How do you like that, Elon Musk? The founder of SpaceX and Tesla responded to the popular meme-question. NTV Channel asked the American entrepreneur on Twitter how he liked a video filmed in Nevinnomyssk. It shows an 18-year-old student driving a Lada tuned in a very peculiar way: The trunk and hood of the car had been switched places and the driver's seat and steering wheel had been turned backwards. Unexpectedly for all, Musk replied to the tweet with "Haha awesome" in Russian. The video presented to the businessman has been already watched 1.5 million times.
Let's see it. Well, the name of the Nevinnomyssk inventor is Sergey Artyushenko. He rebuilt that car on his own with a little help from his friends. The entire work took two evenings and cost 1000 rubles. The car itself cost 16,000. Now, the Lada has been taken in for expertise. The inventor might get fined for the unauthorized modification of the car. He claims he was aware that he may face an administrative offense. What the self-taught engineer didn't expect is to get recognized by Elon Musk himself.
Sergey Artyushenko, student: "Well, that's quite possible. I wouldn't say it's my life goal but I'd be happy to. I still can't believe what's happening. I thought I'd get famous in Russia at best. But I didn't expect to get world-famous."
We're joined now by Kirill Demkov the editor-in-chief of the HTB.Ru website.
- Greetings, Kirill. Everybody keeps asking "How do you like that, Elon Musk?" but get no response. But he did reply to you. And he even did it in Russian. Were you surprised? What did you feel when you saw it?
Kirill Demkov, editor-in-chief of HTB.Ru website: Naturally, we were happy. I immediately checked if it was a fake account because we've all had sad experiences with so-called fake news but it proved to be real. We were surprised. But there's another thing that surprised me even more. This morning I thought and, frankly speaking, I still think that here's how the story would've ended: NTV would've posted the video on social media, perhaps even posted it on our website, and mentioned it on air but that's basically it. But in this case, we didn't really do anything but the news was picked up by quite serious websites actual serious newspaper websites news agencies, and television channels. Here we are discussing it on TV. People called me asking me for a comment. The video got posted everywhere. It was #1 in today's top news in Russia and the world for quite some time. I was surprised by the professional media aspect of that story. It's an atypical example and now, we must think of how to live with that and how to use that in the future. That's the way it works now. It becomes a discussion topic on federal channels including competing channels. That's what surprised me the most. Honestly, even more than the fact that Elon Musk responded to us.
- Well, indeed, social networks are now a force to be reckoned with. We discuss everything that happens there and react to it. What was the reaction of the users? What did they write in the comments after Elon Musk's response?
- Many users were glad that it's finally over. The how-do-you-like meme was rather old and worn out. Now, it's done for good. Elon told us what he thought. He finally told us how he liked that. Some users thought there was some trick. One person told us that Elon Musk has an SMM-office in charge of his Twitter account. But you've shown the inventor-guy. We aired a big prime-time story last evening after the initial hype was over featuring his reaction. He shared his opinion with us. The whole story was true. In general, everybody's happy and surprised. People keep reposting the news and so on.
- Did you get a lot of new subscribers today thanks to the international informational support?
- Well, we did get a couple of new subscribers. I don't want to bore you with the numbers. It's too early to gather statistics because it's not an instant thing.
- Did you get a lot or not?
- Well, yes, that tweet has more than a million views. It's 50 or 60 times more than we usually get. The number of our subscribers increased nine- or tenfold in a single day about 7 million new people, something like that. That's a lot but I wouldn't... For me, the situation's unusual because it's been growing like a rolling snowball. It wasn't treated like a mundane story "Oh, look, somebody responded on Twitter, that doesn't happen every day, does it?"
- Well, thank you. Now, imagine how shocked the young man is the one who was driving the car. I believe that he's even more shocked than you. Thank you for your…
- He's not upset about possibly being fined and getting his insurance and inspection revoked. Now, he must be thinking about monetizing this story. He should open a repair shop and call it "Haha awesome" or "Elon Musk's" in order to profit off the hype.
- He should do the same thing that Brazilian fan did the one who was printing T-shirts taking advantage of the hype. Well, thank you for the interesting story.
Kirill Demkov, the editor in chief of the HTB.Ru website.
