The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has been named Time’s 2021 Person of the Year.
According to Time, “For 2021 was the year of Elon Unbound.”
The publication explained, “In April, SpaceX won NASA’s exclusive contract to put U.S. astronauts on the moon for the first Time since 1972. In May, Musk hosted Saturday Night Live. In October, car-rental giant Hertz announced it planned to add 100,000 Teslas to its fleet.”
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/8Y5BhIldNs pic.twitter.com/B6h6rndjIh
— TIME (@TIME) December 13, 2021
Time National Political Correspondent, Molly Ball, acknowledged it is “really hard to escape Elon Musk’s dominance over so many things in American life right now.”
She continued, “He’s got 65 million Twitter followers, and he likes to make weird jokes and set people off, and sometimes, with a single tweet, he can control the stock market or the value of various different cryptocurrencies.”
Time Executive Editor John Simons explained Musk’s wealth is “largely tied up in Tesla stock.”
He added, “He is the, not only the CEO, he is its largest shareholder. And Tesla is one of the most valuable companies in the country. Its market value is more than $1 trillion.”
Musk told the publication he is “confident in the future of Tesla,” adding, “I hope some of these other companies do well too.”
.@elonmusk is TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year.
— TIME (@TIME) December 13, 2021
See how the richest man on the planet is reshaping our world—and beyond #TIMEPOY https://t.co/kxujBpxSEG pic.twitter.com/McylFsiI5u
Still, Tesla has received some criticism.
“There is a federal investigation underway into the autopilot software that Tesla has, which, despite the name, is not autopilot software. It does not drive the car for you. And a lot of people in Tesla have expressed a lot of skepticism about whether the company’s technology is eventually going to be able to get there,” Ball said.
Musk argued, “Far more accidents off autopilot than on autopilot.”
Commenting on his tweets, Musk called them “self-inflicted wounds.”
Watch: TIME's 2021 Person of the Year @elonmusk on the power of his tweets #TIMEPOY https://t.co/NS7CjGCsP2 pic.twitter.com/HjrKOczgrb
— TIME (@TIME) December 13, 2021
Time also offered a behind-the-scenes look at the publication’s Person of the Year issue.
“It’s a theme that resonates throughout this issue. Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast of all time and our Athlete of the Year, took sports and the world forward in 2021 by using her spotlight at the Tokyo Olympics to stand up for mental health, and making sure athletes are measured by more than their wins and losses,” the publication stated.
Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) is TIME's 2021 Athlete of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/35CNbmLYxI pic.twitter.com/wX4y34GGW7
— TIME (@TIME) December 13, 2021
It continued, “The miracle of fast and effective vaccines that saved millions of lives from COVID-19 was the work of so many scientists over so many years that we created a new category to recognize them, Heroes of the Year.”
Vaccine scientists are TIME's 2021 Heroes of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/8qAiVzxRPP pic.twitter.com/pxee2faWdL
— TIME (@TIME) December 13, 2021
Vaccine scientists are TIME's 2021 Heroes of the Year.
— TIME (@TIME) December 13, 2021
In science there is hardly ever a simple quick fix, but this was truly a moment of the right fix. A brand new kind of vaccine technology at exactly the right time #TIMEPOY https://t.co/6D9pc35D7H pic.twitter.com/1ZTihnVilN
Time revealed its 2021 entertainer of the year to be Olivia Rodrigo.
“In her profile of our 2021 Entertainer of the Year Olivia Rodrigo, my colleague Lucy Feldman made an observation that jumped out at me. Rodrigo, the 18-year-old pop sensation whose music has won over audiences of all ages, ‘has a gift for picking the best of the past,’ Lucy notes, ‘and finding just the right way to situate it in the present,'” Editor-in-Chief and CEO of Time Edward Felsenthal wrote.
Olivia Rodrigo (@oliviarodrigo) is TIME's 2021 Entertainer of the Year #TIMEPOY https://t.co/lst3sc3ZWM pic.twitter.com/gTUA3g8Yag
— TIME (@TIME) December 13, 2021
Felsenthal even offered the reader a look into how the publication itself has changed over the past year.
“For us at TIME, it has also been a year of building on the past to forge the future. We developed, like so many of you, a new hybrid approach to work as many of us now ping back and forth between our virtual and physical offices,” he wrote.
