They’re now worth nearly two hundred times that, and they expire in August 2022. In 2012, Musk was awarded Tesla stock options: 22.8 million shares at $6.24 apiece. The gesture appeared democratic, an act of civic duty, even magnanimity, in response to the urging of his ‘people’.īut that isn’t the full story. Do you support this?’ When 58 per cent of respondents said ‘yes’, he proceeded to sell some of his stock. On 6 November, Musk put a poll on Twitter: ‘Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. And his dickish online persona is a useful lens for examining larger myths about wealth in our time. One response would be to ignore him, but since his entitlements come at the public’s expense, with his companies gobbling up ever more government subsidies and tax breaks, we can’t just pretend he doesn’t exist.
Rich men – and no one is currently richer than Musk – still flaunt their wealth with overpowered cars or yachts, but they also now have Twitter, and we have to decide how to respond to Musk’s vanity rocket thrusting into our feeds whenever he says something clever, mean, childish or self-serving, which is every day. Musk is a master at publicity, and the image is a provocation, to encourage more admirers or haters to pour into his timeline. It’s a sly wink at his stans, the fanbase who make up the core of his 64 million Twitter followers. It’s a nod to his work with SpaceX, but it’s also clearly a penis. His profile picture is a photo of a rocket, elongated and cylindrical, silhouetted against the sky. At least, that’s the image the Tesla and SpaceX CEO likes to project on Twitter.