Mr. Elon Musk,
As a satire website, Hard Drive prides itself on delivering our readers funny, insightful, and often searing comedy about video games and the culture around them. But that mission does not shield us from responsibility, and we will always be the first to admit when we’ve gone too far. With that in mind, Hard Drive would like to formally apologize for dragging Mr. Musk so hard that not even his nearly 100 million Twitter followers could save him from getting ratioed several times in the span of 20 minutes.
The regrettable incident happened on May 30 — Memorial Day, disrespectfully — when Elon Musk shared a screenshot on Twitter of a woke Hard Drive article “Zodiac Killer Letter Solved by Opening it with VLC Media Player.” The image, shared without a link to the corresponding article, was cropped to cut out the Hard Drive watermark that appears on every one of our header images.
We initially let our emotions get the better of us when we responded with “hey i’ll give you a horse if you stop cropping our name off our articles.”
hey i'll give u a horse if u stop cropping our name off our articles https://t.co/QnNfyiNYs3
— Hard Drive (@HardDriveMag) May 30, 2022
We not only apologize for that clapback, but for the fact that we used it to reference reports that Elon Musk allegedly sexually harassed a SpaceX flight attendant by showing his penis to her and offering to buy her a horse. We should have kept our mouths shut, much like the flight attendant Musk allegedly harassed, who was reportedly paid $250,000 by SpaceX to stay silent on the claim in a severance agreement.
We have to admit that we were stunned when Mr. Musk quickly put us in our place by pointing out that the original joke was only a “6/10.” It was never our intention to write a middling piece of comedy that Mr. Musk would find on the internet and willfully share with his followers. As a video game publication, we understand how serious a 6/10 review is. It’s practically a 0.
We should have stopped there, but we persisted by sharing an article titled “Elon Musk Admits He Wants To Travel to Mars Because No One Hates Him There Yet” — a shameful response that at the time of writing has racked up over 45,000 likes. We apologize on behalf of all 45,000 of these people, as well.
ok well lemme know what you think about this one https://t.co/JIS5vkyms9
— Hard Drive (@HardDriveMag) May 30, 2022
Once again, Mr. Musk tried to put us in our place by pointing out that the joke was “less funny than SNL on a bad day.”
That one hit us hard. This next part is difficult to write.
In response, we shared a picture of Elon Musk’s 2021 appearance on Saturday Night Live — an episode that The Guardian called “brutally awkward” — in which he is dressed as Wario, with the caption “well you’re the expert on SNL’s bad days.” At the time of writing, that post has 62,000 likes, eclipsing Musk’s SNL retort which sits at under 4,000 — despite the fact that Elon Musk has nearly 100 million Twitter followers, while Hard Drive has under 250,000. As Elon Musk said in his riotously funny SNL sketch Gen Z Hospital, “big yikes!”
well you're the expert on SNL's bad days pic.twitter.com/Ysb5oJsRBK
— Hard Drive (@HardDriveMag) May 30, 2022
As Mr. Musk was quick to point out, the reaction serves as a harsh lesson to comedy sites like ourselves. “The reason you’re not funny is because you’re woke,” Musk tweeted shortly after actively sharing a meme that he thought was funny. “Wokism is a lie, which is why no one laughs.” We take that feedback to heart, as we feel it likely explains why Hard Drive was nationally trending on Twitter after the incident. No one is laughing on this dark day.
Ultimately, we hear Mr. Musk’s assessment about woke comedy. When we wrote about the Zodiac Killer, we should have considered that our joke could be potentially alienating to readers who support — or were — the 1960s mass murderer who was never caught by police. Comedy should always leave room for differences of opinion on serial killers and also VLC Media player, which was an unfortunate piece of collateral damage in the exchange.
We hope that Mr. Musk will accept our sincerest apologies. We should have known that it was unwise to go toe-to-toe with a billionaire who’s famous for his ability to deliver epic clapbacks to his critics (like when Mr. Musk called a diver who rescued children from a flooded cave a pedophile). From now on, we vow to put aside petty quarrels and use our platform to highlight issues that really matter — like the reportedly “nightmarish conditions” in Tesla factories, which have been likened to “modern-day sweatshops.”
Sincerely, Hard Drive
