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The Street
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Elon Musk's Latest Stunt Is Especially Immature

Right now, if you e-mail a press inquiry to Twitter (TWTR), you're likely to get a very stinky response. And that's because Elon Musk, the social media platform's new owner, is maybe a little too fond of the infamous poop emoji.

According to his own Twitter feed, Musk's newest "administrative" change was to change the auto-reply for emailed press inquiries. And he chose--you guessed it--his favorite emoji.

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It's not the most professional move that's ever been made, that's for sure. Several folks confirmed the claim in the tweet, reaching out for PR purposes and even using Musk's own toilet humor against him. 

Another commenter called the automated response an example of "disruptive marketing". But PillowFight CMO and television news pundit William LeGate likely spoke for plenty of members of the press in his criticism of Musk’s emoji choice.

Musk has a history of taking heat for his love of non-words when interacting professionally. In the spring of 2022, before Musk scooped up Twitter in a $44 billion deal, the Tesla (TSLA) CEO used the emoji to cast doubt on the former Twitter CEO’s claims about bots. At the time, Parag Agrawal, then head of Twitter, tweeted that Twitter was “strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can, every single day. Anyone who suggests otherwise is just wrong.”

In response to Agrawal's tweet, Musk used what is now becoming his signature digital expression.

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