Elon Musk Met With Icy Welcome From Dave Chappelle's Comedy Show Audience

Whatever crowd reaction Elon Musk was hoping for during his surprise appearance at Dave Chappelle's comedy show in San Francisco, it probably wasn't several long, uninterrupted minutes of booing. We have to assume it wasn't the reception Chappelle expected from the approximately 18,000 audience members either. Adding insult to injury, videos from the embarrassing moment promptly began circulating all over Musk's very own social media platform, Twitter. 

According to Gizmodo, Chappelle told the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, make some noise for the richest man in the world," near the end of his show on December 11, and boy did they ever. Watching the videos, you can hear for yourself as the boos quiet down when Chappelle tries to joke with the crowd, then pick up steam every time Musk tries to speak. "It sounds like some of the people you fired are in the audience," Chappelle quipped, in reference to the highly-publicized mass layoffs at Twitter following Musk's takeover.

It would have been one thing if Elon Musk's disastrous guest appearance at Dave Chappelle's show was confined to that evening but videos from the event have taken on a life of their own on social media. At one point, Musk tried to reference Chappelle's classic, "I'm rich b****" joke, which only got more boos, and a lot of traction on Twitter. "Elon Musk shouting "I'm rich, b****," while the sound people at Chappelle's show honk a horn to drown out the boos from the crowd is one of the saddest videos I've ever seen," tweeted Gizmodo writer Matt Novak.

Social media users also had heat for Chappelle, who has been widely criticized lately for his refusal to back down from jokes found to be offensive. "Dave Chappelle wh*ring himself out for these uber rich white men just to be in their presence, literally alienating his audience trying to force their acceptance of this colonizing right wing a**hole, is so gross I can't believe he's become this over the years," tweeted one fed-up fan. 

There was, of course, one person who viewed the events differently. And that person is, of course, Musk himself. "Technically, it was 90% cheers & 10% boos (except during quiet periods), but, still, that's a lot of boos, which is a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter)," the South African billionaire tweeted. "It's almost as if I've offended SF's unhinged leftists ... but nahhh."