Elon Musk is one of the most divisive and notorious figures in the world of tech today, and part of the reason why he is so prominent and notorious has to do with his presence on social media. While for the most part he does seem to be using his social media accounts to do good such as donating to charities and the like, sometimes his use of social media can be considered to be toxic or even downright dangerous as he abuses the power that he has.
An example of the latter involves Musk’s online sparring with a cave diver by the name of Vernon Unsworth. Back when the group of schoolboys was trapped in a cave in Thailand, Musk tried to help which had mixed results. When Unsworth criticized him for these attempts, Musk implied that he was a pedophile to his group of more than thirty million followers, thereby causing quite a bit of emotional distress to Unsworth.
Unsworth filed a suit which Musk welcomed standing by his statement that the British cave diver was a child rapist. The reason that this is important is because of the fact that in the proceedings Musk claimed that he was cash poor, which meant that even though he is worth a lot of money most of that money is not liquid and therefore not immediately accessible to him.
In spite of this statement, Musk recently donated a million dollars to an initiative to plant twenty million trees, which was originally started by MrBeast. While this does seem like a good use of his money since really rich people should ideally be using their finances to make the world a better place, it seems odd that Musk would do this after claiming that he did not have that many liquid assets since it casts aspersions on this claim.
Read next: 94 percent of NGOs agree that social media is effective for online brand awareness
Photo: Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
An example of the latter involves Musk’s online sparring with a cave diver by the name of Vernon Unsworth. Back when the group of schoolboys was trapped in a cave in Thailand, Musk tried to help which had mixed results. When Unsworth criticized him for these attempts, Musk implied that he was a pedophile to his group of more than thirty million followers, thereby causing quite a bit of emotional distress to Unsworth.
Unsworth filed a suit which Musk welcomed standing by his statement that the British cave diver was a child rapist. The reason that this is important is because of the fact that in the proceedings Musk claimed that he was cash poor, which meant that even though he is worth a lot of money most of that money is not liquid and therefore not immediately accessible to him.
In spite of this statement, Musk recently donated a million dollars to an initiative to plant twenty million trees, which was originally started by MrBeast. While this does seem like a good use of his money since really rich people should ideally be using their finances to make the world a better place, it seems odd that Musk would do this after claiming that he did not have that many liquid assets since it casts aspersions on this claim.
Ok, sounds legit, will donate 1M trees— Treelon (@elonmusk) October 29, 2019
— MrBeast (@MrBeastYT) October 30, 2019
Read next: 94 percent of NGOs agree that social media is effective for online brand awareness
Photo: Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
