Elon Musk Imposter Tricks Fan Into Thinking He's Getting Free Tesla

Kyle Young has been eating pizza the wrong way for 99 days, hoping that Elon Musk would reward him for it with a Tesla. It's not exactly what the internet was invented for, but Young is amassing views regardless.

In fact, Young's whole account, @foodthewrongway, is dedicated to his mission of eating pizza from the crust first, uploading videos since March 11. In the three months he's been active, the account has managed to rise from just 7,000 likes on his first video, to gaining views in the millions on each recent clip.

"Eating pizza the wrong way has been an idea I've had for about four years now but I never had any reason to do it. Then I had the idea to make it an everyday series and it just grew from there. Changing the editing style to only show the crunches, and doing it for a Tesla from Elon all played a major factor in the growth of my account," Young told Newsweek.

"I started my mission for the Tesla back in March mostly as a joke, but I had another account at the time which me and my friend both played a part in. Eventually he claimed that the only reason our channel had grown was because of him and that I played zero factor so it was partially to prove him wrong which I think I definitely did. Now it's just a habit and something I enjoy doing," he said.

For a while, it seemed like Musk had joined in the fun, with a verified account commenting on the videos over the last week. @elonmuskdad, who had a verified tick on TikTok, had been offering to give Young a Tesla if he made it to 420 days.

"Either day 420, or you getting to 420 pounds, whichever comes first," wrote the account. The offer was convincing, with the real-life Musk's publicly documented fixation with jokes related to the number 420.

"I'm ready for day 420!!! Next pizza, extra extra cheese," he wrote in another comment. The account also claimed to be open to personally meeting Young too: "I will personally meet with you and give you the Tesla on day 420! On 4/20/22."

It was all going so well, until suddenly it wasn't. The account turned out to be fake, regardless of its app verification.

Yesterday, June 17, @elonmuskdad was deleted from TikTok, much to the disappointment of Young and his followers. Young's suspicions had started to rise previously, with him making his doubts known on June 17, writing: "Pretty sure it's not really Elon, but that's just me."

"I had a suspicion from the start that the account may have been fake, but I had no way of proving it so I just believed it as many others did," said Young. "Some people accused me of being the 'elonmuskdad' account as a way to inflate my views but that's not why I'm doing this. Sure it's nice to have as many followers as I do but my goal remains the same. Get a Tesla from Elon Musk."

In a post shared yesterday of him eating pizza, he wrote: "Elonmuskdad's account got banned. It wasn't him guys, guess I keep going."

Viewers have been closely watching his journey to get Musk's attention, with him gaining over 500,000 followers. Young starts each of his videos by responding to their comments.

Some of them have been left a little concerned about the TikTok creator's health, now that he's making pizza part of his everyday diet. "He's going to have so many health problems before he gets that Tesla. My guy be like 'welp, I just lost five years of my life,'" wrote one viewer.

However, Young told Newsweek that his "response to these people being concerned about my health is that they shouldn't be. I'm a fairly active person, I don't eat that much other than pizza, and my metabolism is still fast so I haven't seen any weight gain or other problems with my health."

Perhaps Young might have better luck trying to get a Tesla out of fellow famous supercar giver David Dobrik, seeing as he's just made his big return to YouTube.

Update 6/22/21, 09:20 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Kyle Young.