A Japanese billionaire who’s paying Elon Musk to fly him around the Moon, assuming all goes to plan with SpaceX’s giant metal phallus, has bought himself a rather different ride in the meanwhile.
The BBC reports that Yusaku Maezawa has elbowed aside nugget-loving U.S. teen, Carter Wilkerson, to bag the title of most retweeted tweet by promising to give away 100 million yen (just under $1M) in cash if people RT the tweet.
His 5 million+ Twitter followers probably helped too.
At the time of writing Maezawa’s January 5 tweet has ~4.6M RTs (and counting), beating out Wilkerson’s April 2017 tweet pleading for free chicken nuggets which now has circa 3.6M RTs.
Sorry kid.
ZOZOTOWN新春セールが史上最速で取扱高100億円を先ほど突破！！日頃の感謝を込め、僕個人から100名様に100万円【総額1億円のお年玉】を現金でプレゼントします。応募方法は、僕をフォローいただいた上、このツイートをRTするだけ。受付は1/7まで。当選者には僕から直接DMします！ #月に行くならお年玉 pic.twitter.com/cKQfPPbOI3
— 前澤友作 (@yousuck2020) January 5, 2019
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Of course it’s not a fair fight. Wilkerson had just 138 Twitter followers to provide native uplift when his brief plea for “Nuggs” went viral.
Prior to Wilkerson, the world record retweeted tweet was a celebrity group selfie.
So we can add something else to the list of things money can buy (fine art; a ticket to the moon; faux popularity).
In true entrepreneur spirit, Maezawa, founder of Japanese online clothing retailer Zozo, is using his puffed up profile (i.e. as the man who Musk might fly to the Moon) to drum up business for his clothing business.
Clearly he’s hoping to get more than just a trip to outer space for the “lot of money” he’s paying Musk for the chance to play lunar tourist. So the key lesson is demand the moon and back folks.
Hence the world’s most retweeted tweet now promotes a Spring sale. Late stage capitalism eat yer heart out.
We can at least be thankful the tweet wasn’t crypto related. After all, given the Musk connection, that sort of spam would have been rather more typical.
