Attorney, journalist, and Elon Musk biographer Seth Abramson eviscerated both Elon Musk and his “fanboys” who have attempted to use the billionaire’s IQ as an indication of his intellectual prowess in a series of messages shared on X Thursday evening and into Friday. “You are in a cult,” he wrote in one before he later noted Musk “has zero *personal* intellectual achievements.”

“As an Elon Musk biographer, I would peg his IQ as between 100 and 110,” Abramson tweeted Thursday afternoon. “There’s zero evidence in his biography of anything higher. And I want to repeat that now, lest you think it a typo. There’s zero evidence, from his life history, of Musk having anything higher than a 110 IQ.”

The author then stepped away from the platform (“on the basis of this not being a platform worth spending time on”) only to return Friday morning and find his initial message had gone viral in online MAGA communities — and “because Nate Silver thinks Carlyle’s 1800s theory of history, the Great Man Theory, is still relevant to historians in 2025,” Abramson continued.

What followed was a lengthy series of messages, each designed to decimate Musk’s reputation among some circles as a kind of genius.

Musk “was sued for stealing the idea for Zip2—which fired him as soon as investors got involved” and “was going to run PayPal into the ground after his company merged with it—again he was fired.” He then “invested in Tesla when it was distressed and quickly began running it into the ground.”

He was sued for stealing the idea for Zip2—which fired him as soon as investors got involved. He was going to run PayPal into the ground after his company merged with it—again he was fired. He invested in Tesla when it was distressed and quickly began running it into the ground.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) February 21, 2025

Musk founded Zip2, described as “a sort of digital Yellowpages” by Belmont Hill School’s The Panel Online, with his brother. The outlet reported that in an attempt to impress investors in the company, Musk “created a large, fake casing around the Zip2 computer to make it seem like an extremely advanced supercomputer” — a move that worked, but investors who put $3 million into the company did so only after Musk agreed to step down so “someone more experienced to take his place.”

The code used by the program, which Musk taught himself, “was soon exposed to be so scrambled that a majority of the program had to be rewritten by more advanced programmers.”

Musk ultimately returned to the company as CEO and benefitted financially when it was sold to COMPAQ in 1999. He used the $22 million his 7% share brought in to an “internet bank” at X.com — the same company he merged with the founders of Paypal. He was named CEO after the merger in April 2000 but was removed from the position six months later.

I account Elon Musk’s idea for SpaceX to be more or less the only clearly good idea he has ever publicly had, though it required heavy lifting mostly from a powerful Black man for it to become a success, which may be why Musk has so much resentment for the former president now.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) February 21, 2025

SpaceX, Abramson continued, is Musk’s only “truly successful and novel company” and a chunk of its success was owed to President Obama, who Musk “successfully lobbied” after “Russians had laughed Musk out of Moscow.”

“I needn’t tell you the Boring Company is a failure that has done no more than produce an illegal flamethrower for fun, one that cannot be legally shipped and has caused lots of people legal issues,” Abramson added. “Neuralink is mired in ethics investigations, and Musk does none of its science.”

“Everything” Musk has said about Twitter/X was “a lie,” he also said, “and business schools will teach how he ran this platform into the ground for 200 years.”

“Feel free to Google all the things Musk did to scam people into thinking he’d made a successful foray into robotics,” Abramson continued. “It does not take intelligence to throw money around and buy a company or buy a politician. Anyone would/could.”

“It does not take intelligence to, having thrown money at a politician, use the clout you accrued from that to advantage your own businesses—businesses you are well aware you have nothing to do with the success of, which is why you mess around with their patents to hide that fact.”

“If you assign intelligence to just spending money, you’re in a cult,” he also added. “If you attach intelligence to simply owning a successful company whose work on a day-to-day basis you have nothing to do with and who you are considerably more of a hindrance to than a help to, you’re in a cult.”

It is also a particularly American disease to confuse wealth with intelligence and corporations with those who own them. In most of the world the conversation we are having would seem utterly preposterous, as again there is no evidence of Musk having *intellectual* achievements.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) February 21, 2025

Toward the end of his messages, Abramson noted, “It is also a particularly American disease to confuse wealth with intelligence and corporations with those who own them. In most of the world the conversation we are having would seem utterly preposterous, as again there is no evidence of Musk having *intellectual* achievements.”

“I don’t find IQ to be a valuable measure,” he also clarified. “I introduced the term to this conversation because it’s used by *you fans* as some sort of supposed proof of Musk’s intelligence—though none of you have any proof whatsoever of any IQ test the man’s ever taken.”

Abramson’s entire thread can be read on X, formerly Twitter. (Yahoo)

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