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Elon Musk has only managed to accelerate his impressive fall from grace since acquiring the social media platform he rebranded as X, which helped him end up at the center of a lawsuit where that forced him to confirm he was behind a strange burner account on the platform.
It’s been around a year and a half since Elon Musk dropped $44 billion to buy Twitter after spending months attempting to wriggle out of one of the priciest impulse buys imaginable.
Since then, the man who was once viewed as a brilliant technological visionary has committed an impressive number of unforced errors that have torpedoed his reputation, which includes plenty of tweets where he’s pushed demonstrably false narratives and amplified a number of conspiracy theories.
That includes the case of Ben Brody, a college student who was subjected to a tsunami of harassment in 2023 thanks in part to Musk, who posted multiple tweets where he implied Brody was an agent provocateur who infiltrated a far-right gathering in Oregon last summer to spark a brawl the billionaire positioned as a “false flag.”
According to Rolling Stone, Brody—who was actually in California when the incident transpired and was forced to flee his home after being doxxed—decided to file a defamation lawsuit against Musk in October, which resulted in the man best known for his work with Tesla and SpaceX sitting down for a deposition in March.
That led to some interesting revelations, which included an exchange where Musk admitted the questionable posts he’s sent out on a regular basis “may have done more to financially impair the company than to help it”—an admission that comes a few months after Fidelity estimated X has lost 75% of its value since he took over as users flee the platform at a fairly alarming rate.
During the deposition, Musk also confirmed a viral theory that surfaced close to a year ago when he seemingly revealed he was operating a burner account under the handle @ErmnMusk, which he used to post as a two-year-old who bemoaned his inability to get into nightclubs while asking at least one user if they were romantically interested in Japanese girls in some now-deleted messages.
He also acknowledged he was behind another dubbed @babysmurf9000, which he once used to call Mark Cuban an idiot.
Brody is seeking more than $1 million in damages from Musk as the lawsuit continues to wind its way through court.