--- title: "Elon Musk Got One-Shotted by an Extremely Mean Tweet" description: "Elon Musk had his personality effortlessly deconstructed by an 87-year-old novelist, and didn't take it well." date: "2025-11-11" modified: "2025-11-11" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/future-society/elon-must-one-shotted-mean-tweet" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" --- # Elon Musk Got One-Shotted by an Extremely Mean Tweet ![Elon Musk had his personality effortlessly deconstructed by an 87-year-old novelist, and didn't take it well.]() *MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images* It's probably not a great feeling to get [consistently owned]() on a website you overpaid billions of dollars for. X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk suffered a mini-meltdown over the weekend after receiving a deadly broadside from an esteemed literary figure, Joyce Carol Oates, who in a single tweet vivisected his whole persona with cold, surgical brevity. Oates to the broader public is a prolific award-winning author who's written over 60 novels, which is probably more than Musk has read cover to cover in his entire life. But the 87-year-old is also prolific on X, where she routinely shares incisive cultural commentary when she's not knocking down opinionated Philistines a peg or two. On Saturday, she put Musk in the crosshairs after he wrote a [lengthy boast]() about why he deserved his $1 trillion pay package. "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," Oates [wrote](). "In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured," she continued. "The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the 'most wealthy person in the world.'" The roast became an instant hit. Musk promptly sought refuge in the replies of his fans who defended him as smart and well-read, [claiming]() that everything she said "can be shown to be demonstrably false with a simple search." "Oates is a lazy liar and... an abuser of semicolons!" he seethed in [one post](). "Eating a bag of sawdust would be vastly more enjoyable than reading the laboriously pretentious drivel of Oates," he [replied to another]() (if you find it extraordinarily difficult to believe he's actually read one of her books, you're not alone). "Oates is a liar and delights in being mean," Musk also [said](). "Not a good human." Clearly, though, the billionaire had been rattled. Shortly after being accused of being an uncultured buffoon who doesn't watch movies or read books, Musk began posting about watching movies and referencing books. He promptly offered insights like "Great movie," on a tweet about the 2014 actioner "Edge of Tomorrow," and "Fifth Element has great style," on a tweet about the 1997 sci-film "The Fifth Element." (Musk has a penchant for only providing surface level insights into media, often [either]() [missing the point]() and/or betraying the fact that [he's faking it](), such as his [faux pas]() of referring to the protagonist of the classic sci-film "Blade Runner" (1982) as the "Bladerunner.") He also made a [post]() referencing a famous Voltaire quote, somehow tying it in — unconvincingly — with his AI chatbot, Grok. Most astounding of all was this spectacular coincidence: after Oates' roast, users suddenly [began seeing]() [ads that featured Musk]() from a service called "Blinkist," which provides summarized versions of books for people who don't read. The ads claimed that Musk "reads a lot." In the aftermath of Musk crashing out, Oates nonchalantly revealed that her intent wasn't to roast Musk in the first place. "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," she [observed](). **More on Elon Musk:** [*Elon Boasts That His AI Can Generate a Beautiful Woman Saying "I Will Always Love You"*]() ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()