Well isn’t this lovely? Tech billionaire Elon Musk referred to one of the divers who assisted in the rescue of the soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand of being a pedophile in retaliation for being questioned about the efficacy of his self-made rescue submarine.
Yes, you read that correctly. He made the reference in a series of now-deleted Twitter replies, first implying that it was “sus” that diver Vern Unsworth lived in Thailand:
And then outright calling Unsworth a “pedo guy”:
When called out on the “pedo” remark, Musk doubled down on it:
This outburst was in response to a widely-circulated video in which Unsworth – upon being prompted by a CNN interviewer – says that Musk should “stick his submarine where it hurts” and that it had “absolutely no chance of working.”
Cave rescuer on Musk: “It was a PR stunt. It had no chance of working.” pic.twitter.com/uPgRMQLkRx
— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) July 13, 2018
In the video, Unsworth goes on to allege that Musk’s effort was just a PR stunt, and that he was “very quickly” asked to leave the rescue site when he showed up with his submarine, which had been cobbled together from rocket parts at SpaceX.
Easily the least gratifying part of the incredible cave rescue has been the discourse around Musk in the wake of it all.
Musk megafans – who are a particularly wonderful genre of angry online dude – argue that the billionaire should not be criticised for attempting to help, even though his efforts ended up being pretty neutral in the actual rescue. On the other hand, critics say that it was never more than PR bluster, and Musk was taking advantage of a real-life and potentially tragic situation to boost his profile.
It’s probably a little of column A and a little of column B, but Elon’s case is not particularly helped by his consistently hot-headed response to criticism, which is something you might expect to receive when you have billions of dollars. Lashing out and calling a guy who was actually part of the rescue operation in a measurable way a pedophile is probably not a great move!
It hasn’t been a good week for Elon overall. Amidst the horrorshow that is his Twitter account, it was revealed by public accountability organisation ProPublica that Musk donated nearly $40,000 to a conservative group focused on ensuring that Republicans control the House of Representatives – perhaps not great optics when you’re trying to maintain a look as someone on the frontline of the battle against climate change.
In an interview with Bloomberg just a week ago, Musk said he would try and temper his Twitter usage.
“I have made the mistaken assumption — and I will attempt to be better at this — of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season,” he said. “And that is my mistake. I will correct it.”
That went well!
