A Twitter account run by a Florida teenager that tracks the movements of Elon Musk’s personal jet has been making international headlines recently.
As we reported last week, Musk sent a private message to @ElonJet account owner, 19 year old Jack Sweeney, asking him to take it down over concerns for his safety.
The account only makes Sweeney about $20 per month, but Musk made an unsolicited offer of $5,000 to “make it slightly harder for crazy people to shoot me.”
Not content with having the world’s richest person personally reach out to ask you a favour, Sweeney upped the ante by asking for $50,000, and a Tesla or SpaceX internship.
Weeks went by without a response, so instead of doing what most people in his situation would do, Sweeney reached out to media outlets around the world to tell his story, presumably in the hopes that Musk would see it and agree to pay up.
Instead, the opposite has happened. Since the story was first reported, Musk implemented some additional blocking technology to make his jet harder to track.
He also reached out to Sweeney to say it didn’t “feel right to pay to shut this down.”
The nail in the coffin took place yesterday when Musk blocked the Twitter account, all but ending Sweeney’s hopes of a payday, and a potential job at Tesla or SpaceX.
UPDATE 7:33am PST: Musk has now also blocked Sweeney’s personal Twitter account.
Yup that’s what Jack said. I mean what else do you want Elon to do. He’s worried about his own safety.
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) January 31, 2022
Sweeney had a golden opportunity to help Musk and in the process earn some good karma (and extra cash). Instead he went to countless media outlets to brag about what he had done, and to say that $5,000 wasn’t enough to replace the satisfaction he gets from working on the account.
Now he’ll have to do it without extra cash, and with Musk on his bad side.
Sweeney’s antics have also done the exact opposite of what Musk wanted. The account has grown from around 80,000 followers prior to the story being published to more than 200,000.
