Ebrius Disputatios

Maybe he's not a genius?

Elon Musk decided to demonstrate his programming knowledge and philosophical nature, but instead accidentally embarrassed himself in front of millions of users. In December 2021, the entrepreneur published a message in the format of a Linux operating system command. He used the traceroute command, which is actually used to trace the path of network data across the Internet, and added to it a strange construct “wokemindvirus” (literally, “woke mind virus”).

A few years later, Musk decided to continue his joke by simulating a dialogue with a computer system. He posted the supposed response: “wokemindvirus found at 127.0.0.1” (the virus was found at 127.0.0.1), and then added a line saying that the virus was removed using the rm -rf command.

Probably, with these messages, the billionaire was trying to ridicule progressive social ideas, whose adherents in the English-speaking world are called “woke” (literally “awakened”, meaning “aware of social problems”). It is curious that he himself once shared these views, and now regularly criticizes them on social networks.

Philosophy and politics aside, you might notice that this attempt at humor reveals poor knowledge of programming principles. First, the address 127.0.0.1 in computer networks always points to the user's own computer – it's like writing “here” as a mailing address. It turns out that Musk accidentally admitted that the “virus” he was making fun of was in his own head.

In a dialogue with subscribers, the billionaire agreed with this interpretation. To the comment “The local host was infected,” he replied: “But not anymore,” as if cementing the metaphor of changing his own beliefs.

However, there are other technical inconsistencies. For example, the traceroute command is designed to trace the route of network packets across the Internet. It shows the request path to the server, but cannot be used to search for files. There is a special find command for this task in Linux.

The next part of the joke is even worse. Elon uses the rm -rf command, which is considered one of the most powerful and potentially dangerous in Linux. It is designed to forcefully delete entire directories along with all their contents, without asking for confirmation. Using such “heavy artillery” to delete just one file is like hammering a pushpin with a sledgehammer

Programmers also noted the non-standard format of the deletion message. In reality, the rm -rf command does not notify the user of success. Moreover, if we assume that the line “wokemindvirus deleted rm -rf” was intended as a deletion command, then its syntax violates all the rules of command structure in Linux – the parameters are in the wrong order, and the lack of specifying a specific directory makes the command completely meaningless.

So can we continue to call him a genius?