations” last quarter.
Since 2022, more than 800,000 tech workers have been laid off, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts.
The surge in pink slips started in 2023, when companies that had gone on hiring sprees during the COVID-19 pandemic began to cut back. From January to April this year, U.S. tech employers announced 85,411 job cuts, up 33% from the same period last year, according to global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Groupon said in the filing that the decision to shift toward an AI-based company is to “better deliver on our mission, serving both customers and merchants.”
The company said the layoffs will cost it as much as $13 million, but save it more than $20 million per year.
This announcement comes as many e-commerce companies are shifting their business models to AI to reduce costs by automating many roles.
Artificial intelligence has also triggered fierce competition for top talent and is also fueling tens of thousands of layoffs this year. The result is that the class divide is widening in Silicon Valley as a tiny group of employees are landing unprecedented packages for AI skills, while many others struggle to find work.
The have-nots are doing everything that used to guarantee great jobs — refreshing resumes, optimizing LinkedIn profiles and doing interviews — but companies are much more picky these days. The tech jobless are rethinking their lives. Some are taking pay cuts, while others are leaving tech. Some are going back to study or launch startups. Some have retired.
Groupon shares, which have fallen 27% over the last 12 months, slipped 1% on Thursday to $21.20.
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC has filed renewal applications with the Federal Communications Commission “under protest” after an order mandating a years-early review of the network’s eight television station licenses.
The criticism was part of the network’s applications for the FCC review, which were filed ahead of a deadline Thursday. In an objection to the early renewal, Disney’s New York station WABC called the FCC order “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” and said it was “legally indefensible.”
“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” the station wrote in its filing. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”
The licenses for the eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.
The FCC order came shortly after ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow” days before a gunman tried to breach the White House Correspondents’ Assn. gala last month that President Trump attended.
Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he is unhappy with their coverage, but the order is the first time the government has acted on his wishes, sparking anger from free speech advocates. The FCC has said the order is part of an investigation into whether Disney’s diversity and inclusion policies violate federal law and the agency’s rules against “unlawful discrimination.”
In its response, WABC said the “only plausible reason” to issue the order was to “punish the station for speech the government does not like.”
“The ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company. It is to the public,” WABC wrote. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Thursday that Disney filed its applications to renew its broadcast licenses only after the company was told its previous answers were “disingenuous, deficient and improper.”
“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”
FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the panel’s only Democrat who has backed Disney in its fight, cheered the Burbank media and entertainment company’s filing, saying in a post on X that she was “glad to see them expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
Andrew here. Warning: If you bet on prediction markets about things you could know about from your work, it may be insider trading. That’s the lesson from new charges against an employee of Google.
Also, Jamie Dimon is thinking about spending $20 billion on acquisitions; we go through some possible targets. And take our quiz about the U.F.C. fight scheduled to take place at the White House.
Gaming prediction markets
In the public’s view, prediction markets are a way to bet on the N.B.A. playoffs, the Texas Senate race or what Costco executives will say on their next earnings call.
They’re also often seen as a hive of insider trading, a view reinforced by charges filed on Wednesday against a Google employee who made more than $1 million on Polymarket. The case raises more questions about how these platforms are policed — and who should do the policing.
What happened: The Google employee, Michele Spagnuolo (who used the handle AlphaRaccoon), was accused of betting on what people were searching for on Google — wagers he was sure to win because he had access to internal search data.
“Spagnuolo correctly predicted virtually all of the outcomes on these positions,” the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wrote in its complaint.
A Google representative said in a statement that using confidential information for making these kinds of bets was “a serious breach of our policies.”
Spagnuolo isn’t the only person charged with insider trading on Polymarket. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan last month accused Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. Special Forces soldier, of betting on the capture of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, an operation he participated in.
Insider trading is an increasing problem for prediction markets. Polymarket has faced significant scrutiny because its unregulated offshore platform has long made it easy to bet anonymously. (Kalshi, which is regulated in the U.S., has also suffered from insider trading.)
Polymarket has started clamping down on that practice, according to The Information — though some longtime users have chafed at those efforts. “Polymarket will go down the drain if they make KYC mandatory,” one user wrote on the company’s Discord discussion forum, referring to “know your customer” practices.
