It has been widely speculated that Elon, or someone close to him, has operated a large bot farm for the past decade focused on influence operations around his persona.
References online to 'Elon' show a marked difference in bot activity than those that refer to him as 'Elmo.'
Language ambiguity is a good tool to employ against influence operations.
Here, it’s slightly gratuitous, but on Twitter, even pre-Musk Twitter, Musk was one of the people who it was best not actually to name when talking about them, as mentioning his name tended to summon his weird fans. So, nicknames.
> It began as a joke, one of the people said, given the close spelling of the Muppet's name to Musk's own and the irony of Musk's temperamental personality in contrast to that of the kind and curious "Sesame Street" character.
> However, use of Elmo to discuss Musk has become more commonplace in recent weeks, as Musk has turned Twitter into "a dictatorship," one former employee said. There are potentially fewer repercussions from criticizing your billionaire boss if you can argue you were discussing a puppet, not the CEO.
> Elmo is also gaining traction as a nickname for Musk on Twitter itself. Thousands of recent Tweets and comments clearly discussing Musk only mention the Muppet by name. Discussing Musk under his new nickname keeps the CEO from trending and it keeps critics out of his mentions.
Yup what a total muppet. Guy seems to have a problem with names. What
makes me laugh is he just can't make "X" stick. Every time I see it
written X (formerly Twitter) am thinking it's less characters to just
type Twitter. Everyone still calls it Twitter. Only journalists
swallowed the X thing, and they're tiring of it now. Fuck it, just
change the name back to Twitter and admit defeat. Using X in any
sentence looks ridiculous and ambiguous, If people used to tweet what
do they do now? Send kisses?
"The president XXxed (formerly tweeted) yesterday on X (formerly Twitter)..."
sigh
(Could you replace e.g. an "a" with %61 and keep the URL working?)