Tesla CEO Elon Musk got into a bizarre argument on Twitter after being called out for not crediting the artist behind a piece of video game fan art
- Tesla CEO Elon Musk is an active Twitter user, and he often responds directly to people messaging him publicly.
- After posting an image of fan art from a video game without credit, some folks began calling out Musk for not sourcing the artist who created the image.
- Musk responded bizarrely - he argued that people should "always credit everyone," then said "no one should be credited with anything ever." He subsequently deleted the tweets and claimed he had deleted his Twitter account.
- He didn't delete his Twitter account.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is very active on Twitter, for better or worse. But this past weekend, his account took a turn to the bizarre.
It started when he posted fan artwork of a character named "2b" from the video game "Nier Automata" - the tweet simply had the character's name and nothing else. The fan artwork wasn't credited to anyone in particular, and people started calling out Musk for not crediting the artist.
Here's the since deleted tweet:
Posting the artwork without credit was a small mistake that's easily forgiven.
Where things got bizarre was when Musk started responding to people with statements like, "always credit everyone," followed by "no one should be credited with anything ever."
Perhaps most strange of all, Musk said, "I wish people would stop crediting artists on twitter when any fool can find out who the artist was in seconds. It's destroying the medium."
Musk appears to be trolling the folks who criticized him for not crediting the artist of the video game-inspired art.
The female French artist in question, Meli Magali, has received an outpouring of support following her sudden exposure through Musk's tweet.
"Today I had a lot of messages #Elonmusk, I would like to say thank you for your wonderful messages and support. You're awesome and made me shine," she wrote.
Perhaps most bizarre of all, Musk followed this up by deleting his tweets - including the original one with the fan art from the video game - and then announced, "Just deleted my Twitter account."
He did not, in fact, delete his Twitter account.
A spokesperson for Musk did not immediately respond to request to Business Insider's for comment on Musk's behavior.