What are policymakers doing? Critics have accused the C.F.T.C., the primary American regulator of prediction markets, of failing to adequately police the industry. (Mike Selig, the commission’s chairman, told ABC News that his agency actively patrolled for wrongdoing.)
Some lawmakers are seeking to crack down on insider trading, including Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and several bipartisan groups of senators.
Why it matters: Prediction markets have become big businesses. (Kalshi was most recently valued at $22 billion.) But a growing perception that they’re rife with cheating could threaten their popularity.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to fund U.S. drone companies. Shares in Unusual Machines, a drone start-up in which Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisory board member, are soaring in premarket trading after The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported on the potential investments. (The Times hasn’t independently confirmed the report.) The deals, aimed at bolstering domestic production, are still in the negotiation stage — equity stakes are a possibility — as the Pentagon vets the companies, The Journal adds.
Investors brace for Thursday’s inflation data. The Personal Consumption Expenditures report for April, which will be closely watched by the Fed, is expected to show on Thursday that headline inflation hit a three-year high of 3.9 percent. The wartime energy spike is a big culprit, and that’s likely to tie the Fed’s hands on interest rates. Lisa Cook, a Fed governor whom President Trump has tried to fire, is the latest policymaker to say that there’s even a rate increase in the cards.
Jensen Huang reportedly agrees to join the board of a Chinese university. Huang, the Nvidia C.E.O., is expected to be the latest U.S. business leader to join the advisory board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, The Financial Times reports. Tim Cook, Apple’s departing C.E.O., is the chairman, and Michael Dell and Elon Musk are members. (Nvidia is trying to jump-start business in China as the Washington-Beijing trade war continues.) Laura Loomer, a right-wing agitator, quickly seized on the Huang news, calling it “a massive scandal!!!!” on social media, and a national security risk.
What might Dimon buy?
Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, is sitting on a pile of cash and says he’s open to a deal. He even put a number on it: up to $20 billion.
While that’s not a big sum relative to the bank’s assets, it got us thinking: Where could JPMorgan, whose last major acquisition was First Republic during the 2023 regional-banking crisis, go fishing for a company to buy? Brian O’Keefe asked Mike Mayo, a banking analyst at Wells Fargo.
Here are three possibilities:
Wealth management. Driven by solid margins and lucrative high-net-worth customers, this area of finance has experienced an M.&A. boom in recent years. (The First Republic deal already bolstered JPMorgan’s wealth-advisory ranks.) Such a move would tick a lot of boxes, Mayo said, adding, “It could be a high-end private bank, it could be kind of a mass-affluent brokerage firm, it could be wealth advisory.”
-
Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s wealth management division, told analysts in February that her unit had reviewed 25 potential deals last year and passed on all of them.
Payments. JPMorgan has invested heavily in new payment platforms, including in JPM Coin, a digital token it has tested with Coinbase and Mastercard. The bank handles between $5 trillion and $10 trillion in transactions daily, Mayo said. “There could be more opportunities to enhance the efficiency, the effectiveness, the timeliness or the geographic reach in the payments area,” he added.
Digital banking. Dimon recently singled out Revolut, the British banking app that is plotting expansion into the U.S., as an emerging competitive threat. “To the extent that an acquisition could help JPMorgan become the next Revolut outside the United States, that would seem to be attractive,” Mayo noted.
There are some big asterisks to consider. Because of its size, JPMorgan would most likely be barred from buying another U.S. lender on antitrust grounds. For that reason, Mayo thinks that a deal, if there is one, would probably happen abroad.
Dimon himself is being coy. The bank may have amassed ample capital for acquisitions, but “it’s not burning a hole in our pocket at all,” Dimon said on Wednesday at an investor conference. “If it sits there for a while, no problem,” he added.
Dimon did not suggest any potential targets on Wednesday.
Here are some guesses:
-
Aberdeen Group, Invesco or Julius Baer in wealth management?
-
Revolut is too big, but how about Wise or Toast in payments?
-
Or what about Monzo or Bunq, fintech banks that have grown rapidly in Europe?
Meta will charge for its chatbot
Meta will begin charging customers for access to its A.I.-powered chatbot, a big change for a company best known for its free products — and the latest sign that even deep-pocketed companies are wrestling with the enormous cost of artificial intelligence.
