By 
Tesla's Elon Musk continued his reign of terror against reality last night by introducing something called a Cybertruck. It definitely sounds like the villain in a straight-to-DVD Transformers knockoff, but apparently it's just a regular, futuristic pickup truck designed to look like a computer mouse as sketched by Pablo Picasso sometime in 1912. An easy misunderstanding.
Yes, this is a pickup truck. Yes, it looks like what would happen if the vehicles from the Cars movies got Botox and cheek fillers to try to freshen themselves up. Yes, the word cyber has lost all meaning and just sounds like a 1990s local news segment about the dangers of internet porn. And what about it?!
The truck is made from the same material as SpaceX rockets and, Musk bragged, is bulletproof against handguns. Ah yes, finally, the perfect vehicle for a 12-minute trip to Home Depot to pick up potting soil for the community garden, two eye-hooks, and one (1) candy bar at checkout. I know that Musk, as one of our eras' leading heavy-handed human metaphors, is clearly more in tune with dystopia than the average citizen, but this is really pushing it. Still, you have to respect his determination to equip humanity for a galactic battle only he can foresee. He even included the post-apocalyptic graffiti behind the truck! Courteous!
More From ELLE
Forgive me for sounding like a thousandaire, but I'm not really sure my life calls for an indestructible truck with the hauling capabilities of a Ford F-150, the handling of a Porsche, and the mandate of a Terminator. Or, should I say, a nearly indestructible truck. Musk touted the Cybertruck's unbreakable metal glass windows (METAL GLASS?! What is this? Everything about this truck sounds like the end-of-semester project by a weird teenager in a high school entrepreneurship class. Final grade: B.), and proceeded to demonstrate the unbreakable windows by hurling a metal ball at them. Twice. It did not go well. Twice.
Elon Musk introducing his peculiar and frightening new creation with loads of fanfare only to immediately begin destroying it has the same energy as me writing something I am very proud of, stepping away from the computer for two seconds, and then rereading the thing I just wrote.
I love the festive lasers! It's like Mad Max at a rave. "Alexa play 'Bust Your Windows' by Glee Cast, featuring Amber Riley, based on the original recording by Jazmine Sullivan."
I typically don't pay much attention to Elon Musk news unless it involves Azealia Banks, but this is crucial. Two smashed-in windows! Elon Musk Lemonade-d his own vehicle! Elon Musk is so committed to that dystopian life that his car is already dressed for the coming revolution. Elon Musk threw the first terrabyte at Spacewall.
Musk responded to the incident by pointing out that though the windows cracked, they didn't actually break. Which... I mean, yeah, it's true. This has the same energy as when you're doing a Sip & Paint and you mess your canvas up and have to pretend that you're pivoting to abstract expressionism. "I was doing sleek, inexplicable space truck but now I'm doing mid-riot realness. Please respect my shine." Anyway, the Cybertruck looks very cool in the most terrifying way possible and I can't wait for it to take its broken windows, go back in time, and erase my entire existence. See you never!
R. Eric Thomas is a columnist for ELLE.com, where he skewers politics, pop culture, celebrity shade, and schadenfreude. He is also the author of Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, a memoir-in-essays.
