US election result: Elon Musk leads meme brigade on social media

PTI, Nov 6, 2024, 8:48 PM IST

Elon Musk

X owner Elon Musk led the meme brigade on social media in reacting to the US election results and Donald Trump’s historic victory on Wednesday with a series of posts ranging from acerbic to straight-up mockery.

As initial results started coming in, Musk was among the first who went on a posting spree. He reused his picture from 2022 when he had walked into X’s headquarters with a sink. This time too, he gave the same caption “Let that sink in” but the background setting was inside the White House.

An hour later, he uploaded an image of SpaceX rocket starship with a caption “The future is gonna be fantastic.” Among the other meme doing the rounds was a morphed video of Trump dancing to Ranveer Singh’s “Malhari” from the film “Bajirao Mastani”.

X user Peter Hague, who identifies himself as a solutionist with an astrophysics PhD on his page, posted a picture of Instagram-famous squirrel Peanut, who was euthanised by US officials, with a heading “Tell Kamala. I want her to know it was me.” The Joe Biden administration had come under fire from Trump supporters over the issue.

A user named Rothmus made a reference to Algerian boxer Imane Khelif who won an Olympic gold medal at Paris to post, “I haven’t seen a man beat a woman this bad since the Olympics.” Khelif faced intense scrutiny over misconceptions about her womanhood.

There were many memes that used edited images of Trump celebrating and dancing. One of these was with Musk to the background tune of Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive”.

In another post, Trump is seen carrying two garbage bags with images of Biden and Harris.

During a campaign event, Biden had referred to Trump’s supporters as “garbage”. However, Trump sought to use this to his advantage when he entered a rally site in a garbage truck and asked his supporters, “How do you like my garbage truck? This truck is in honour of Kamala and Joe Biden.” A photo taken during Trump’s stop at a McDonald outlet in Pennsylvania serving fries at the drive-thru was also used with a caption “Bye bye, Kamala” in another post.