Gary Zhou 
Over the years, Tesla has had its own fair share of critics, and numerous attempts have been undertaken to attack the company. These include a long-running misinformation campaign from the skeptics of the company, as well as a strong presence of Tesla’s most ardent and hostile critics on social media. More recently, Tesla has become the target of a rather bizarre social media effort on TikTok, one of the most popular viral video-sharing social networking services on the internet today.
The Internet community MSCHF, which has made a name for its cynical viral campaigns and products, has launched an initiative to take down businesses it considers to be evil. Tesla, Amazon, Facebook, Palantir, and, interestingly enough, TikTok itself, to name a few. A “takedown” video of one of the target companies is expected to be posted by participants in the campaign, although each clip must use one of nine custom sounds produced by MSCHF.
MSCHF provides incentives for every “takedown” video to inspire users of the video-sharing site to engage in its campaign, provided that they reach a minimum number of views. In Tesla’s case, if they reach 500,000 views or more, the internet community provides $1,000 for any video that attacks the electric car manufacturer. Interestingly enough, the custom sound that MSCHF created for Tesla takedown videos featured the name of Elon Musk in Billie Eilish’s famous song “Bad Guy.”
As can be seen on the official page of MSCHF, its recent campaign is primarily aimed at “killing” brands that it considers to be evil or engaging in questionable actions. For instance, because of its “content suppression” campaigns, TikTok is a $10 target, Amazon is a $100 target for its “human rights violations and union busting,” and Facebook is a $4,000 target because of its proliferation of “hate speech and fake news.” For its part, Tesla became a target over its alleged “employee health negligence and union busting.”
Gabriel Whaley, the founder and CEO of MSCHF, noted in a previous interview with Business Insider that he doesn’t even view the group as a business. This is evident in the projects of the community, ranging from browser add-ons that allow users to disguise watching Netflix as a conference call, to tangible goods such as Holy Water-filled Nike sneakers. Whaley observed, explaining the operations of the organization, that MSCHF exists to make fun of “how much everything sucks.”
“We’re trying to do stuff that the world can’t even define. Our perspective is everything is funny in a nihilistic sort of way. We’re not here to make the world a better place. We’re making light of how much everything sucks,” he said.
Very interestingly, for Tesla, TikTok has also been used as a positive platform. For instance, popular YouTuber David Dobrik used TikTok for a rather heartwarming Tesla Model 3 giveaway. Tesla China also uses the video-sharing site to reinforce its social media presence and answer customer inquiries.
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