As if it wasn’t enough to be popular on the internet. But then Elon Musk isn’t just an average tech tycoon. The SpaceX and Tesla founder has long dreamt of exploring space, and his latest contribution to the Area 51 craze goes beyond the alien conspiracy to take a dig at… metrication in the United States.
“Some secrets are too dangerous to be free,” the multi-billionaire Twitter memelord wrote on Tuesday alongside a meme about Area 51 guards going after a person in a muppet costume that knows “the secret reason why America isn’t using the metric system.”
Some secrets are too dangerous to be free pic.twitter.com/g547UdmiJ7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 24, 2019
The followers were quick to respond with a stream of jokes mocking how the United States refuses to be metric.
— Eva Fox 🦊 (@EvaFoxU) September 24, 2019
— K10✨ (@Kristennetten) September 24, 2019
— Eva Fox 🦊 (@EvaFoxU) September 24, 2019
— World of Engineering (@engineers_feed) September 24, 2019
— Pauline 🚀 (@justpaulinelol) September 24, 2019
The satirical Area 51 break-in event, scheduled for 20 September, became an Internet sensation over the summer and received extensive news coverage after two million people signed up. The alien-buff get-together prompted stark warnings from the US military, who promised to protect the national assets, and was cancelled with just days to go over safety concerns. The organisers were allowed to hold a music fest near the location instead.
Area 51, sitting in the middle of the Nevada desert, is a US Air Force installation that is ostensibly being used for research and testing of aircraft and aviation technologies. A long-running conspiracy that has already become part of the American popular culture links this place with highly secretive government-run alien studies. There has been rumour of the military reverse-engineering alien spacecraft from the 1947 Roswell incident; the government says the aircraft that crashed in the incident was a high-altitude army balloon and not a UFO.
