Elon Musk’s ‘media empire’ staffed by ex-Onion writers might be called ‘Thud!’

If you can believe anything Elon Musk tweets, then ‘Thud!’ is the name of the media venture that the multi-CEO and space person is starting up, staffed by former Onion writers he’s poached and doing something with comedy.

Musk apparently wanted to buy The Onion initially, but I guess that fell through and instead he went about assembling a team of funny people with access to keyboards to do whatever he’s doing on his own. ‘Thud(!),’ I guess.

That’s the name of my new intergalactic media empire, exclamation point optional

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2018

I say this all with a degree of uncertainty (including the “might be” in the headline to this article) because it’s very hard to tell when Musk is joking, trolling or otherwise playing with the media as we breathlessly report almost everything he does on social media (yes I do this, too).

We’ve reached out to Elon to find out if “Thud!” is something legit or if he was just being impish on Twitter as he is wont to do on occasion, and will update this post in case he provides any cryptic hints either way.

Regardless of what it’s called, the project and the Onion staff hires seem real enough, so expect something involving jokes and media from Musk — I guess when he’s not busy building a Hyperloop, establishing a colony on Mars or making electric cars a mass-market reality.