Musk flummoxes web with ‘Kekius Maximus’ persona
Elon Musk adopted the moniker “Kekius Maximus” on X Tuesday, sparking hypothesis amongst his 210 million followers about his mysterious new deal with that could be a mash-up of an alt-right image, a memecoin, and the lead character of the film “Gladiator.”
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and a confidant of US President-elect Donald Trump, additionally changed his profile image with considered one of “Pepe the Frog,” a well-liked cartoon character, sporting historic Roman apparel and holding a online game joystick.
In typical Musk trend, the billionaire tech mogul and proprietor of X previously Twitter supplied no rationalization in regards to the new username and avatar, however the transfer triggered fast ripple results.
The change roiled the cryptocurrency world, sending the worth of a memecoin a digital forex impressed by an web meme with the identical identify skyrocketing.
It additionally despatched web sleuths attempting to find solutions: was the identify change only for the laughs? Was there a hidden message? Was this one other thinly-disguised try to jolt the crypto markets?
Musk and X didn’t instantly reply to AFP’s request for remark.
His new deal with seems to be a mix of “Maximus Decimus Meridius” a Roman normal performed by Russell Crowe within the 2000 smash hit “Gladiator” and “kek,” an expression well-liked among the many alt-right and web trolls that’s used as a variation of “LOL,” or chortle out loud.
Pepe the Frog was initially a cartoon character from the “Boy’s Membership” comedian collection.
However throughout Trump’s first presidential marketing campaign, it grew to become related to the alt-right and white supremacists, with the Anti-Defamation League dubbing it a “hate image.”
“The vast majority of makes use of of Pepe the Frog have been, and proceed to be, non-bigoted,” the ADL wrote on its web site.
Nonetheless, because the meme proliferated on-line, the meme was centered on “racist, antisemitic or different bigoted themes,” the ADL added.
Earlier than altering his deal with, Musk posted a teaser on X: “Kekius Maximus will quickly attain degree 80 in hardcore PoE.”
PoE is an obvious reference to the favored “Path of Exile 2” online game.
The billionaire is thought to play the sport, calling it a “hall-of-famer” earlier this month in a put up on X.
Within the wake of Musk’s deal with change, the memecoin Kekius Maximus’s worth soared by greater than 1,600 % as of Tuesday night, in keeping with the location CoinGecko.
The memecoin was buying and selling at lower than one-fifth of a greenback in worth at round 22:00 GMT.
Prior to now, Musk has despatched crypto costs on a rollercoaster experience together with his social media commentary, but it surely was not instantly clear if he has any involvement on this specific memecoin.
The billionaire, an advisor to the incoming Trump administration, has been tapped to run the brand new Division of Authorities Effectivity , tasked with lowering authorities spending.
Musk’s account on X has turn out to be more and more influential and has usually courted criticism for amplifying misinformation since his buy of the platform for $44 billion in 2022.
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