Elon Musk is a prolific Twitter replier. From population collapse to laughing emojis, here are his top replies.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

Picture Alliance/Getty Images

• Out of everyone to helm Twitter as CEO, Elon Musk is by far the most active on the platform.
• Musk engages with users on a daily basis, even replying to tweets from accounts with few followers.
• These are some common phrases and themes found in his replies.

If there's one thing you can give Elon Musk credit for as the CEO of Twitter, it's that he uses the service far more than any of its leaders to come before. Historically, a frequent criticism about Twitter leadership — including its C-suite executives and board members — was that they didn't tweet very often.

And most CEOs active on Twitter largely use the platform to distribute sterile, PR-crafted statements regarding company news.

Musk is much more freewheeling on the social network, which has made him likeable to some but has also had disastrous results. Musk is fighting a legal battle over a tweet he sent in 2018 in which he claimed to have secured funding to take one of his companies, Tesla, private at a price of $420 a share. Plaintiffs say they lost money after buying stock on the announcement before word came out that the deal was still in discussion and not finalized. 

Advertisers have also been concerned about their brands appearing on the platform as Musk loosens up content moderation, with fourth-quarter revenue down 35%, The Information reported.

In using Twitter, Musk is unusual among major leaders in another way: He often tweets in response to regular users who don't have very many followers.

Insider took samplings of Musk's replies between early 2020 and the start of 2023 and searched them for words and phrases that appeared often. Some patterns emerged in the ways in which Musk replied to others. Below are five common themes found in his replies.

Population collapse

Musk has long stated he is concerned about population collapse globally.

Twitter/@elonmusk

Musk has frequently said that the shared mission of all his companies is to advance humanity, be it by reducing emissions in the atmosphere through Tesla or expanding civilization into the stars through SpaceX.

He has also used his replies to highlight his concerns about a societal collapse arising from a declining population.

Musk has 10 known children, most recently fathering two children in 2021 with an executive from his brain-interface company, Neuralink.

Despite conceiving most of his children through fertility treatment, Musk cut fertility benefits at Twitter following his acquisition. According to emails seen by Insider, Twitter informed employees late last year that a benefit covering up to $80,000 in lifetime costs related to various fertility-related needs and treatments, along with the costs of adopting children, was being reduced to a maximum of $40,000.

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2020

🤣💯

Musk frequently uses emojis in his replies on Twitter.

Twitter/@elonmusk

Another Musk-favorite reply uses simple emojis — specifically, the "rolling on the floor laughing" emoji and the "100" symbol. He employs them frequently in response to tweets he finds funny and sometimes to dismiss detractors.

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 19, 2023

"Interesting," "true"

Another standby Musk response is one word: "interesting" or "true." He often uses these to amplify the exposure of tweets in support of his companies or topics of interest to him, such as politics.

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 20, 2023

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2022

Responding to his acolytes

Musk has said he's a big fan of citizen journalism and frequently replies to fans of his who share their own reporting on his companies, such @BillyM2K and the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley group.

He has in the past offered interviews to people and outlets favorable to his companies, including one that ran for more than an hour and included Musk saying that the future of Tesla relied on making its self-driving technology work.  

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022

In this past, he has replied to tweets from @MuskUniversity, which shares quotes from Musk.

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022

Fighting media or government

Musk frequently takes to Twitter to criticize government and the media.

Twitter/@elonmusk

Musk frequently spars with the media and government agencies, and he complains about them on Twitter.

Most recently, he suggested that Twitter was pressured under prior leadership to take down content at the behest of President Joe Biden's campaign. Biden was not yet president nor serving in any office of government at the time, and the campaign was requesting illegal posts be removed, so legal experts have pointed out this issue is not related to the Constitution.

Musk has never been shy of making it clear he is not fond of regulatory oversight. His companies have been the subject of numerous government investigations across the world, including by the Division of Occupational Safety and Health of California and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Earlier in the pandemic, Musk reopened a Tesla factory in Fremont, California, in violation of COVID-19 lockdown rules, and 450 people there contracted the virus afterward, The Washington Post reported. The shutdown helped motivate Musk's decision to move Tesla's headquarters to Texas.

Read the original article on Business Insider

from Business Insider https://ift.tt/4tSZuOq
via IFTTT