X, the smoldering wasteland of a social media platform formerly known as Twitter, is basically the wild, wild west at this point, and if there’s one gunslinger you don’t want to cross, it’s Joyce Carol Oates. The celebrated author is one of the most prolific posters remaining on the website, providing a relentless stream of incisive commentary on all manner of subjects. Having often criticized President Trump and his cronies, she turned the glare of her attention to DOGE czar and X overlord Elon Musk.
On Saturday, responding to a screenshot of Musk getting defensive about Tesla, Oates wrote:
“So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates— scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated , uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’”
Musk, who recently had to put a prompt into his Grok Imagine AI in order to hear a woman say “I will always love you,” was disgruntled by the writer’s representation of his lack of personality. “Oates is a liar and delights in being mean. Not a good human,” he complained, adding in another post, “Eating a bag of sawdust would be vastly more enjoyable than reading the laboriously pretentious drivel of Oates.” He then spent the rest of the weekend replying to film stan accounts with comments like, “Man On Fire is great!” and “Fifth Element has great style.” See? He’s not owned! He’s not owned!
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Unfortunately for Elon, schadenfreude protocols had already been activated, and the Joyce Carol Oates take-down has already been circulating in anti-Musk circles with much relish. It even now comes with a commentary track from the creator herself. “Truly it was out of curiosity: why a person with unlimited resources exhibits so little appreciation or even awareness of the things that most people value as giving meaning to life,” Oates later explained. “Just minimally well to do people donate to charities, local museums & libraries & the like; they support the commonweal. & unlike the very wealthy these people pay high income taxes.”
Still, she’ll give him one thing: “It is impressive that Elon Musk allows critical commentary of himself on X,” she wrote in a separate post. “That is not usually a magnanimity of spirit commensurate with the extreme type of non-empathetic person.” So true—and other X users should feel welcome to follow her example and post their most psychologically scorching observations of Elon Musk, as a celebration of freedom of speech.
