A Spectator journalist has been blocked on the social media platform X for debunking a theory that Elon Musk is the secret owner of a fawning sock puppet account.
Since 2023, rumors have swirled that X user Adrian Dittmann, a Musk acolyte with more than 222,000 followers, is really a burner account created by the world’s richest man.
“You’re an amazing father, Elon. Your kids are very lucky to have you,” Dittmann wrote in a January 2024 post.
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“Elon is a father who gets lots of sex. He will never stoop to the lows of anger and posting emotionally like a lot of people expected him to,” read another Dittmann missive that has since been deleted. Musk has 12 kids with three women. Most of his children were conceived via IVF.
Dittmann’s rhetorical style and questionable takes—which have been disputed by Musk’s daughter—had convinced many users that Dittmann was really Musk.
But a detailed analysis by Jacqueline Sweet in The Spectator over the weekend seemed to put that speculation to rest. The report concluded that alleged Musk superfan Adrian Dittmann was in fact a German Musk superfan named Adrian Dittmann living in Fiji.
The Fiji Dittmann’s biography lines up with highly specific geographical and personal details revealed by the X user Dittmann, including the time zones on some of his posts and the fact that he lives in Oceania but grew up in Gibraltar. (The Fiji Dittmann’s entrepreneur father was based in Gibraltar in the early 2000s, according to financial records.)
Cross referencing social media accounts belonging to the Fiji Dittmann’s family confirmed other information that the Musk disciple Dittmann posted to X. And perhaps most convincingly, when Sweet contacted the Fiji Dittmann to ask about certain posts, the X user Dittmann suddenly deleted the corroborating information.
The whole thing was fairly garden-variety internet weird, until Sweet shared a link to her story on X. Musk himself responded to her post, writing, “I am Adrian Dittmann. It’s time the world knew.”
Within hours, X took down Sweet’s post, blocked her from posting for 30 days, and blocked users from posting the link to her story on X, The Spectator’s managing editor revealed on the site.
The link was labeled as “unsafe,” according to Mediaite, with Sweet presumably blocked for “doxxing” Adrian Dittmann, or revealing his identity—even though it turned out he was in fact using his real name and posting his real information.
The Daily Beast has reached out to X for comment.
Users were quick to accuse Musk, who claims to be a free-speech crusader, of censoring Sweet.
