Musk Tries To Confront Bernie Sanders Over Rising Insulin Prices, Twitter Community Comes To The Rescue

Elon Musk has been in the public relations industry for a long time and has mastered the art of adopting several personas. For a while, he was seen as a sort of Tony Stark prototype—"genius, millionaire, playboy, philanthropist"—but then the day came when Musk was taken seriously as the equivalent of the legendary King Midas, who transformed everything he touched into gold.

But now that 2022 is here, it's time for a fresh look. Most of what Musk has said and done this year aligns with the paradigm of traditional tricksters, such as Loki, who is found in Scandinavian mythology rather than Marvel comics.

A being whose primary objective is to generate chaos—not for the sake of good or evil, but rather because the act of creating chaos is more important than the result. In other words, a brilliant intellect devoid of accountability. Another incident, or rather a fresh iteration of the incident involving the blue Twitter badges that Elon Musk started peddling for $8 each, demonstrates how even seemingly innocent gags and practical jokes can significantly impact the state of the modern world.

This time, it concerns something that is crucial to many people.

Elon Musk recently decided to sell Twitter "blue credentials" for $8 each

JD Lasica

Therefore, once Musk decided to sell blue badges, there was initially a surge of outrage, including a series of articles from Stephen King, and then internet users developed a new approach to compete with Twitter.

People started purchasing account verification and naming them after companies to make them appear as legitimate corporate sites. However, a surge of absurd, caustic, and plainly offensive tweets from these same accounts—including, incidentally, the bogus Tesla page—emerged.

Insulin is free!

kenklippenstein

At first glance, everything appeared to be a funny practical joke—that is, until the false Eli Lilly account claimed that insulin would be free going forward. Of course, very few people actually believed in such a philanthropic assertion, but just in case, investors and traders began to dump business shares worldwide.

As a result, Eli Lilly's stock fell by 4.5%, lowering the company's market value by around $16 billion, according to several sources.

Apologies...

LillyPad

That's not all, though

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders weighed in, stating that Eli Lilly should have apologized in the first place for the fact that since 1996, they have increased the price of insulin by more than 1,200%, while the cost is less than $10.

After Eli Lilly's official Twitter account responded, apologizing for the unintentional misinformation associated with the brand, the senator pointed out that when the insulin creators sold their patents for $1 in 1923, they did so to save lives rather than to benefit the CEO of Eli Lilly.

BernieSanders

Musk responded

elonmusk

Musk got into a debate with Senator Bernie Sanders on insulin pricing

JUNlPER

And then suddenly got fact-checked by the Twitter team

JUNlPER

Here it goes:

JUNlPER

True:

davenewworld_2

Good for him

IwriteOK

U.S. insulin prices:

GoodPoliticGuy

This is so sad

FrenchHist

What are they apologizing for?

MorePerfectUS

Insulin prices in the U.S. are crazy

2C2K Photography

Big money

rafaelshimunov

So sad...

rafaelshimunov

$17 billion for just $8? Not bad...

Chamomillionair

Go figure...

IwriteOK

Class solidarity

KnowNothingTV

He could've...

FiercelyNormal

Sounds interesting...

ajbauer

Two things:

Booker4KY

More than 7 million Americans have diabetes and need to take insulin daily. During the past ten years, the drug's price has increased dramatically.

According to research from Yale University, more than 14% of Americans who use insulin spend at least 40% of their available income on it. And that is simply terrible.