Musk drops a bombshell and proves there’s nothing boring about his company
Billionaire Elon Musk dropped a surprise early in his hotly anticipated turn as host of Saturday Night Live, saying in his monologue that he “is the first person with Asperger’s” to host the show, before clowning through skits for the first global live stream of the comedy show.
“At least the first to admit it,” continued the billionaire, making light of his tendency to speak in a monotone, adding: “I’m pretty good at running human in emulation mode.”
Asperger syndrome is a condition on the autism spectrum associated with difficulty in social interaction and is sometimes referred to as high-functioning autism.
Comedian and Saturday Night Live alumni Dan Aykroyd has spoken in interviews about being diagnosed with a mild form of Asperger’s. He hosted the show in 2003.
Many had wondered how Musk would handle himself during a live comedy show. The answer was that he and the show’s writers sought to soften the rough edges of Musk’s public persona.
Throughout, Musk gently poked fun at himself, including his penchant for provocative tweets and the time he smoked a joint on a podcast.
“To anyone I’ve offended, I just want to say I reinvented electric cars and I’m sending people to Mars on a rocket ship. Did you say I would be a chill, normal dude?”
Musk’s mother, Maye, joined him on stage and the two made a joke about Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency Musk has touted. Cryptocurrency jokes popped up throughout. In one sketch, Musk was cast as a cryptocurrency expert on the Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update segment. Dogecoin and other digital currencies had surged in price ahead of Musk’s appearance.
Musk was most convincing playing a version of himself as head of Spacex dealing with an emergency on a Martian colony. The crisis had a happy ending, until it didn’t.
In the end, Musk will keep his day jobs. Still, the Saturday Night Live appearance offered plenty of synergies with his real gigs as “techno-king” and CEO of Tesla Inc, head of rocket launch company Spacex and chief of the Boring Company, a tunnel construction venture.
Musk got days of attention across all forms of media ahead of the show and shared the spotlight with a prototype of Tesla’s futuristic Cybertruck that it brought to Manhattan on Friday. Video of the hulking pickup prowling the streets blew up on social media.
During the show, a Tesla supercharger made a cameo appearance in a skit set in an Old West saloon. Musk played a gunslinger who had developed an electric horse and advocated tunnelling through the earth to escape a shoot-out.
Musk often boasts that Tesla doesn’t spend billions on advertising the way established automakers do. He doesn’t have to as long as he has access to platforms such as Twitter or Saturday Night Live.
Throughout, Musk gently poked fun at himself, including his penchant for provocative tweets