Elon Musk: Early Tweets Were Absurd
Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated on the Third Row Tesla Podcast on February 9, 2020, that his early tweets were absurd, and the absurdity was not steep because it was absurd from the beginning. He mentioned that he had one of the earliest Twitter accounts when the platform had fewer than 10,000 users. He received messages about what type of latte someone had at Starbucks, which he thought was the silliest thing imaginable, leading him to delete the account. After deleting it, someone else took over the name and began posting in his name.
Bill Lee and Jason Calacanis advised him to use Twitter to communicate, informing him that someone was already using his name to say absurd things. His response was that if absurd things were to be said, they might as well come from him. Subsequently, he began posting for fun to some extent, admitting that those early posts were quite absurd.
He made a comparison in expression: some express themselves through headlines, while he uses Twitter. This statement did not provide posting frequency, readership, or how many more cars the company sold as a result; it only mentioned the account being taken, friends urging him to reclaim his voice, and his casual posting becoming a continuous state.
At the time of the interview, Tesla still communicated with the market through product launches, delivery data, and earnings calls, and Twitter was not yet the company he later acquired. In this recording, he treated the platform as a personal outlet rather than an advertising space. He viewed the impersonation and absurd statements as a reason to re-register, not as grounds for litigation.
The buyers want to hear directly from the founders, investors, and car owners, bypassing press releases, while the sellers still communicate through interviews, press conferences, and public relations channels. This is not an advertising contract; it shifts attention from media schedules to personal timelines. The beneficiaries are the founder accounts that can influence orders and stock price discussions, while the impersonators and PR departments that are used to scheduling statements are under pressure.
He did not provide the date of the account deletion in this interview, nor did he name the person who took over. What can be verified are the two people who urged him to return and that he had registered when there were fewer than 10,000 users but exited due to the trivial nature of the content.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
After selling PayPal, Elon Musk divided his money between SpaceX and Tesla, both of which have long struggled for funding and rely on the founder to maintain the financing narrative. In 2018, he tweeted about considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share, claiming funding was secured, which led to a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, resulting in him stepping down as chairman while retaining the CEO position, and the company paying a fine for this. By the time of this recording in 2020, he had already treated his personal account as a channel to communicate with regulators, short-sellers, and car owners.
Resources did not first buy media space. Bill Lee and Jason Calacanis encouraged him to return, using zero-cost distribution: a single tweet could simultaneously reach order inquiries, recruitment, and funding meetings. The later path became about buying the channel. In 2022, he pushed to acquire Twitter, transforming the previously borrowed platform into one under his control, shifting the risk from impersonation to platform rules.
This is similar to how Steve Jobs turned product launches into a singular narrative and Richard Branson priced the Virgin brand through personal adventures, though they are not at the same stage. Jobs locked expression into keynote speeches, while Branson locked expression into events. Musk, in 2020, was still in a borrowing phase: the platform did not belong to him, nor did the rules, and he described the arc as absurd from the very beginning. Control occurred after the acquisition.
The essence is the transfer of pricing power. In the past, the price of company information was determined by press releases, analyst meetings, and editorial choices. After founders began posting directly, the cost of waiting for interviews became higher than the cost of being misunderstood, and attention pricing shifted to the account itself. The mechanism is not that posts are more accurate, but that financing, deliveries, and recruitment all need to build trust on the same timeline. The impersonators first proved that the name had an audience, prompting him to decide that absurd statements should come from him.