Elon Musk is trolling you!

The ‘Nazi Salute’ feels very 4Chan

If an actual Nazi had done that, it would be a 'Sieg Heil'. If your slightly confused liberal grandma had done it, it would probably not be. The debate about Elon Musk's weird on-stage gesture boils down to whether people think he's a Nazi anyway.

Anyway, here’s the video:

I don’t think Elon Musk is a Nazi. Neither does the Anti-Defamation League. But I also don’t think it was just an innocent if awkward thank-you-I-love-you-all. My guess is that it was something far smarter than that.

What if Musk deliberately did something he knew would be interpreted by some as a Heil Hitler; which he could then use to prove the ‘legacy media’ are woke lunatics?

Maybe the endless online conspiracism is starting to saturate my own faculties, but as someone who’s studied old school internet trolling (which ran roughly from the late nineties to the arrival of 4Chan shit-posting in the early noughties), it looked extremely familiar to me. It looked a lot like an old fashioned 4Chan style troll campaign. And it worked.

What if this was just his latest tactic in an increasingly transparent but effective campaign to undermine, mock, and weaken the established media – the CNNs, CNBCs, BBCs of the world – and boost the alternatives?