Elon Musk Trolled CBC For Coming Back To Twitter With A 'Brokeback Mountain' Meme (PHOTO)
Things are getting feisty between Musk and the broadcaster.
Elon Musk. Right: CBC News building in Toronto.
CBC/Radio-Canada is set to make a comeback on Twitter after briefly pausing activity last month – but not everyone is welcoming the broadcaster back with open arms.
Just hours after CBC News editor-in-chief Brodie Fenlon confirmed in a blog post that it would be resuming activity on a handful of Twitter accounts, Elon Musk took to the social media platform to troll the Canadian broadcaster for coming back.
Late on Tuesday, the Twitter CEO tweeted a homemade meme featuring a shot from the movie Brokeback Mountain – a movie about two cowboys who develop a relationship.
In the image, Musk photoshopped his own face into the picture, as one of the men, and used the CBC logo to identify the other man. The text read "I wish I knew how to quit you."
Within 24 hours, the tweet – which was shared with Musk's 139.1 million followers – had received millions of views, in addition to hundreds of thousands of combined likes, retweets, quote tweets and bookmarks.
\u201chttps://t.co/Rm2WfVhy22\u201d— Elon Musk (@Elon Musk) 1683684275
Over 8,000 users also directly responded to the image, with some Canadians appearing to enjoy the trolling, while others voiced criticism over Musk's controversial approach to managing the platform.
Notably, many of the comments in favour of the billionaire's meme-making were made by Twitter Blue verified accounts, which is now a paid privilege after the recent overhaul of the verification process.
Government-funded media
In April, Musk grabbed Canadian headlines when he officially labelled CBC's Twitter account as "government-funded," along with other public broadcasters from around the world.
The label changed several times throughout the course of a week, before eventually disappearing altogether.
In response, multiple broadcasters, including CBC, announced they'd be pausing their Twitter activity or leaving the platform altogether.
However, on May 9, CBC News Editor in Chief Brodie Fenlon confirmed that CBC would be "[resuming] some activity on a handful of umbrella Twitter accounts, including @CBCNews."
While it is making a comeback on the social media site, Fenlon said that the broadcaster will "significantly reduce our overall Twitter footprint and continue to assess the platform against our strategy."
In Monday's blog post, the Editor in Chief explained that CBC News has been adjusting its social media strategy since long before the Musk-imposed changes at Twitter, including the controversial "abandonment of its verification program for accounts."
"Our focus remains on social platforms that prioritize healthy communities and or provide us better opportunities to grow new audiences," Fenlon added.
According to Twitter, the "government-funded media" tag was used to "provide additional context for accounts heavily engaged in geopolitics and diplomacy."
The platform's policy defines government-funded media as "outlets where the government provides some or all of the outlet’s funding and may have varying degrees of government involvement over editorial content."
In his blog post, Fenlon pushed back at the idea that the Canadian government has "involvement or influence" on CBC News and Radio-Canada journalism, and called out Musk for "[linking] government funding to state influence and media bias."
Whether CBC will respond to Musk's Brokeback Mountain meme remains to be seen — although if the broadcaster does, it seems it's unlikely to be via Twitter.