Trolling, as Musk has strongly implied was his intent when making a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration, is limit searching, plain and simple.
It’s what someone does to find out how far they can go before there is significant pushback or real consequences.
It has nothing to do with humor. It’s only marginally funny, and even then only to insecure, cruel onlookers. It’s never funny to those being trolled.
Toddlers do it all the time–it’s part of growing up. How much can I get away with before Mommy and Daddy get really mad?
I can easily imagine Musk, who is both deeply insecure and insatiably power hungry (the two usually go together), thinking to himself: I’ll bet if I go out there and make a Nazi salute, nothing bad will happen to me. The press will excuse it, and I’ll totally trigger the libs.
And he’s right, more or less, though maybe we haven’t yet seen the full consequences.
Musk is probably racist, but I doubt he adheres strongly to any kind of Nazi ideology, or any ideology beyond gaining money, power, and status.
But that’s not the point. His Nazi salute was a test of what people will do if he makes a Nazi salute. He’s trolling us.
So what will we do?
I was already divested from TSLA, but I posted my Bluesky profile as my last Tweet. Small, but if enough people do it, X.com will continue to circle the drain and die. This is less of a consequence than Elon deserves, but it may serve as the limit he’s so desperately searching for.
Give this man some guardrails!
