Elon Musk’s creativity had become famous since the first successes of the SpaceX project, imagining him as an eccentric mad scientist who can find an original solution to any problem, from fighting the traffic to making reusable rockets. Yet it is only now the Twitter users worldwide discovered that since February people all over Russia were challenging Tesla CEO’s creativity in their smaller but original inventions.
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The meme itself is closely connected to the launch of Falcon Heavy in February 2018, when Musk’s name was hyped all over the internet. While English twitter was joking mostly about Tesla car in the space, Russian decided to mimic Musk’s engineering skills. One of the first memes shows a man with a toilet seat on his neck, where a cap is used as a small table for a beer bottle. This miracle of engineering thought was signed with: "What do you think about this invention, Elon Musk?"
The users went on, showing more of the strange, yet useful, Russian inventions:
A door to our dormitory’s canteen is held by THIS. Well Elon Musk, do u feel the threat?
How do you like it, Elon Musk?
“The smallest bast shoes created in Russia.”
Elon Musk, sorry, but you don’t stand a chance.
How do you like it, Elon Musk?
The bag for bags: *exists*
Me: HOW DO YOU LIKE IT ELON MUSK
Every time Mum puts a paper under the table's leg I want to shout "HOW DO YOU LIKE IT ELON MUSK?"
Most of the Musk tweets feature either the uncommon use of a common object or mocking some kind of a dubious engineering solution, basically making it a more up-to-date version of the "There, I fixed it" meme.
The catchphrase "How do you like it, Elon Musk" soon became a part of Russian internet lore, appearing here and there in ordinary tweets, until August, 22 when a Bostonian, "Courtney," rediscovered the meme and published several pictures with Russian inventions.
English Twitter caught up soon enough, yet most of them mistakenly believed that the memes were aimed to mock Musk over his creativity, showing useless inventions. In fact, the invention it laughed at — a wine sealing under an iron handle — saved millions of hands from oven heat.
"How Do You Like It, Elon Musk" became the latest thread in Western Twitter dedicated to Russian memes. Other users were also interested in more recent absurd Russian memes earlier this year, citing Memepedia – one of the largest Russian meme-related websites.