Julian Casablancas calls Elon Musk a “bottom-line hungry super-villain”
In a now-deleted Instagram post, Julian Casablancas called out Elon Musk’s recent Twitter turmoil. The social media platform recently rolled out its Twitter Blue paid subscription, which allowed users to pay for blue verification badges and resulted in multiple accounts impersonating public figures.
The Strokes frontman, who also changed his Instagram bio to “Fake Twitter Julian”, posted a photo and caption falsely attributed to Ryan Gosling in his Elon call-out.
“PS dear Rober Baron asshole who makes butt ugly ass cars and thinks billionaires show pay no taxes… (elon musk),” he wrote in a caption which Stereogum captured before he deleted the post. “Maybe twitter could deal if you didn’t (like a typical ceo asshole bottom-line hungry super-villain) fire half your staff. What a great symbol for 2020s pieces of shit.”
Last month (October 28) Musk completed his takeover of Twitter Inc, becoming the platform’s new owner and instantly firing numerous top executives at the company including CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.
Last week, Twitter made nearly half of its employees redundant in a bid to drastically reduce costs. Taking to his Twitter account to defend the layoffs, Musk said that it was a necessary move when the network is losing $4 million a day.
According to The New York Times, Musk also recently warned employees that “the economic picture ahead is dire”, adding that the company was running a negative cash flow of several billion dollars. “Bankruptcy is not out of the question,” he reportedly added.
Many film and TV stars have announced their decisions to quit the site following Musk’s controversial takeover, which has led to a rapid increase in hateful posts on the platform. The use of the N-word, for example, increased by 500 per cent in a 12-hour period following Musk’s $44billion (£38billion) acquisition.