On Nov. 29, 2023, the SpaceX Lovers Facebook page posted a link to an article on SpaceXMania.com that said former Fox News host Tucker Carlson had announced the creation of a new media empire in collaboration with X owner Elon Musk. "Yes! This will be EPIC!," the post's caption read, referring to a development that would purportedly happen in the future.
The story began as follows:
Just in: Tucker Carlson To Launch His Own Media Empire In Collaboration With Elon Musk
Tucker Carlson Teams Up with Elon Musk to Create a Powerful Conservative Media Force.
The ongoing feud between Tucker Carlson and Fox News has intensified, as insiders close to Carlson have revealed to Axios that he is gearing up to pressure Fox News into allowing him to work for, or even create, a competing right-wing network.
This rumor was an unusual one, to say the least.
The article was originally published on May 7, 2023. A previous Facebook post on the SpaceX Lovers page that included a link to the same story received more than 57,000 likes.
On one hand, there's the fact that the bio of the SpaceX Lovers Facebook page states that the content it posts is "satire." Also, the "About Us" page of SpaceXMania.com says that it publishes "the latest news, analysis, and satire related to Elon Musk, Space, SpaceX, and everything in between" — which implies that not all the content published on the website is satirical (though it appears the vast majority of it is).
The article took on a retroactive nugget of truth about a month after it was first published, when Carlson began uploading episodes of his new show on X, now called "Tucker on X."
In other words, while the story may have originated from a Facebook page and website that both carry satire disclaimers, something resembling the events described in the May 2023 article eventually happened in reality — that is, if X is to be considered a "media empire."
For background, here is why we sometimes write about satire/humor.