[imagesource: The Verge]

A national lockdown might not bring everyone together, but it did lead to some commonalities.

For example, everyone took up baking banana bread, although the trend now seems to have shifted to dalgona coffee.

Social media has been rammed with food pictures, as people desperate for online validation are denied the chance to pose on the beach or travel abroad, and Elon Musk is joining in the fun.

He’s been under fire this week for opening Tesla’s Fremont, California, factory, amidst fears that he will expose his staff to unsafe working conditions.

After weeks of tweeting things like ‘FREE AMERICA NOW’. and the confusion around the name of the son he fathered with Grimes, Elon turned to sharing the simple pleasure of a tasty dessert.

Look at this whopper of a sundae:

Ice cream sundae in a martini glass pic.twitter.com/zAVFlOsYkM

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2020

He followed it up with a tweet saying “Life should be lived,” because he will not be stopped from living his best life.

Two things we should cover – damn, that looks good, and did anybody notice the watermark in the photo he posted? See the bottom right below:

It turns out he actually used the photo of a food blogger, from more than three years ago:

Yep, it’s my photo! 🙋🏻‍♀️ I don’t understand how something from over 3 years ago was found, but a few people noticed the watermark and tagged me, although it would’ve been nice for the 100K people who liked the original tweet to know it was originally mine 😕

— Diane (@episodiceater) May 13, 2020

When somebody asked Elon where the photo was taken, he simply replied ‘Buca’.

As Indy100 points out, that’s technically correct, but he’s not exactly being genuine:

The original photo was not taken in the Bay Area, it was taken in, as previously mentioned, West 3rd Street in Los Angeles. This is around a six-hour drive away…

In fact, the only two Buca di Beppo restaurants in the Bay Area are also closed for dine-in options.

So what is Elon actually trying to say? ‘Life should be lived’, but he uses an image, uncredited, from three years ago, featuring a restaurant that isn’ actually open for business at present?

Given the problems facing the world today, this is trivial, but it’s part of a larger picture of Elon going from heralded tech entrepreneur to throwing around ‘pedo guy’ accusations on social media.

CNN covers how the wheels look to be coming off of late:

Increasingly, the risks Musk has been taking are not with his own money, or even his own life, but with the money, careers, reputations and lives of others. And the boundaries that once held him back are caving under the pressure.

This week, the fun CEO from the past has become something different. What that is exactly may depend on your view of him and the current pandemic. Maybe he’s a figure out of an Ayn Rand novel standing up against “sweeping, authoritarian and undemocratic restrictions on individual liberty” that are holding back business and the public, working for the greater good and ensuring that his workers can keep earning a living.

Or maybe he’s just another old-school executive (albeit one who’s very attached to Twitter) demanding that he be allowed to send his non-unionized factory workers back to assemble cars at potential risk to their health and in violation of orders from the local health department in service of no greater purpose than his company’s profits.

He did open that factory with the permission of local officials, under new safety guidelines, but some workers say they’re being pressured to return to work.

Perhaps, eventually, all billionaires turn into villains. You only need to look at the current backlash against Bill Gates, driven by conspiracy theories and political agendas, to see that even the best intentions usually end in public backlash.

It’s sad to see Musk, who has had such success and broken new ground in the past, become just another billionaire statistic.

[sources:indy100&cnn]