Overview
- Oates argued that Musk seldom shows ordinary joys or cultural interests in his feed and wrote that he seems “totally uneducated, uncultured.”
- Musk replied on X by calling her “a liar” who “delights in being mean” and said reading her work is “laboriously pretentious drivel.”
- Oates later said she was genuinely curious why someone with “unlimited resources” displays so little visible appreciation for things that give life meaning.
- The clash followed scrutiny of Musk’s xAI Grok Imagine clips, including an AI-generated woman saying “I will always love you” and a Sydney Sweeney likeness saying “You are so cringe.”
- After the criticism Musk posted brief endorsements of films such as Man on Fire and The Fifth Element, which observers interpreted as attempts to display cultural taste.