‘Not dating’: Elon Musk clarifies as internet pairs him up with Italy’s Meloni

The internet has labelled Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as a “perfect couple” after the former praised her at an awards ceremony in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
Seeing the two together at the event, netizens exploded the internet with comments like, “I am totally shipping these two. Perfect” and “Now that is the kind of international power couple I can get behind.” Some users also wrote, “That’s Amore (That’s love).”
“I wanna find someone that looks at me the same way Meloni looks at Musk,” another user wrote.
However, Musk silenced all the comments on Wednesday by replying to an X post that questioned if he and Meloni “would date”.
To this, Musk wrote: “Not dating”.
This is not the first time the internet has paired the two leaders. In December last year, several posts on X (formerly known as Twitter) claimed that the two were together after Musk accepted Meloni’s invitation to attend a political festival in Rome.
Bestowing an Atlantic Council Global Citizen Award on Giorgia Meloni, Elon Musk said it was an honour to present the accolade to someone who is even “more beautiful on the inside than she was on the outside.”
“She’s also someone who is authentic, honest, truthful — and that can’t always be said about politicians,” he added.
Meloni received the award for her “strong support of the EU and becoming the first female prime minister of Italy”.
Previously, the internet was occasionally flooded with Prime Minister Narendra Modi-Meloni memes, jokingly portraying the romance between the two prime ministers. Some posts even created an imaginary phone call between the two. Such memes went viral on social media, especially during the G20 Summit in India and then after the BJP fell short of a majority in the Lok Sabha elections.
Netizens also created a #Melodi – connecting Meloni and Modi’s names.
In December of last year, Meloni used the hashtag on a selfie she posted with Modi after meeting him on the sidelines of the COP28 summit in Dubai. She also shared a similar picture with Modi in June this year.