“You are a disgrace”: Calls for a Sesame Street puppet to “resign” follow Elmo’s X account hack
Certain posters are demanding that a red sack with plastic eyes resign from Sesame Street after hackers made Elmo post hate speech. Over the weekend, the official Elmo account on X posted racist and antisemitic remarks and demanded that President Donald Trump release the Epstein files.
The real owners regained control of the account and posted a confirmation of the hacking on Tuesday. However, some do not appear satisfied with this resolution.
The @Elmo hack
The uncharacteristic posts, which many immediately recognized as a hack, began on July 13. The hackers demanded genocide against Jewish people and called Trump "Netanyahu's puppet." He then accused Trump of pedophilia in the most profane manner and told him to "release the files."
The hackers went on to subject those who replied to posts like these with more vitriol, including racist and transphobic slurs.
By the next day, Sesame Workshop had recovered its account. An explanation and condemnation of hate speech soon followed.
"On Sunday, Elmo’s X account was briefly hacked by an outside party, in spite of the security measures in place," the post reads. "We strongly condemn the abhorrent antisemitic and racist content, and the account has since been secured."
"These posts in no way reflect the values of Sesame Workshop or Sesame Street, and no one at the organization was involved."
"You should be out of a job"
Despite this statement and that the notoriously sweet children's character would never post such vile things, some X users still reacted as though the puppet is a real person, demanding its resignation from Sesame Street.
"Resign. You posted the most vile hate speech since the latest Tucker Carlson podcast," user @r_slavis replied to a normal Elmo post. "Saying what you did about Jews is Nazi style rhetoric, and you should be out of a job at the very least. You are a disgrace and should be far away from anything having to do with Children."
User @anjewla90, who apparently missed the explanation post, replied with screenshots of the offending posts.
"Did you think we would forget in 3 days?" she asked. "No apologies?"
"Elmo needs to apologize for the words he said," said @jwsherrod. "What does it communicate to children that you can post violent, antisemitic content and then not say anything about it for two days and then not apologize for it?"
This is the weirdest people have been about Elmo since that time he posted about losing his job due to Trump's budget cuts on LinkedIn. Before that, it was the freakout over Larry David slapping the puppet.
Folks can't seem to stop treating the mass of felt like it's real, but at least it's entertaining.
Popular X account @CantEverDie remarked that "the coolest part about the Elmo hacked posts is that the most insane people online are treating Elmo like he’s a real guy."
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