Skip to main content

This blessed Chrome extension replaces ‘Elon Musk’ with ‘Grimes’s Boyfriend’

This blessed Chrome extension replaces ‘Elon Musk’ with ‘Grimes’s Boyfriend’

Share this story

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination Costume Institute Gala - Arrivals
Grimes and her boyfriend at the 2018 Met Gala
Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images

If you’re still not over the surprise news of the week — musician Grimes is dating Tesla CEO Elon Musk — then why not keep the shock-and-confusion train a’rolling with a Chrome extension that replaces every mention of the words “Elon Musk” with “Grimes’s Boyfriend.”

The resulting headlines (“Is Grimes’s Boyfriend just an AI set on ‘eccentric billionaire’ mode?” and “Grimes’s Boyfriend plans to create bricks for affordable housing”) are easily worth the price of entry. They also serve as a good reminder that Grimes, a Canadian synth-pop musician best known for her songs “Oblivion,” “California,” and “Kill V. Maim,” has a new boyfriend who made a lot of money in the early 2000s selling a financial website to eBay and now sends rockets into space. Just so we’re clear.

The extension was made by 24-year-old James Bartholomeou, who told Newsweek he was inspired by The Verge’s own T.C. Sottek, who tweeted the (extremely Photoshopped and not real) headline above on Wednesday. Another Twitter user suggested this would make a good word-swap extension like the famous “Millennials to Snake People” one — and, hey presto! Bartholomeou delivered. The whole purpose of the swap, of course, is to point out that publications often refer to prominent women only in relation to their male partners, like calling human rights lawyer Amal Clooney “George Clooney’s wife.”

A quick Google for “Elon Musk” with the extension installed.
A quick Google for “Elon Musk” with the extension installed.

The relationship between Grimes and her boyfriend was first reported by Page Six at the beginning of the week, and it seemed to be confirmed when the pair turned up together for the 2018 Met Gala. Grimes also tweeted about it. According to Page Six, the two met when Musk Googled a joke he was about to make about Roko’s Basilisk, an AI thought experiment beloved by nerdy types, only to find Grimes had made the same joke first.

Roko’s Basilisk, by the way, imagines that sometime in the future, humanity will manufacture a super intelligent AI, which will, for reasons of dodgy computer engineering, want to kill everyone who didn’t aid in its creation. The fun of Roko’s Basilisk is that it’s a cross between Pascal’s Wager and The Game (which you just lost because as soon as you know about the hypothetical existence of said AI, by not helping in its creation right this second, you are incurring its future wrath). Sorry about that.