Cash-strapped ‘Treelon’ Musk vows to plant a million trees during Twitter exchange – YouTube pledges to match him
Tesla and SpaceX founder and CEO, and part-time memelord, Elon Musk, appears to have pledged to plant one million trees, on a whim and during an off-the-cuff Twitter conversation.
YouTuber Jimmy 'MrBeast' Donaldson announced the #TeamTrees initiative last week via his YouTube channel and was garnering support from his fellow content creators on the platform.
Donaldson aims to raise $20 million by New Year’s Day to assist the Arbor Day Foundation to plant 20 million trees around the world ($1 = one tree, according to the Team Trees website).
As of Monday, the project had already amassed a hugely impressive $6 million (six million trees). However, on Tuesday, a brief Twitter back-and-forth between YouTuber Marques ‘MKBHD’ Brownlee and Musk led ‘Treelon’ to spontaneously pledge $1 million, despite claiming that he was broke as a result of his ongoing 'pedo-guy' lawsuit.
Ok, sounds legit, will donate 1M trees
— Treelon (@elonmusk) October 29, 2019
Musk's donation has already appeared at the top of the #TeamTree leaderboard and YouTube has publicly pledged to match the entrepreneur’s donation.
Can confirm it's legit. And we'll match the next million to keep #TeamTrees growing🌲
— B🎃🎃Tube (@YouTube) October 30, 2019
Twitter chief Jack Dorsey has also reportedly pledged to plant 150,000 trees.
On his donation, Musk left a note that simply read “for Treebeard”, referring to the Lord of the Rings character, a tree-like creature called an ent who is the caretaker of a vast and ancient forest. Musk also changed his Twitter name to ‘Treelon,’ because… why not?
As is tradition, ‘Muskovites’ across Twitter shared memes in celebration of their hero’s generosity.
— Sara Boutall (@sara_boutall) October 30, 2019
— Kacper Pilch 🏳️🌈 (@KacperPilch1) October 30, 2019
@elonmusk@MrBeastYTpic.twitter.com/GhA5zdbFvH
— 乂卂几ᗪ乇尺 ㄥ乇乇 (@AxelArttio) October 30, 2019
At the time of writing, Team Trees had already surpassed the $8 million donation mark, though it remains to be seen whether the well-intentioned movement will fizzle out, much like the Notre Dame Cathedral restoration pledge movement did.
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