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| - In early December 2024, a video surfaced on YouTube alleging that tech entrepreneur Elon Musk once disguised himself as a homeless person before dining at an upscale restaurant in order to test how people judge others based solely on their appearances.
According to the story, which did not provide any evidence to corroborate its claims, Musk later revealed his true identity and berated patrons and restaurant staff for making disrespectful comments.
Snopes readers wrote in to ask whether the story is true.
The footage, titled "Elon Musk Goes Undercover as Homeless in a Restaurant – The Shocking Ending Will Blow Your Mind!", had amassed more than 450,000 views as of this writing and was uploaded by a channel named Elite Stories.
Artificial intelligence (AI) video-creation tools seemingly helped to create the video's thumbnail, narration, scripting and sequencing.
Similar videos posted elsewhere on YouTube and on Facebook shared nearly identical stories.
The narrator in the first clip recounted that Musk disguised himself as a homeless person before dining at an upscale restaurant called The Copper Elm in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Inside the restaurant, Musk was about to be turned away when a server named Sophia offered to seat him. Throughout his meal, Musk heard disparaging comments from the restaurant's staff and diners, except from Sophia, who treated him like a regular customer. After finishing his meal, Musk revealed his identity and berated the restaurant's staff and diners for their rude treatment before presenting Sophia with a check for $50,000 and leaving.
However, there was no evidence that the story was true and no credible news outlets reported on such a tale. Furthermore, no restaurant called The Copper Elm Restaurant exists in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The video's description also included the following disclaimer, but that did not stop people from leaving comments implying that they believed the story was real:
The stories presented on this channel are entirely fictional and crafted solely for entertainment. Any resemblance to real events, individuals, or situations is purely coincidental and unintentional. These narratives are not intended to depict, reference, or represent any actual occurrences, persons, or entities.
Musk has also never posted such a story on X, the social media platform that he now owns.
Elite Stories has posted similar fake stories about Musk going undercover as a homeless person at a bank and at a car dealership.
In short, the rumor was made up from whole cloth for the purpose of gaining views online. Therefore, we have rated this claim as false.
This was not the first fabricated story about Musk in which he allegedly taught the general public a moral lesson. For example, we previously fact-checked false claims that he was asked to leave a San Francisco coffee shop (and an unidentifiable hospital) for wearing a Make America Great Again hat or that he rewarded a good Samaritan who helped his mother fix a flat tire.
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