Elon Musk appears to have accidentally revealed his burner Twitter account in a screenshot the billionaire shared on Monday night.
The Twitter account, which Motherboard has not confirmed is Musk’s but several points of evidence strongly suggest it is, is full of bizarre tweets like, “Do you like Japanese girls?” in response to a tweet from a Bitcoin influencer, praise for Tesla, and replies to Elon Musk tweets.
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On Monday evening, Musk tweeted a screenshot of him logged into his own profile. The purpose of the screenshot was to show content creators how to enable subscriptions on Twitter.
As well as the well known profile picture for his main account @elonmusk, the screenshot also showed a second profile photo. This is how Twitter displays secondary profiles so people can switch between them more easily. The image is of a young child.
Using that profile photo, people quickly found what appears to be the respective account, one with the username “Elon Test” and @ErmnMusk.
A member of 4chan appears to be among the first people to identify Musk’s potential burner account. “LMAOOO,” the user wrote, along with a screenshot of the profile. The profile picture matches that of the one in Musk’s original screenshot. Motherboard searched for the image using the TinEye service and it returned no results, meaning that the image may not have been used elsewhere on the internet.
The account was created in November, with its first tweet being on the 13th, just weeks after Musk completed his purchase of Twitter. The account’s first like is of an Elon Musk tweet containing the tombstone emoji and the bot emoji, alluding to Musk’s commitment to stamping out Twitter’s bot problem. In one tweet, @ErmnMusk replied “Wow!” to a CNBC tweet about a test of Tesla’s self-driving capabilities, and in another case replied to an Elon Musk tweet sharing a meme about former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.
On Monday evening, the account tweeted “I will finally turn 3 on May 4th!” Musk’s and Grimes’ child X Æ A-12 was born on May 4. In another tweet, seemingly tweeting in character as Musk’s child, the account wrote, “I wish I was old enough to go to nightclubs. They sound so fun.”
On their birth certificate, Musk’s child’s first name is “X.” After sharing the screenshot that revealed the possible alt, Musk tweeted “or maybe just X” while quoting a 2018 tweet about a news-rating website he planned to launch.
FTX was a preoccupation for the @ErmnMusk account, which interacted with conspiracy theories—one saying that FTX was a middle party to laundering funds through Ukraine for U.S. Democrats, for example—and expressed horniness. “I 💜librarians,” the account tweeted in reply to a photo of Alamada Research CEO and reported Bankman-Fried romantic partner Caroline Ellison with an explicit sexual caption. “Do you like Japanese girls?” the account replied to MicroStrategy executive chairman and Bitcoin promoter Michael Saylor.
Twitter accounts followed by @ErmnMusk include: Bari Weiss’s website The Free Press, Matthew Yglesias, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Stephen King (recently involved in a public beef with Musk), Donald Trump, several Bitcoin accounts, tech investors, a handful of pop stars, MrBeast, NASA, Khloe and Kim Kardashian, and a Twitter troll who famously posed as a fired Twitter employee, among others.
Again, the @ErmnMusk account has not been confirmed as Musk’s alt, but a good amount of evidence points that way. Regardless, it’s already had an impact: Over 10,000 people follow the account, and there’s already a new cryptocurrency named after it with 159 holders.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
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