On Wednesday, we looked at how companies were reining in the costs of consuming A.I., including by switching to cheaper models. Meta’s move shows that the companies supplying A.I. models are also reckoning with ballooning costs, and seeking revenue to make up for those losses.
Meta is spending a fortune on A.I. Last month the company increased its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to as high as $145 billion, and Meta’s C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, said it would spend at least $600 billion on A.I. infrastructure in the next few years.
Some investors have looked skeptically on that plan. The company’s stock is down 2.3 percent this year.
Meta will use paid subscriptions to offset some of its A.I. investment. The basic tier of the chatbot, Meta One Plus, will be $7.99 per month. A premium version, Meta One Premium, will cost $19.99. From Bloomberg, which reported the subscription news earlier:
Meta has long argued that its A.I. investments are already paying off in the form of highly targeted and efficient advertising, which is improved thanks to A.I. models. But the company is also looking for other ways to recoup its A.I. spending, and consumer chatbot subscriptions have become popular with several other A.I. competitors, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI. Both rivals offer similarly priced subscription tiers.
The company has sought to expand its subscription business, testing plans for WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. It has also tried to cut costs in other corners of its business. This month, Meta laid off 10 percent of its employee base, about 8,000 workers.
Investors, eager to see revenue gains from A.I., cheered Meta’s subscription-chatbot plan. The company’s stock price was up 3.7 percent at the market close on Wednesday.
-
Elsewhere, shares in the software maker Snowflake are soaring in premarket trading on Thursday after it reported strong quarterly results that suggested that A.I. agents weren’t clobbering its core subscription business. Salesforce’s analyst call on Wednesday, however, renewed fears that this sector was still vulnerable to A.I. disruption.
Quiz: U.F.C. on the South Lawn
This question comes from a recent Times article. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.)
President Trump is getting ready to celebrate his 80th birthday — and America’s 250th — with an evening of mixed martial arts. Preparations are underway to host Ultimate Fighting Championship matches in an octagon on the White House’s South Lawn on June 14. Construction of the temporary arena, along with a 90-foot-tall arch known as “The Claw,” featuring LED lights and audio equipment, began this week.
U.F.C. plans to spend around $60 million on the event, said Mark Shapiro, the president and chief operating officer of TKO Group Holdings, U.F.C.’s parent company, on a recent earnings call. (He added that U.F.C. would lose about $30 million on the event but that it would be “an investment for the long term.”)
The expenses include about $700,000 to repair the lawn after the fight, Dana White, the U.F.C. president and chief executive, told Sports Business Journal.
How many people will the temporary arena hold for the U.F.C. event at the White House?
THE SPEED READ
Deals
-
“SpaceX-Tesla Merger Is ‘Only a Matter of When,’ Early Investor Says” (Bloomberg)
-
Shares in the European food-delivery company Delivery Hero are down sharply on Thursday after Uber, which is pursuing a takeover bid for the company, raised its stake to nearly 37 percent. (WSJ)
Politics, policy and regulation
-
The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey subpoenaed FIFA over soaring World Cup ticket prices. (WSJ)
-
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said he would impose a 100 percent tax on payouts to state residents from the $1.8 billion fund tied to the Justice Department’s settlement with President Trump. (Politico)
Best of the rest
We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
-
Missouri2 minutes agoBarry County man breaks Missouri state record with yellow bass catch
-
Montana9 minutes agoCounties accept enough signatures to put Bodnar, Eisenhauer on ballot; counts unofficial
-
Nebraska12 minutes agoNebraska Man Fractures Spine After Falling Off Big Boy Locomotive At Whistle-Stop
-
Nevada17 minutes agoNevada SPCA brings adoptable pet to spotlight on Furever Home Friday
-
New Hampshire24 minutes agoRFK Jr. visits NH to unveil new federal actions to fight Lyme disease
-
New Jersey27 minutes agoMercer County, N.J. enacts new policies to limit ICE arrest activity
-
New Mexico34 minutes agoVirgin Galactic partners with nonprofit for menstruation research in space
-
North Carolina42 minutes agoFamilies in Durham say they’re barely getting by; New report says Americans are saving less
