Could Tesla CEO Elon Musk Be ‘Fact Checking’ Anonymously on Enthusiast Forums?
From the automaker’s financials to orbital physics, the internet persona talks Tesla just as well as the CEO.
The Tesla Motors Club is one of the largest Tesla forums on the net and has long been a staple of the automaker's fanbase, acting as a community where owners, investors, and window-shoppers of the brand conjugate. And as a result, a perfect place for someone like CEO Elon Musk to lurk behind the shadows.
Longtime forum members have recently become suspicious of a user who goes by the name of "Fact Checking," and have gone as far as saying that it could be Musky Boy himself.
Inquiries to the automaker by Automotive News have prompted Tesla to deny Musk's involvement in the account, responding with a simple "No." The Drive's own inquiries have ushered the same response.
Fact Checking began posting on TMC in early August, typically responding to threads with concise and factual information regarding Tesla's financial standings. Additionally, detailed replies often included a working understanding of Tesla's day-to-day operations and displayed industry knowledge. Musk is known to lament over incorrect and negative reporting, so the potential of a pro-Tesla fact checker trolling the forums does seem plausible. Is it out of the question to speculate that it's the big man himself?
On top of financial knowledge, a few posts by Fact Checking go into detail about orbital physics and the Oberth Effect, a topic which Musk has discussed previously. The vast wealth of knowledge and the appearance that this suspicious user seems to understand what's going on in Musk's mind looks to be fairly on-par with the CEO's ramblings on social media.
But perhaps the most damning evidence presented on the topic is a post from Sept. 28, where Fact Checking calls the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the Short-seller Enrichment Commission; a verbatim transcript of a phrase Musk would use on Twitter days later to mock the SEC after he signed a no-guilt settlement with the regulatory body.
Later, Fact Checking posted a comment that read: "So is Elon reading TMC, or is he joking like me? Not sure which possibility I find more unsettling."
Several minutes later, another forum member muttered the words that many may have been thinking;: "I think Fact Checking is Elon"
Again, Tesla said that Musk is not Fact Checking, but if he is, it seems the two could grow to be good friends due to their strikingly similar internet personas.