Elon Musk is forever taking Ls, and to be honest, I feel for anyone who supports him. His impressive ability to constantly embarrass himself should be studied, yet people will still try and tell you he’s the smartest man on the planet.
It’s not been a good week for the billionaire. Over the weekend, Musk was called out over his nuclear-level blunder when his department, DOGE, fired 300 nuclear experts. Upon realizing what a bad idea this was, the Trump administration was forced to walk back the terminations. Now Musk has also revealed he’s no more technologically savvy than your average boomer after falling for a fake image and publicly drawing attention to it on X.
The image in question shows masked figures holding axes and standing in what appears to be a ruined hospital. A user by the name of Basil the Great claimed the picture showed a “migrant mob” who had stormed a hospital in Birmingham armed with axes and blades. Musk shared the pictures, along with the caption, “What happened here?” My good sir. Google is free.
It seems Musk realized his mistake, as he soon deleted the post, but it was too late. One user by the name of Mukhtar had already made screenshots of the embarrassing post, and shared them online alongside a caption claiming the pics were from a Batman movie.
Elon Musk felt for this fake news. That image is from a batman film.
West Midlands police had to release a statement saying it’s fake news for him to delete it. His favourite news account deleted it as well pic.twitter.com/M0UG0iAbnI
— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) February 17, 2025
It makes you wonder how many times a day Musk shares fake news without realizing it? Eventually somebody contacted the West Midlands Police via X to get confirmation about this alleged hospital attack, and they confirmed there were no incidents at any hospital in Birmingham.
#UPDATE | No disorder took place at any hospital in #Birmingham following the stabbing of a 16-year-old boy.
Images being shared on social media which claim to show people carrying weapons at a hospital are fake.
Full statement
https://t.co/HCXiPAeI1E pic.twitter.com/WJQAFwJO7F
— West Midlands Police (@WMPolice) February 17, 2025
Where did the picture come from?
No. Ai generated.
Who holds and axe like that anyway. pic.twitter.com/6WIXzZgaSP
— Joe (@JoeBalaclava) February 17, 2025
As for the picture, it isn’t actually from a Batman movie. The exact origin is difficult to pinpoint for sure, but some believe it is AI generated, although others have disputed this claim. It is admittedly getting harder and harder to determine if a picture is real or not, but we can use a little bit of common sense and reason to come to a pretty sound conclusion here.
Many things in the picture don’t make sense, from the way the axes are being held to the green exit sign above the door, which seems to depict an amorphous white blob instead of the typical stick man we’re used to seeing.
Even if the picture wasn’t AI, the fact that the police have confirmed no such incident took place should be enough to confirm that this was fake news, and dangerous fake news at that. The intention here was clearly to incite hatred towards immigrants in the U.K., something Elon Musk has already tried doing. He could have fact checked this himself but because it confirmed his own biases, he decided to be irresponsible and share it.
It goes to show that even critical thinking and fact checking are important and necessary in all situations. Obtuseness seems to be spreading, and it’s coming straight from the people at the top. Spreading fake news is easier than ever, as demonstrated here, so we can’t just accept things we see online — we need to switch our brains on. Don’t be an Elon.
