I Love Watching Elon Musk Cry

A simple pleasure for trying times.

Hi friends!

Something the elders never warned me about is that as the years go by, your own lore may run so deep that you won’t be able to keep track of it. Which I guess is how I just remembered that Tesla once tried to recruit me to make Instagram stories for Elon Musk.

Early Monday afternoon, as I sat on my couch, looking at my phone, grazing on the headlines, as a free-range woman who works from home does, one of my brain cells spontaneously resurrected and brought the summer of 2018 back online. I searched my email to rule out hallucination, and there it was, a Hello from Tesla:

---

That screenshot text is tiny, so here’s the transcript for my beloved boomer community:

Hey Lizzy¹ —

Happy Wednesday! hope that your week is coming along well.

Reaching out to extend a 'hello' from our VP of Communications, [REDACTED], and her (tiny yet stellar) Social Team. We came across your LinkedIn page/portfolio and were impressed with your professional pedigree and super keen on the cache of brands you’ve created content with.

I'm confidentially searching with [REDACTED] for a creative who can partner with the Team/our CEO to develop compelling video content/stories for our social channels (namely Twitter and Instagram.) Would you be open to a brief 10-15 minute intro call with me to discuss our opportunity/culture in more detail?

Looking forward to continuing the conversation with you soon!

Cheers,

[REDACTED]

---

Once I read that email, it all came flooding back.

In 2018, I had yet to ban myself from working for public figures and had a lot of time on my hands because the #MeToo-themed talk show² I was a producer on only aired one night a week. I obviously replied. When the recruiter called me, he revealed that the “professional pedigree” they were most impressed by was that I had just come off two years of working for Chelsea Handler, experience that led them to believe I might be capable of handling Elon Musk.

At the time, I found that hilarious. But now, in the year of our devil, 2025, I’m offended on Chelsea’s behalf.

Those two do have some things in common — namely, they both really, really love drugs and attention. But only one of them is honest enough to go on Call Her Daddy and admit to sneaking “edibles, mushrooms, and a sheet of fucking acid” through customs while on tour in Australia and New Zealand and then taking a hit of the acid to “communicate with the animals” on a whale watching trip. And it’s not Elon. He told Don Lemon last year that he takes ketamine every other week, as prescribed by his doctor, even though his abuse of the horse tranquilizer turned party drug turned therapeutic panacea has been extensively reported on.

Bitch, please. We all saw those chainsaw pics.

Chelsea was a generous boss. She paid for great health insurance and took us on a harrowing yet memorable staff camping trip during which I ate so many squares of mushroom chocolate that I discovered the meaning of life as I stared at the ocean.³ She’s a successful, independent, and proudly childfree woman who has made a lot of money from being herself. Whether you like her or not, she is who she is, and I promise you that she does not give a fuck.

Elon relishes in firing people and taking AIDS medicine away from babies. He’s a eugenicist, has constant baby mama drama, and openly endorsed the idea that people without children should not be able to vote. He hasn’t actually invented anything, but his fame comes from the illusion that he has. And it’s pretty clear that he hates himself — why else would the world’s richest man be so bothered by a little schtick from Tim Walz?

Tim Walz has relatable uncle energy, it’s his biggest draw. We’re just two petty peas in a pod, he and I, finding comfort in Musk-related schadenfreude. Tim’s getting his daily fix by checking in on Tesla’s tanking stock. And thanks to him, I’m now getting mine by watching Elon hold back tears as he calls him an evil jerk.

jury’s still out on human emotions, but crocodile tears are a definitive yes.

Elon fucking sucks and he knows it and no one likes him except for his weirdo parasocial fanboys and he got beat up on the playground every single day. I don’t have tangible proof of that, so just going with my gut. Maybe it’s all covered in his Walter Isaacson biography, but someone would literally have to pay me (well) to read it, and I’m sure it just confirms his lack of empathy as a lifelong pathological disease. Don’t you dare try to explain that away by citing neurodivergence when there’s a new season of Love on the Spectrum to binge this weekend and the cast is the sweetest group of people to ever grace a docuseries.

I love crying and I adore feelings and I am staunchly pro-tear. Bawling your eyes out is a phenomenal release valve. In these crazy-ass times, I think that we should all feel entitled to weep shamelessly wherever and whenever we need. I also think it’s absolute bullshit that our demented patriarchal culture robs men of the freedom to express their emotions. But nothing says gender discourse in the Age of Unhingement™ quite like patriarchy’s PR guy/empathy’s biggest hater welling up with tears in a Fox News exclusive.

Elon’s public tears, while glorious for other reasons, are not a step in the right direction for a better, more fully embodied version of manhood. For that, I will direct you to Andrew Garfield reading this Modern Love essay. Or his chat with Elmo. Or when he shared his grief so beautifully with Stephen Colbert.

To me, Elon’s tears don’t seem to have any emotional content, they’re about him not getting what he wants because he’s a very wealthy toddler. And I think that’s why, after the past several months of him doing whatever he fucking well pleases, I find them so healing to watch.

I’m also healed by the people of Wisconsin showing him they can’t be bought. And a democrat finally doing something splashy. We’ll take what we can get, because Elon’s only friend had a very busy week levying tariffs on penguins and tanking the global economy.

this man united the world this week if you squint hard enough.

But back to Elon, and more importantly, my newfound love of watching him get teary-eyed. After that initial video had a palliative effect on my derangement, I searched to see if there were more. Well, this man has so much experience crying on camera that when Old Man Chaos finally takes away his chainsaw, he can use his free time to audition for The Young and the Restless.

He had another crocodile Tesla moment earlier last month, but that clip is honestly kind of lackluster. Here are a few better selects from the vault to add to your self-care practice:

That Time He Cried About Astronauts

I really like this one because I found it through a weird fanboy edit.

That Time He Lost It in Australia

The Australian energy crisis making Tesla ownership more expensive seemed to move him deeply.

That Time Leslie Stahl Laughed in His Mopey Fucking Face

He was crying about HIS TWEETS! How could a news diva possibly resist? That interview happened less than six months after the Tesla recruiter and I decided to mutually ghost each other. Goddess bless, some things are just not meant to be.

This week was nuts and who knows what’s next. I don’t understand the stock market but I know it ain’t good. No one even cares about this round of TikTok ban roulette because it’s all simply too much. So, cry if you need to. Watch Elon cry if you need to. I’ll be back next Sunday with a special BIAD TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY EDITION because time isn’t real but it sure does fly when everything’s monumentally unhinged!

Less Lessons More Blessin’s™

Liz

1. Lizzy is indeed one of my many aliases, but unclear why he was calling me that when I actually go by Lizard professionally.

2. We’ll get back to that another time, I promise.

3. Which I promptly forgot. I carried around a notebook the entire next day in case it came back to me. It didn’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