Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world. But based on his posts on X, the billionaire has never appeared more detached from humanity. And after one high-profile author pointed out that fact over the weekend, Musk now seems determined to prove that he\u2019s a real human person with real human interests.<\/p>\n
It all started in the early morning hours of Saturday when, at 3:20 a.m. Central Time, Musk shared a video with his followers on X. \u201cGrok Imagine prompt: She smiles and says \u2018I will always love you,’\u201d Musk wrote, sharing the resulting AI video.<\/p>\n
Grok Imagine prompt:<\/p>\n
She smiles and says \u201cI will always love you\u201d pic.twitter.com\/cjDu3MuDCZ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 8, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n The video is eerie, to say the least. It starts with an AI-generated woman giving a rather concerned expression before smiling in that fake way real humans sometimes do without using their eyes. Smiling without your eyes is famously a hallmark of a fake smile. The audio is also not very well synced to the video, as you can see above.<\/p>\n But whatever the technical limitations of Musk\u2019s Grok, the real story here is just how much the wealthiest person in the world seems to be struggling with a lack of human connection. Musk\u2019s desire for love and companionship is understandable, if that\u2019s what\u2019s going on. It\u2019s what all of us want in our lives. It\u2019s only human. However, it\u2019s easy to see why that might be hard for Musk, especially when it comes to a romantic partner, given his attitudes on women and their role in society.<\/p>\n Back in July, Musk pushed the idea that women were \u201canti-white\u201d because they\u2019re physically weak<\/a>. He\u2019s described empathy as a weakness, and has been blamed for contributing to the deaths of an estimated 600,000 people through his role in destroying USAID while the head of DOGE, according to the New Yorker<\/a>.<\/p>\n Musk is disconnected from humanity and insulated by his wealth, but he also seems to be suffering from a self-imposed exile into a fantasy world of his own creation. The Tesla CEO purchased Twitter in late 2022 and promptly set about changing the platform\u2019s algorithm to make sure he saw more praise from his fans. He allowed anyone with $8 to buy a worthless blue \u201cverification\u201d checkmark and tweaked the way Twitter (now X) works to make sure those replies are at the top of all posts. Effectively, Musk made it so that the people willing to pay him money are the people whose replies will be the most visible.<\/p>\n The billionaire\u2019s AI endeavors, with Grok and his company xAI, seem to serve that same goal of creating a fantasy universe for one man. Musk told Joe Rogan during a recent podcast that he predicts pretty much everything people consume will eventually be AI-generated. And it suggests that\u2019s the world he wants to live in.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of what people consume in five or six years, maybe sooner than that, will be just AI-generated content. So music, videos\u2026\u201d Musk told Rogan.<\/p>\n The podcaster replied that he loved AI-generated music, seeming to confirm Musk\u2019s thesis among the demographic of extremely rich, 50-something men.<\/p>\n Musk thinks this version of the future is what people really want\u2014fake content that caters to your desires\u2014because he\u2019s so detached from humanity.<\/p>\n As he told Joe Rogan: \u201cMost of what people consume in five or six years, maybe sooner than that, will be just AI-generated content. So music, videos\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n [image or embed]<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social<\/a>) November 8, 2025 at 8:27 AM<\/a><\/p>\n It was against this backdrop that Joyce Carol Oates<\/a> entered the conversation on Saturday. Oates, the 87-year-old author, tweeted a rather devastating observation about Musk\u2019s own social media habits.<\/p>\n \u201cSo curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates\u2014 scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend\u2019s or relative\u2019s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history,\u201d Oates wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cIn fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the \u2018most wealthy person in the world,’\u201d Oates concluded.<\/p>\n It\u2019s true. Musk spends his days on X largely whining about trans people, palling around with far-right extremists, and retweeting quotes highlighting his brilliance. Musk\u2019s own tweets are largely focused on his own petty grievances, but it\u2019s his retweets that really give some insight into how disconnected he is from humanity. Scroll his feed at any given point, and the retweets aren\u2019t about news he finds interesting or stories that he wants to elevate for unselfish reasons. It\u2019s almost always about Musk, his companies, and his products.<\/p>\n Oates clearly got under Musk\u2019s skin. He sent out a series of angry tweets, saying her tweet<\/a> was \u201cdemonstrably false,\u201d calling her<\/a> an \u201cangry liar,\u201d and writing things like<\/a>, \u201cOates is a liar and delights in being mean. Not a good human.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk then proceeded to make an effort to prove he was interested in things like movies. And it was pretty sad to watch. The billionaire started replying to random tweets from the X account @cinesthetic, which posts about films. \u201cMan on Fire is great!\u201d Musk wrote in reply to a tweet about the 2003 movie. \u201cGreat movie,\u201d Musk wrote in reply to another tweet about the 2014 movie Edge of Tomorrow.<\/p>\n \u201cFifth Element has great style,\u201d Musk replied in another. It should probably be noted that the video he was replying to opens with a shot of Gary Oldman\u2019s character in the 1997 film, who happens to have the haircut Musk was sporting in 2021<\/a>. And none of Musk\u2019s very short tweets engaged with anything deeper. It was pathetically performative after getting pantsed by Oates.<\/p>\n Bluesky users ridiculed Musk\u2019s attempt at appearing to like normal human things<\/a>, as that social media platform\u2019s left-leaning user base tends to do.<\/p>\n In fairness, Musk does post about books and movies sometimes. He\u2019s recommended people listen to The Iliad on audiobook at least half a dozen times in recent years. But he seems to often get confused about much of the media he talks about, including things like The Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.<\/p>\n \u201cI took from the book that we need to extend the scope of consciousness so that we are better able to ask the questions about the answer, which is the universe,\u201d Musk is quoted as saying in Walter Isaacson\u2019s biography.<\/p>\n The New Yorker<\/a> marveled at Musk\u2019s characterization in 2023, even questioning whether he\u2019d actually read the book. The magazine explained that he fundamentally misunderstands the book\u2019s message, which is actually an indictment of imperialism, not a celebrating of seeing how far you can reach.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s arguably less embarrassing than Musk\u2019s thoughts on the 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner. The CEO was describing<\/a> his new Tesla Cybertruck vehicle and why it was futuristic: \u201cIt\u2019s an armored personnel carrier from the future \u2013 what Bladerunner would have driven.\u201d There is no character named Bladerunner in the film Blade Runner.<\/p>\n Elon Musk may be the richest man in the world, but money can\u2019t buy the ability to care about your fellow humans. Nor can it give you the cultural knowledge to properly claim the title of Nerd King\u2014something he desperately aspires to achieve with his awkward tweets.<\/p>\n Musk has built an artificial world where he can make robot girlfriends profess their love, without the messiness of attending to an actual human\u2019s needs or desires. Other X users have even made fun of his desire to make AI girlfriends in the past, with even some of his biggest fans recognizing it as weird<\/a>. He\u2019s put up guardrails on X so that most of the messages he sees on a daily basis are fawning adulation, something that fewer people on the platform seem to notice. But every once in a while, a person like Oates will absolutely eviscerate him. And he simply doesn\u2019t know how to handle it.<\/p>\n Without the ability to self-reflect, Musk seems doomed to repeat this cycle of embarrassment for the rest of his life. While Tesla shareholders voted just last week to give him a nearly $1 trillion pay package that could be paid out over the next decade<\/a>, there are days when it seems like Elon Musk is the most impoverished man in the country.<\/p>\n