The year is 2022 and the world’s richest men are fighting on twitter

Elon Musk is continuing his quest to buy twitter and dropping hints about a tender offer. At the same time, there’s this…

The latest episode starts with a ‘leak’ of screenshots from Elon Musk’s telephone of SMS messages between him and — allegedly — Bill Gates. They have an appointment to meet at 720 Wednesday Gates texts to say he’s ‘just landed’. Musk replies “Do you still ahve a half billion dollar short position against Tesla?”

Gates then replies, “Sorry to say I haven’t closed it out. I would like to discuss philanthropy possibilities.”

Musk then replies, “Sorry, but I cannot take your philanthropy on climate change seriously when you have a massive short position against Tesla, the company doing the most to solve climate change.”

It’s not clear when the exchange took place but in Musk’s retelling, he sent the screenshots to friends and the New York Times “must have got it through friends of friends.”

A short time late, Musk tweeted this:

Naturally, the meme was copied and uncredited.

The top reply:

The idea — I guess — is to galvanize some kind of short squeeze on Bill Gates and boost Tesla shares. Or maybe it’s just Elon being Elon.