Sometimes you’re about to reclaim your title as the world’s richest person while, simultaneously, thousands of people on your own social media platform start a movement so that they never have to see your posts again. But only if you’re Elon Musk.
The hashtag #BlockElon was trending on Twitter on Wednesday afternoon, with more than 19,000 tweets from people discussing whether they should opt out of seeing Musk from appearing on their timelines. “[A] daily reminder to block elon musk because its making him mad,” one Twitter user wrote, referencing a report about how Musk reportedly changed Twitter’s algorithm to make his posts appear higher and more often on the service.
“Hashtags are aesthetically repellent but #blockelon is trending and i know that makes him furious so lfg,” wrote the account for rock band eve6, referring to the phrase “let’s go for it.”
“Sick of self-entitled narcissists. Block the clown. #BlockElon,” another user wrote, following it up with several illustrated photos of Musk with a painted face and a red nose.
The mini movement seems to have surfaced in response to reporting that Musk is deeply aware of a decline in views of his posts by other users on the platform, and ordered Twitter engineers—under threat of termination—to create a special system to boost his tweets. As part of their changes, Musk’s tweets are being given extra visibility to countless users on the platform’s “For You” tab. The move was reportedly in response to the CEO’s distress that more people saw a Super Bowl tweet on Sunday from President Joe Biden than they did from the Tesla billionaire himself. Previously, Musk reportedly fired one of Twitter’s principal engineers after the employee said that views of Musk’s tweets were declining because user interest in Musk was declining.
Musk seemed to make fun of his boosted tweets on Tuesday, posting a photo of one woman, who was labeled “Elon’s tweets,” force-feeding milk to another woman, who was labeled “Twitter.”
“Please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh…‘algorithm,’” Musk wrote in a follow-up tweet.
But some Twitter users have had enough of Musk’s omnipresence in their feeds, and are taking matters into their own hands.
Although the Twitter tide—or at least popular opinion—seemed to be turning against Musk on Wednesday, he also was close to reclaiming the title of world’s richest person once more. He had lost the title in December of last year to French businessman Bernard Arnault, head of luxury fashion brand LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. But a recent surge in Tesla shares could put Musk on top once again. Musk’s fortune is now around $184 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and at the time of this writing he is just $3 billion shy of Arnault.
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett round out the rest of the top five richest people.
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