At 87, Joyce Carol Oates isn’t pulling punches, especially not when it comes to Elon Musk. The acclaimed author has spent the past week dismantling the billionaire on X with observations so cutting that they’ve sparked a cultural moment.
Oates accused Musk of being “joyless” and “uncultured,” which led to a public meltdown from the Tesla CEO and a flood of memes across X and Bluesky.
What happened between Elon Musk and Joyce Carol Oates?
The beef started with the news that Tesla shareholders voted to approve a trillion-dollar bonus for Elon Musk if the company meets its high-performance goals within a specific time frame. If it reaches certain financial milestones, the X owner will become the world’s first trillionaire.
On Nov. 6, 2025, Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez took the opportunity to post about the affordability issue.
“Elon Musk wants to become a trillionaire off the backs of American taxpayers while we are struggling just to pay for groceries,” he wrote.
The next day, Musk fan Stefanie Tyler quote-tweeted the state senator with a screenshot of a Musk tweet claiming he had been given nothing all his life, despite documented financial support from his wealthy parents and the fact that he is the world’s richest individual.
Then came Oates.
“So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates—scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history,” she said.
“In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’”
Oates is not the first to suggest that Musk is secretly miserable and empty on the inside, but perhaps the most successful. The mind behind Hyperloop couldn’t help but respond, calling her a “lazy liar” and “mean” in multiple posts.
Joyce Carol Oates: 1, Elon Musk: still coping
Of course, responding to Oates’ thoughts only spread the word further. Musk critics on X delighted in seeing the author clearly hurting the billionaire’s feelings. Oates continued to post about how sad and pathetic Musk is as her followers discussed the matter.
Bangers like “whatever club he’s invited to join has been devalued by the invitation” and asking “why a person with unlimited resources exhibits so little appreciation or even awareness of the things that most people value as giving meaning to life” were met with cheers across platforms.
As Musk haters observed the man lashing out at Oates in response, proving that her accusations caused him further suffering, they began to spread the idea that he doesn’t read or even watch the movies he claims to love. That tweet in which Musk seemed to reveal that he thinks Blade Runner is the main character’s name resurfaced.
It wasn’t long before they noticed that Musk was suddenly spending a lot of time commenting on popular media. He replied to posts about films like Edge of Tomorrow and Man on Fire with his usual brilliant input, like “Great movie” and “Man on Fire is great!”
By Monday, book-related apps like Blinkist were conveniently putting out articles on how Musk “reads a lot.” X user @dogprom_2 joked that Oates “BBQ’d his illiterate a** so bad he’s pushing ads about how he reads books actually.”
Here come the Oates-Musk memes
At this point, word had spread to Bluesky—the app made for people desperate to flee what was then called Twitter after Musk took over. On both platforms, all who despise the Tesla CEO reveled in the resulting memes.
The best are the ones that reference movies Musk probably hasn’t seen.
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