To say that the writers here at Jalopnik were skeptical that Elon Musk would provide any tangible, humorous benefit to society during his stint on last night’s Saturday Night Live would be a bit of an understatement. Through Wario sketches and an appearance as a cryptocurrency expert, our suspicions were proved correct. The most entertaining part of Musk’s appearance, though, came in what happened in and around his appearance: a drastic drop in Dogecoin stock and the airing of rival electric car commercials during the program.
Let’s start with Dogecoin, shall we? After Musk circulated memes calling himself “The Dogefather,” it was inevitable that we’d hear some Dogecoin jokes going on during his skits. But Musk fans, especially those who have invested in Dogecoin, were less than pleased about the content of those jokes.
Stock prices first began to drop during Musk’s opening monologue, during which he referred to Dogecoin, a form of cryptocurrency, as a “hustle.” Worth $0.65 per share before the show, prices immediately dropped down to $0.416, Reuters reports—a drop of almost 30 percent. Robinhood, a stock trading app, began to experience difficulties as people rushed to the service to sell off their shares.
One Twitter user tweeted Elon Musk to say “Elon I can’t believe that was your doge joke!! I hope’s not doge!?!? It should have been I hope it’s doge, I lost my money man, I trusted in you I believed you would help this community make some money but instead you crushed it.”
Prices rose again after Musk mentioned Dogecoin during the ‘Weekend Update’ segment, but as of this writing, prices are still low, at about 50 cents per share. It’ll be interesting to see how Tesla stock fares.
To put it another way, Dogecoin lost more during Musk’s SNL appearance than Tesla has ever made. Let that one sink in.
That wasn’t all. The Tesla founder’s presence spurred on competing electric vehicle manufacturers to air commercials promoting their own cars, including a spot from Lucid, a manufacturer that has yet to put a car into production but that is aiming to become the first EV maker with a 500-mile range.
Ford and Volkswagen also ran ads promoting electric vehicles.
And the final bit of scrutiny some folks have been applying to Musk’s appearance on SNL came during his opening monologue. Musk identified himself as the first person with Asperger’s syndrome to host the show, which many folks pointed out as being untrue, considering SNL alum Dan Aykroyd has also been diagnosed with the same condition. Other folks pointed out that the preferred term is now “Autism Spectrum Disorder” due to Hans Asperger, after who the syndrome was named, being complicit in the experimentation and euthanization of children conducted by the Nazi regime in Germany.
Musk’s appearance on late-night television was bound to come with some Discourse-with-a-capital-D, no matter what. But investors and Musk fans were predicting something much more successful than what has actually transpired.