Musk, who is a well-known fan of anime and videogames, posted artwork of Nier: Automata’s main female protagonist 2B on June 15. The picture, now deleted, was simply captioned: “2B.”
When asked to credit the artist, Musk responded with “no” and “it’s top secret.”
He later elaborated that “no one will ever find out who it was,” when further pressed on the subject by his audience.
“I wish people would stop crediting artists on Twitter when any fool can find out who the artist was in seconds. It’s destroying the medium,” Musk wrote in another deleted tweet, adding that “the constant credit crowd are damaging the ethics of the internet. And if they don’t like me, too bad.”
The most provocative, though, was Musk’s tweet, also now deleted, that “no one should be credited with anything, ever,” which raised many eyebrows among netizens. Several people started suggesting that since no one should be credited with anything, they could not credit Musk for his inventions and ventures, including Tesla and SpaceX.
One user also reminded Musk that Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard was partially responsible for the company’s success, to which the billionaire replied that Tesla “is alive in spite of Eberhard. He seeks credit constantly and fools give it [to] him.”
The online artistic community was also displeased with Musk’s stance. Many saw it as disrespectful towards the artist’s hours of work and said that putting the artist’s name (or nickname) isn’t too time-consuming.
Eventually, the artist behind the 2B picture, which became the sticking point, was found. A person nicknamed Meli Melo thanked everyone for their support, while noting that it was “not cool” on Elon’s part not to credit her.