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Elon Musk's Tesla Cybertruck revs up memes and jokes

The car for when you need "a luxury tank to drive through the ghost towns of the apocalypse."

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper
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On Thursday,  Elon Musk  introduced the Tesla Cybertruck, an electric pickup that you might use to take Grandma to church, if Grandma is named Mad Maxine and lives inside the movie Blade Runner. Looks aside, it's no joke. As Roadshow's Tim Stevens and Andrew Krok point out, "given its relative performance and price, the Cybertruck could be a massive success for Tesla as it enters into the largest segment in the US market." (Tesla promises an aggressive starting price a hair below $40,000.)

You can reserve one for just $100, and if you're not yet sold, Tesla is making a new all-terrain vehicle that can charge in the truck's bed (not included in the truck's price). But maybe don't throw metal balls at the supposedly unbreakable windows. After they were dented in a public demonstration, Musk promised the company will fix that.

But the truck's futuristic, I-can-survive-a-nuclear-explosion looks, coupled with the metal-ball fiasco, revved up the internet meme machine.

First, the basic look of the car earned plenty of comparisons and jokes. "Finally, my boy Elon Musk made the car I always drew when I was five," wrote one Twitter user.

Familiar with the "gonna tell my kids" meme, where users post a photo of something that's definitely not what they claim it is? Yeah, that got a workout thanks to the Tesla Cybertruck. "Gonna tell my kids this is Knight Rider," wrote one Twitter user.

The window-smashing debacle about broke the internet with reactions. "Not for nothing, but the smashed windows actually complete the whole 'driving my luxury armored command unit through the violent slums to elysium transfer station for my offworld vacation' look in a really pleasing way," wrote Max Read.

Not all the reactions were negative. "Elon is playful, but Elon isn't playing. Underestimate him at your own risk."

Tesla Cybertruck is like nothing else, and it'll be built in Austin

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