Elon Musk confirms to have previously used a 'secret account' on X where he pretended to be a child
In a slightly baffling turn of events, a lawsuit being levied against Elon Musk has confirmed one of the more persistent rumors since the billionaire bought Twitter (since renamed to X).
The rumor was around a somewhat confusing X account, with the user name @ErmnMusk and the profile name Elon Test, which made a few slightly weird posts in late 2022 to early 2023.
The account was reported to have replied to some major tech figures with non-sequiturs, including asking Michael Saylor, the executive chairman of MicroStrategy, "Do you like Japanese girls?", and telling Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky: "I wish I was old enough to go to nightclubs. They sound so fun."
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When a post talked about the profile's author turning three years old on 4 May 2023, people started to believe that it was Elon Musk role-playing as his then nearly three-year-old son, X Æ A-12.
Some people dismissed that as preposterous, but it was extremely hard to prove, either way - until now.
Musk has confirmed himself in a deposition from the aforementioned lawsuit that the account was indeed his, calling it a "test account".
The lawsuit has been initiated by Ben Brody, after Musk allegedly amplified posts suggesting that Brody played a part in starting a neo-Nazi brawl in Oregon in 2023.
As speculation flew about the identity of some of those involved, and the possibility of a so-called false flag operation to start the brawl, Brody's name was being thrown around on X, and Musk allegedly drew attention to some of those arguments.
Brody, in fact, wasn't even in Oregon at the time, so had nothing to do with any of it, but allegedly found himself subject to abuse and threats as a result, and is now suing Musk for defamation.
On 27 March this year Musk was deposed, and it's the transcript of this deposition which confirms that he's admitted to the Elon Test account being his own, even if it's since been deleted.
In fact, the lawsuit also alleges that Musk deleted the account on the same day that it was included in a discovery motion.
The deposition transcript is available in full via the HuffPost website, for those who want to read it.. At one point, Musk appeared to indicate that he believed Brody's lawyer was the one instigating the lawsuit, rather than Brody himself, arguing that the whole thing was "about you getting a lot of money" from him.
Musk and his legal team are keeping quiet on the lawsuit for now, and it'll be interesting to see how it ends - but for now, the deposition is being fairly widely derided as a bit of a PR disaster for Musk and X.