The New Yorker:
As Tesla’s profits drop, a group called Everyone Hates Elon is going viral for plastering London with fake advertisements for the company, infiltrating a car showroom, and inviting the public to trash a Model S.
By Anna Russell
Perhaps you’re an American waiting at a bus stop, in a country not your own, ruminating on the limits of democracy at home. A bus passes, and then another. You’re feeling low and, frankly, a little pissed off. (Perhaps you’re also running late. You’re always running late.) What could make you feel incrementally better? Doomscrolling, you see: federal layoffs, foreign-aid cuts, the dangers of A.I., a flurry of angry social media posts made at 3 a.m. You look closer at an advertisement on the side of the bus stop. “elon musk is a bellend. Signed, the UK,” it reads, using rude British slang for a male anatomical part. Aha!
This spring, as Musk has busied himself dismantling parts of the United States government, signs of discontent with the world’s richest man have stealthily appeared across London’s public-transport network. On the Tube, a fake advertisement for Tesla showed Musk doing a gesture widely received as a Nazi salute alongside the company’s plummeting stock price, with the caption “Hate Doesn’t Sell. Just Ask Tesla.” Another, plastered over a bus stop in Clerkenwell, in central London, featured Musk and Donald Trumptogether with a Tesla, and read “Autopilot for your car. Autocrat for your country.” On a bus stop in East London’s Bethnal Green, a sign branded Tesla “the Swasticar,” and announced that the vehicle “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 Seconds.” “Now With White Power Steering,” another read. The displays, though convincing, are not officially sanctioned. A spokesperson for Transport for London told me, in an e-mail, “These posters were not authorised by TfL nor our advertising partners and we have instructed our teams and contractors to remove any that are found on our network.”
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