Elon Musk And 'Fortnite' Trade Shots On Twitter In Unexpected Meme War

Photo by Ray Tamarra/GC Images

Just in case Fortnite wasn’t popular enough, it got another shoutout from the world’s most controversial tech figure at the moment, Elon Musk, this weekend.

Yesterday, Musk shared a photoshopped screenshot of a QZ article that claimed “Elon Musk buys Fortnite and deletes it,” followed by a fake quote from Musk stating “I had to save these kids from eternal virginity.” Musk shared the image (which I do not believe he created), and said “It had to be done.”

Not wanting to take this lying down, the official Fortnite account (with 6 million followers to Musk’s 22 million) tweeted a month old article about Musk wanting to building a base on Mars in 10 years. Fortnite said “A whole decade @elonmusk? Just build, LOL!” referencing a common “git gud” style Fortnite meme. Musk responded “Reality is hard,” and it appears this feud is over, with Fortnite letting him get the last word so far.

Musk’s tweeting has gotten him in no small amount of hot water the past few weeks, with his most famous tweet about wanting to take Tesla private attracting SEC attention and subsequent fines. This is a less controversial tweet no doubt, though I’m guessing most at Tesla wish he wasn’t tweeting as much overall, even if it is just a goofy meme beef with Fortnite.

FortniteEpic

As for the meme itself, it did strike me as kind of weird to hear the “har har gamers are lifelong virgins” take which now seems very dated in an age when the average gamer is over 30 and games are a bigger industry and movies and television combined. The meme also implies Fortnite isn’t “cool” and will turn off potential partners, and yet in reality, especially among the younger crowd, it’s been the case that you aren’t cool unless you’re playing Fortnite. I’ve heard stories about kids actually being hounded by classmates because they weren’t playing the game, which is kind of the polar opposite of what this meme suggests.

So, could Elon Musk buy Fortnite and delete it? Well, his net worth keeps fluctuating due to Tesla’s stock price, but by last count Musk is worth about $19.7 billion. And while Epic is a private company, the success of Fortnite has estimates making it worth about $8 billion, at least a few months ago. So yeah, if Elon Musk liquidated about half his fortune, he might actually be able to buy Epic Games and then promptly flush that money down the toilet by shuttering its most popular product.

Alright I feel like I’ve explored the depths of this meme war enough, but I’ll update if it escalates any further.

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