Rug Pull: Musk’s Martian Myth Falls Apart
The narcissism and dishonesty of elites has never been so clearly exposed.
For a quarter of a century, South African immigrant Elon Musk has promoted the narrative that humanity must become “multi-planetary” in order to “preserve the light of consciousness.” This has been his central argument for investors and the federal government to give SpaceX billions of dollars to “Occupy Mars.”
Nevertheless, on Super Bowl Sunday, in the midst of an attempt by MAGA to create a culture war out of Bad Bunny’s heartwarming, record-breaking halftime show, Elon Musk tweeted that they have discovered Mars is much farther than the Moon.
This is one of the most death-defying rug pulls in human history. Musk has raised tens of billions from investors, and captured millions of very online imaginations with his existential mission to populate the Red Planet. And his cultish followers stayed with him, despite his endlessly moving the goalposts.
In 2016, Musk predicted he would have people on Mars by 2025.
In 2025, Musk reaffirmed: “we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.”
In 2026, Musk said colonizing Mars “will take 20+ years” because of the “iteration cycle” and will “shift focus” to the Moon.
The obvious reason for this sudden reversal is that Musk’s company SpaceX is scheduled to go public this summer at an astronomical trillion dollar valuation, and therefore has to actually explain the company’s plans and business model for the first time.
But the Mars fantasy has always been scientifically ridiculous. It was always just a story. What we’re seeing is reality meeting alternate reality in real-time.
As someone who has interacted with many thousands of Elon Musk enthusiasts/cultists online, I can tell you, they aren’t taking the news very well.
Musk’s Mars LARP (live action role play) has been a central pillar of his self-image since he was a child. His father named him after “The Elon” in Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun’s book, Marsprojekt. Many of Musk’s ideas come from this story.
Mars has also been a repeated narrative in Musk’s relationship with Trump, who, depending on whether Elon was in the doghouse or not, repeated the Mars fantasy on numerous occasions. Musk wore his “OCCUPY MARS” t-shirt at one infamous event, where he was reportedly extremely high on ketamine.
Notably, the Russians were planning to help Elon Musk with his boondoggle, with Putin’s lead negotiator Kirill Dmitriev announcing joint projects with SpaceX last year.
Nevertheless, despite 25 years of selling the same story, Musk has simply reversed course on a dime and expects everyone to nod and move along. The hubris, narcissism, and lack of shame of the elite class has never been so clearly exposed.
I believe this is another serious crack in the meta-narrative that toppled American democracy: the absurd notion that combining MAGA and the broligarchy was the solution to the price of eggs.
It’s all one big rug pull.
But it’s not just Musk’s Martian myth, here are some related false narratives pushed by Musk and his well-funded army of propagandists that are in serious danger of breaking down:
Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin are a serious alternative to the financial system
Chatbots (LLMs) will reach AGI (artificial general intelligence) soon
Trillions spent on “data centers” are a good investment
Full self-driving cars and robotaxis are right around the corner
Humanoid robots will be the most important product ever and will save Tesla
X is “free speech,” not foreign interference and propaganda
DOGE was there to “find waste, fraud, and abuse,” not steal our data
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks and the PayPal Mafia are technology geniuses who want the best for America
It’s always been total bullshit, an interlocking set of science fiction stories delivered with the confidence of a messianic narcissist psychopath.
And it’s not just Musk, the general attitude of the technology industry can be summed up by this terrifying Super Bowl ad by Ring, which ensures that I will never purchase one of their products, ever.
The ad purports to be an uplifting story of a dog being reunited its family, and shows the entire neighborhood turning into a single surveillance system using AI. It is a metaphysically perfect example of the panopticon—a world of total surveillance—being sold as a wonderful futuristic world.
In other ads during the Super Bowl, a rogue AI is shown taking over a house and trying to murder Chris Hemsworth, while another showed an AI therapist suddenly promoting escort services—a shot across the bow at OpenAI for adding ads to ChatGPT.
None of it landed well with the public—an enormous amount of money spent to show us that our worst fears about technology are true. In aggregate, it all feels like there is the potential for a true inflection point in the American zeitgeist. No one is buying their stories anymore.
The words of Ben Franklin have never been more apt:
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
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All cults are built on a con. It's the point of control. As people get smarter and the con gets dumber, is the failure recipe we crave. I hear Bad Bunny has the DOJ looking to indite, because the halftime show was lewd. No one stopping him now. Lets see Bondi and her smarmy mouth on the love Bunny.
“… South African immigrant Elon Musk…” ✅