Elon Musk, the billionaire who wants nothing more in life than to be adored by legions of fans, was loudly booed by a crowd in San Francisco on Sunday night after being invited on stage by comedian Dave Chappelle. And the images are pretty crude, even if you don’t particularly like Musk.
“Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world,” Chappelle said toward the end of his set at Chase Center.
The crowd erupted in a mix of cheers and boos, before the boos clearly won out, according to footage posted on Twitter. The boos grew louder as Musk walked around the stage with a microphone in hand. Musk started pacing and waving, clearly not knowing what to do with such a negative reaction.
“Cheers and boos, I see. Elon…” Chappelle said.
“Hey Dave,” Musk replied, prompting another wave of boos from the crowd.
“Looks like some of the people you fired are in the audience,” Chappelle joked.
“All those booing people, and I’m just pointing out the obvious, you have terrible seats,” Chappelle said, seemingly trying to salvage Musk’s dignity by calling the booing people poor.
Phones weren’t allowed inside the stadium for the show, but at least one person slipped into theirs and captured the bizarre exchange, posting it on Twitter.
Chappelle tried to salvage the encounter, according to a second video posted on Twitter, joking, “His whole business model is Earth shit, I’m leaving anyway.”
“What kind of pussy do they have up there?” That’s what we’re going to do,” Chappelle said, according to the video.
After Chappelle’s jokes about “titty bars” in space, the crowd seemed to be properly won over and Musk started talking again.
“Thank you for getting me on stage,” Musk said awkwardly to more boos.
“The first comedy club on Mars…” Chappelle said, as Musk stood there, awkwardly, simply saying “yeah.”
While the laughs at Chappelle’s jokes were drowned out by boos every time Musk tried to speak, the comedian said people could boo all they wanted because Musk had given him a jetpack last Christmas.
But every time Musk started speaking, the crowd started booing again, much to Musk’s frustration.
“Dave, what should I say? Musk said, clearly desperate and embarrassed by the roar of boos.
” Do not say anything. It will only ruin the moment,” Chappelle said. “Do you hear that sound, Elon? It’s the sound of ongoing civil unrest. I can’t wait to see which store you kill next, motherfucker. You shut your mouth.
The mood in the stadium definitely changed when Chappelle started to become hostile to Musk’s defense.
“I wish everyone in this auditorium peace and the joy of feeling free,” Chappelle said, clearly exhausted that getting Musk on stage was such a failure. “And your pursuit of happiness. Amen.”
At that point, Chappelle clearly decided to throw in the towel, thanking the crowd and saying good night, but a third video shows Chris Rock joining the stage with a few other people.
Chappelle asks one of the men on stage to shout the catchphrase from his 2000s sketch show, “I’m rich, bitch,” into the microphone. The man dutifully complies, then says “wait, wait,” while handing the microphone to Musk, clearly wanting him to say the same thing. Musk does, in the most goofy tone you could imagine. The crowd erupts in boos again, only drowned out by someone from the stadium’s sound department honking some sort of horn.
It’s hard to tell from the videos precisely what percentage of the crowd booed during the goofy episode, but some on social media estimated it was the vast majority of people in the stadium of 18,000 squares.
“Was at the Dave Chapelle show in SF tonight and who comes but Elon Musk! A good 80% of boos from the stadium. 18,000 people. and it dries up. Like absolutely turns into a corn cob. ‘What should I say??’ He says Dave is trying to save the day but to no avail,” Sudowrite founder James Yu tweeted.
“Obviously it’s easy to play in the chair afterwards, but at least say something. ‘Thanks. Now pay me $8 and the mic drop would have been laughable. He mumbled something about being in a simulation, but he felt totally disconnected from the crowd,” Yu explained.
Musk, who used to have a rather bipartisan appeal in the United States, presented himself as a right-wing jerk in the short time he owned Twitter. Musk bought Twitter, along with a number of investors, for $44 billion in late October, when he almost immediately prompted severe layoffs.
Musk has also attempted to woo some of the worst people on the internet lately, tweeting over the weekend that his “pronouns” are “Prosecute/Fauci.” The tweet is apparently both a “joke” about trans people and a reference to the far-right belief that Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, was somehow responsible for the covid-pandemic. 19 that hit the whole world.
Obviously, San Francisco is known as a liberal city and it wouldn’t be a big surprise for a Bay Area crowd to boo the richest man in the world. But it’s not like it’s a mob of antifa supersoldiers or anything. Those in attendance were there to see Dave Chapelle, a man who recently came out as an anti-trans zealot. Chris Rock was also a headliner, according to local press.
Perhaps the crowd was made up of the thousands of people Musk fired from Twitter, as Chappelle joked. It certainly seems like a very real possibility, given the response. But honestly, Musk has been such an asshole for so many different reasons lately, it’s hard to put it down. Musk has also directed his hostility against former employees, some of whom chose to stay with the company after Musk’s initial purge, such as Yoel Roththe former head of trust and safety at Twitter.
Musk made an absolutely baseless suggestion that Roth was in favor of child sexualization, an apparent ploy to invent his own QAnon mythology that the billionaire is on a quest to personally end the exploitation of children around the world. In reality, Musk has gutted the Twitter team that monitors child exploitative material, according to Wired UK.
Musk might not face real consequences in his life, like when he ran off calling baseless a pedophile– given his enormous wealth, but all the money in the world can’t buy you the genuine adoration of the crowd. Maybe Musk should stick to his safe space on Twitter. He paid $44 billion for it, after all. And he’s getting a lot of love from weird nerds who want nothing more than to be near his wealth, even if it’s digital. Unfortunately for Musk, the Chase Center in San Francisco has no lock button.