Monday, December 13, 2021

Time's Person of the Year: Emperor Muskimus

Time's Person of the Year honors, like the magazine itself, doesn't carry nearly as much cachet as it used to, except maybe to one person. Still, be it tradition or nostalgia, the PoY edition does manage to garner a disproportionate amount of media attention, like the US News & World Report's college rankings. Time's purported criteria for PoY is “the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year.” But you gotta sell magazines too. And so, in keeping with their annual buzzy-but-not-really-meeting-their-own-criteria choices, this year Time went with retail trading folk hero, SNL guest host, and noted EV evangelist, Elon Musk.

Time helpfully lays out its exhaustive methodology for the choice of Musk, the world's richest man and future ruler of Mars: 

"An army of devotees hangs on his every utterance. He dreams of Mars as he bestrides Earth, square-jawed and indomitable...He tosses satellites into orbit and harnesses the sun; he drives a car he created that uses no gas and barely needs a driver. With a flick of his finger, the stock market soars or swoons." But most importantly because "Lately, Elon Musk also likes to live-tweet his poops"...Hmmm. But please continue...“Just dropping some friends off at the pool,” the 50-year-old zillionaire informed his 66 million Twitter followers on the evening of Nov. 29, having previously advised that at least half his tweets were “made on a porcelain throne.” After an interval—21 minutes, if you must know—an update: “Splish splash.” Cool Time, you're so hip; maybe Elon will buy you now.

Ok, ok it's still something to be proud of (we're posting about it, aren't we?). Almost up there with when a budding multi-millionaire Elon got a chance to pitch Tony Stark all those years ago.

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