Wikipedia, Dickipedia, and the Sensitive Musk
Remember the days when Musk was best-known for his Dogecoin tweets? Well, forget about them.
In 2022, Musk took over X now renamed to Twitter, saying that the bird has been freed. One year later, the bird is gone – and so apparently is the image of Elon Musk as a hip and progressive entrepreneur.
These days most of the tweets produced by him either touch upon the wars in Ukraine and Israel – regarding which he issues unsolicited advice and opinion – and seem to be very sensitive to any criticism out there.
This is the case with Wikipedia.
Last week, Musk made two tweets. One showing a screenshot of Wikipedia’s personal appeal from its founder Jimmy Wales with a sleeping emoji in the caption. And the other tweet requoting it with the caption “I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia”, adding that they can “add this to the (emoji for cow) and (emoji for poo) on my wiki page.”
Musk’s tweet. Source: X (Twitter)
What caused this specific tweet is unclear. However, Musk is known for being extremely erratic and revengeful.
In May 2023, Wales criticized Musk’s decision to restrict some content on then-Twitter in light of the tightly-contested presidential elections in Türkiye. Back then, according to Bloomberg columnist Matt Yglesias, the “Turkish government asked Twitter to censor its opponents right before an election and @elonmusk complied.” In response, Musk said, "Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is to have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?"
This tweet was then quoted by Jimmy Wales who wrote “What Wikipedia did: we stood strong for our principles and fought to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won. This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan”
Jimmy Wales’s tweet. Source: X (Twitter)
And that’s just one example of their ongoing feud when the two got into a clash over the word recession after the Biden Administration released subpar economic figures. While Musk said that Wikipedia is losing its objectivity, tagging Wales, the latter replied saying that “reading too much Twitter nonsense is making you stupid.”
While the two are exchanging unflattering remarks, others seem to be capitalizing on their differences. Among them is Smosh, the comedy hub founded by Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla who printed t-shirts with the Dickipedia sign and a line “The free dick encyclopedia.”
They’re priced at $32 apiece. Each purchase includes a $5 donation to the Wikimedia Foundation.
Dickipedia T-shirt. Source: Tubefilter.com
Previously, GN Crypto begged the question of whether Musk is finally ready to face EU’s wrath?
