[imagesource: Twitter / @JeffBezos]

As of earlier this morning, Elon Musk is worth in excess of $300 billion, and Jeff Bezos in excess of $200 billion.

That is to say, neither of them cares one iota about what we say or write about them.

It’s still pretty remarkable that the world’s two richest humans see fit to tweet the sort of things that the average dad would get stick over.

Perhaps they can bury the hatchet as they chew the fat over who tweeted the most cringeworthy thing this week.

Let’s start with Jeff Bezos (or Jeffrey, as the classic song goes), and his attempt at humour.

A video from the LACMA Art+Film Gala showed Bezos’ girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, staring dreamily into the eyes of Leonardo DiCaprio as Bezos awkwardly stood by.

Observe:

Leo is Mr. Steal Yo Girl pic.twitter.com/PkwcRcoFvS

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) November 7, 2021

In response, Bezos made a joke about, I dunno, throwing Leo off a cliff?

Leo, come over here, I want to show you something… @LeoDiCaprio https://t.co/Gt2v9JZTNz pic.twitter.com/KqGLB839NI

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 8, 2021

Bonus cringe points for being shirtless, Jeff.

Not to be outdone, Elon Musk then tweeted at US Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who has been calling for new taxes on billionaires.

Nothing wrong with that, except he chose to say that Wyden’s ‘pp’ (profile picture) looked as if he was post-coitus:

Why does ur pp look like u just came?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2021

Why?

Are the two richest humans in the world trying to once again outdo each other, this time in the cringe stakes?

That tweet actually came after he had gone peak troll, reports VICE:

Musk changed his Twitter screen name to Lorde Edge and his location to Tröllheim.

No one can say but the man himself why Musk does the things he does, but people can speculate. Founder of Dogecoin Billy Markus (who goes by Shibetoshi Nakamoto) tweeted that Lorde Edge is an anagram for “elder doge,” something that is both true and very stupid.

Elon also made headlines this week when he ran a Twitter poll asking if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock:

Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.

Do you support this?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021

As you can see, voters were in favour of the sale.

Here’s the kicker, though, before you laud his selflessness – selling those shares is due to a whopper of a tax bill headed his way.

This via CNN:

The real reason is because Musk is just months out from a deadline to exercise the stock options he received years ago. If he doesn’t use them, he loses them. And if he does exercise his shares, he’s going to face a monster tax bill between nearly $11 billion to as much as $16 billion at current share prices…

Musk received the 22.9 million stock options in question as part of his 2012 compensation package. Those options are due to expire August 13, 2022, making them worthless unless Musk exercises them before the deadline.

Once he exercises, however, those shares would be treated as regular income subject to income tax…

He could also face state taxes on top of the federal bill.

So this flogging of those stocks is less to do with righting the wrongs of tax avoidance (Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018, and in 2017 he paid only $65000), and more to do with prepping for the bill that is headed his way regardless of whether he sells shares or not.

The world’s two richest humans, folks.

[sources:vice&cnn]