[imagesource: Flickr]

Elon Musk is in denial.

Despite his attempt to rewrite history and claim that the audience was cheering for him, it is unquestionable that he was in fact being booed into oblivion on Sunday night.

“Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” the comedian Dave Chappelle shouted on stage at the Chase Center in San Francisco as Musk joined him for a comedy show.

The CEO was clearly expecting a warm welcome, raising his arms in the air and spinning around as though he’d scored a goal or something, but he was met with very little cheer from the crowd of 18 000, leaving him stuttering and speechless soon after.

The Guardian reported that “for the best part of 10 minutes Musk was given a real-time readout of his current popularity ratings”:

Turns out Twitter can, in fact, be real life. https://t.co/FFpups1yEy pic.twitter.com/41jcZgdDR4

— Steven Goffman (@SteveGoffman) December 12, 2022

The same moment has been shared on YouTube, you know, in case Musk decides to delete the evidence:

It was a bold move of Musk to appear in front of one of the ‘wokest’ audiences in America, in a comedy arena in arguably the most progressive city, San Francisco.

Not to mention it is the city where Musk fired thousands of employees after his $44 billion takeover of Twitter in October and kept the ones who were willing to work “long hours at high intensity”:

“Controversy, buddy,” was Chappelle’s uncharacteristically diplomatic response to Musk as the booing echoed around the auditorium. “Weren’t expecting this, were you?”

…“It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience,” Chappelle said, and this time he wasn’t joking.

Given that Musk had spent the weekend calling for the pandemic health chief Anthony Fauci to be prosecuted, spreading QAnon conspiracies, and making transphobic remarks, the boos were totally appropriate.

For the first time in ages, Elon didn’t have a word to say:

A normally irrepressible Musk seemed to be dumbstruck by the booing. He remained speechless, only opening his mouth to cry for help: “Dave, what shall I say?”

“Don’t say nothing,” Chappelle counseled. “You hear that sound, Elon? That’s the sound of pending civil unrest.”

Amazing:

Was at the Dave Chapelle show at SF tonight and who comes on but Elon Musk!

A good 80% of the stadium boos. 18k people. and he withers. Like absolutely turns into a corncob.

“What should I say??” He says

Dave tries to salvage the situation but to no avail

— james yu (@jamesjyu) December 12, 2022

Apparently, he did eventually yell “I’m rich, bitch!” awkwardly, parroting a famous line from the comedian’s old show, per BuzzFeed News.

On Monday morning, he was back to business as usual, reassuring his Twitter followers with fake news that the crowd had in fact been “90% cheers & 10% boos”.

Of course, he was off the mark, per the writer James Yu’s tweet above.

Chappelle got a little annoyed with the audience, shouting at them to “Shut the fuck up with your boos,” adding that, “booing is not the best thing you can do”.

Yeah, well, buying Twitter and then reinstating some of the world’s worst people is definitely not the best thing you can do.

[source:guardian&buzzfeed]