‘Are you transitioning?’: Elon Musk sparks backlash after mocking men who share Instagram profiles

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk also remarks that ‘Instagram is for girls’.

Elon Musk made the remarks while responding to a viral discussion on X about evolving trends in social media (AP Photo)

2 min readNew DelhiMay 17, 2026 01:22 PM IST First published on: May 17, 2026 at 01:22 PM IST

Elon Musk has triggered criticism after calling Instagram a platform “for girls” and ridiculing men who share their profiles with him. The world’s wealthiest person made the remarks while responding to a viral discussion on X about evolving trends in social media.

“Instagram is for girls,” Musk wrote. The post examined how users’ digital habits can mirror different stages of their lives, pointing to trends such as posting “thirst traps,” sharing constant story updates, and uploading photos of homemade meals.

Musk later intensified the backlash with another post in which he mocked adult men who sent him links to their Instagram accounts. “Obviously. Sometimes grown men send me their Instagram profiles and I’m like are you transitioning or what?” he wrote.

The billionaire entrepreneur has repeatedly aimed at Meta platforms while positioning X as a freer, more substantive social media platform.

See here:

Obviously.

Sometimes grown men send me their Instagram profiles and I’m like are you transitioning or what?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 15, 2026

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The post has since gone viral, with several users reacting to it. “Elon, please be kind. Why be needlessly hurtful about other people’s bodies? If someone doesn’t want to look like a brutish macho male, then cool,” a user wrote. “And yet from Instagram and its massive user base they basically made an entire Twitter alternative with a flip of a button,” another user commented.

“Men should have a separate app called BROSTAGRAM because explain the pout, the soft lighting, and the 47 mirror selfies,” a third user reacted.

Earlier, criticising Meta, Musk had said that WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption cannot be trusted. “WhatsApp is not secure. Even Signal is questionable. Use X Chat,” he wrote.