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Award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates shredded billionaire Elon Musk on his X platform over the weekend — and social media users couldn’t help but delight over her roast. Musk — in a lengthy post on Friday — took aim at Texas state Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D) for criticizing a massive, Tesla stockholder-approved pay package that could give the billionaire a chance to become the world’s first trillionaire. Oates — who quoted a post from a user seemingly backing Musk’s take — addressed what she finds “so curious” about “such a wealthy man.” "[He] never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates,” wrote the author on Saturday. “Scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history.” She continued, “In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’” Musk has gone on to attack the author, declaring that “eating a bag of sawdust would be vastly more enjoyable” than reading her “laboriously pretentious drivel” before calling her a “liar” who “delights in being mean.” He’s also notably replied to a number of posts about movies in the days since. Oates, in a post on Monday, wrote that her initial comments were “out of curiosity” as to “why a person with unlimited resources exhibits so little appreciation or even awareness of the things that most people value as giving meaning to life.” “It is impressive that Elon Musk allows critical commentary of himself on X,” she wrote in a separate post. “That is not usually a magnanimity of spirit commensurate with the extreme type of non-empathetic person.” Users on BlueSky celebrated Oates’ roast including one who flagged screenshots of ads on X indicating that Musk “reads a lot.”
