Anything set in the far future should theoretically be timeless, but now and again sci-fi creators decide to get all contemporary and reference something in the current zeitgeist that ends up aging like milk. Take one moment from the first season of Star Trek Discovery, for instance, which is coming under the microscope in the wake of Elon Musk’s turbulent takeover of Twitter.
From our viewpoint at the tail-end of 2022, the Spacex founder is a widely ridiculed figure who has managed to transform his reputation from eccentric celebrity inventor to one of the planet’s least favorite people. However, back in 2017, Musk had yet to fully reveal his true colors, so there was still a lot of reverence surrounding the guy. Hence this clunker of a line from the Trek universe.