LGBTQ+ fans outraged at Katy Perry for fangirling over Elon Musk

LGBTQ+ folks and allies are outraged at pop musician Katy Perry for posting a thank you message to X owner and Tesla founder Elon Musk for sending her a Cybertruck.

“thx for the delivery,” Perry wrote, alongside a photo of herself posing in a red dress against the truck, for thousand of which have been recalled by Tesla due to issues with the accelerator pedals.

Related:

Elon Musk blamed for X ad calling for execution of gay people

The post violates the platform’s own policies against hate speech.

Musk is extremely anti-trans and has let anti-LGBTQ+ hate run rampant on X since taking over the company formerly known as Twitter. Perry, long considered an LGBTQ+ icon, has disappointed many by seemingly fangirling over Musk – though it has not been lost on some users that these critics are expressing their anger on a Musk-owned site.

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Since Musk bought X (formerly Twitter) for $44 billion in October 2022, hate content has proliferated on the site. Musk himself reinstated numerous right-wing, anti-LGBTQ+, and other anti-Jewish accounts that had previously been banned from the platform.

Musk has also repeated transphobic talking points and conspiracy theories like the “Great Replacement Theory,” causing big-name advertisers to flee. The site’s ad revenue has decreased by 50% and it may lose another $75 million as advertisers stay away. Musk has responded by telling advertisers to “f**k off” and suing watchdog organizations that have reported on X’s hate speech problem.

The March 2023 CCDH report noted that anti-LGBTQ+ tweets accusing queer people of “grooming” children increased 119% since Musk’s acquisition of the social media network. Five of the accounts most responsible for pushing anti-LGBTQ+ groomer attacks were set to generate up to $6.4 million per year for Twitter in ad revenues, according to a March 2023 report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).