Confirmation Bias
Elon Musk has finally confirmed what many have long suspected — that he has at least two burner accounts on the social media site he disastrously acquired, X-formerly-Twitter.
The unmasking of the burners occurred, as court transcripts reveal, during Musk’s deposition last month as part of a California-based defamation case brought by a young Jewish man who he falsely accused of being involved in a neo-Nazi brawl in Oregon last year.
One of the accounts, @ErmnMusk, was first reported by Vice in April 2023 as a very likely Musk burner. Using it, Musk regularly tweeted all manner of bizarreness, from discussing a toddler’s desire to go to a nightclub to joking that he will “finally turn 3” on May 4, which happens to be the day his and Grimes’ son X Æ A-12 was born.
During the March deposition — which Musk unsuccessfully tried to keep from going public, by the way — lawyers for plaintiff Ben Brody asked Musk about the @ErmnMusk account, to which he responded affirmatively that it belonged to him but insisted it was a “test account.”
“I would not use this account,” the multi-hyphenate billionaire said during the proceedings. “It was just used for testing.”
Although the account does use “Elon Test” as a display name, though, it’s unclear what kind of testing it would be used for — especially considering that Musk revived it on March 27, the same day he was deposed, to post a bunch of bad jokes and takes.
Oh Baby
While Musk’s confirmation that he runs the @ErmnMusk account is already a big enough deal, he also let slip that he has a second burner — though to be fair, that one may already have been known to his acolytes.
During the deposition, Musk maintained that although he “briefly used” @ErmnMusk “as a test account,” he had another as well — but it appears that the court’s transcript might have misrecorded its name.
“There are only two accounts that I use regularly,” the 52-year-old shitposter said. “One is my main account, and the other is baby smoke 9,000.”
To date, no “baby smoke 9,000” account appears to exist. But as Rolling Stone reports, it does sound a lot like @babysmurf9000 , which is another long-suspected Musk burner that he may have let slip during a live stream.
As the crypto blog Coinmonks reported last year, the X owner dropped the name during an October live stream, and soon after, blockchain nerds began making possibly scammy “baby smurf 9,000” meme coins.
While there were other noteworthy admissions during Musk’s deposition, including that he seems to acknowledge that his penchant for public outbursts are “self-inflicted wounds” that harm his bottom line, it’s still wild to have these burners confirmed in such an official setting — and it makes you wonder what else he’s keeping secret.
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