Tesla boss and Twitter CEO Elon Musk has found himself an apt nickname and it might be here to stay. On Thursday, Musk tweeted with a laughing emoji that he had changed his Twitter handle to ‘Mr. Tweet’, and now the microblogging site is not allowing its owner to revert to his real name.
He wrote, “Changed my name to Mr. Tweet, now Twitter won’t let me change it back.” A Twitter user later revealed the inside joke in Musk’s latest attempt at being silly.
According to Patrick McGee, a San Francisco-based tech journalist, Nicholas Porritt, the lawyer representing investors who are suing Musk over Tesla’s share price, accidentally referred to him as “Mr. Tweet” at the courtroom on Monday. Musk apparently found it an “accurate description” and voila – we have a new nickname!
A group of shareholders have alleged that Musk manipulated the stock price of Tesla when he tweeted in 2018 that he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420” per share. Musk, in his defence, accused Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Private Investment Fund of “backpedaling” after verbal assurances of supporting the deal.
Twitter has seen a seismic shift in its app, policies and verification programme after Musk’s takeover. It’s not the first time that Twitter has prevented users from changing their name. In 2022, American rapper Doja Cat’s display name was set to “Christmas” and she begged Musk to help change it back.
“i don’t wanna be christmas forever elon musk please help i’ve made a mistake,” the star had tweeted then. After Musk replied that she should be able to revert to her old name now, Doja Cat changed it to “fart.”
