With talk of a cage match brewing between Twitter owner Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it would come as no surprise that the two tech giants might engage in a bit of smack talk. However, we're not sure if anyone predicted Musk tweeting, "I propose a literal dick measuring contest," a tweet that ended with an emoji of a straight ruler.
Whether joking or not, this was a real tweet posted by Musk from his official @elonmusk Twitter account on July 9, 2023. The tweet was a response to an earlier tweet also from Musk that read, "Zuck is a cuck."
I propose a literal dick measuring contest ?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2023
Since we know that not all users are familiar with the definitions of every word used on social media, here are the ways that Merriam-Webster.com described the word "cuck":
1: a man whose wife is unfaithful : CUCKOLD
2: (informal, disparaging + often offensive) : a weak or submissive man —often used as an insulting and contemptuous term for a man who has politically progressive or moderate views
To give an idea of how unexpected the "dick-measuring contest" tweet was to some users, we'll turn to a tweet from a popular Musk parody account, @ElonMuskAOC. The user behind the parody account tweeted about the "Zuck is a cuck" and "dick-measuring contest" tweets, "At this point, I can't keep track of which account I'm tweeting from," a joke that implied Musk himself was in control of the parody account.
Musk even replied to the parody tweet from his official account, adding, "Same."
Same
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2023
For more details about the possibility of a cage match between Musk and Zuckerberg, we recommend our previous fact check that looked at whether Zuckerberg had tweeted to Musk, "Speaking of cheating, you had an affair with Sergey Brin's wife last year."