Elon Musk’s Soap Operas for Conspiracy Buffs
Online fantasies are now an excuse to take apart the government.
Illustration by Michael Houtz. Source: Chesnot / Getty
March 23, 2025
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Ever since he bought Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk has been titillating his fans with wild conspiracy theories from supposedly secret files. Now that Donald Trump is back in office—and has granted the world’s wealthiest private citizen free rein to dismantle federal agencies—Musk’s conspiratorial musings are no longer just entertainment for the extremely online. Internet fantasies have become a sufficient pretext for crippling the government.
“There are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk recently posted on the platform now called X, alongside a screenshot suggesting that millions of people in the program’s database are over 120 years old. In reality, the undead were an artifact of the Social Security Administration’s archaic records system. They weren’t getting checks. But the argument that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had uncovered massive fraud captivated his fans, and the claim went viral.
Even though the Social Security administrator quickly got to explaining the facts, highlighting data from a 2023 public audit, Trump picked up the idea and falsely claimed in his speech to Congress earlier this month that Social Security abuse is rampant. As Trump and Congress consider whether to shrink a popular part of the safety net to accommodate tax cuts, fraud claims make a convenient excuse.
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About the Author
Renée DiResta, an associate research professor at Georgetown University, is the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality.
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