With the wind in his sails following the BBC drama and his swift reinstatement as Match of the Day host, Gary Lineker has publicly called out Elon Musk after his son George received an abusive DM from an anonymous troll.

George Lineker had already Tweeted out the DM himself, so Gary screenshooted it and tagged Elon, asking him if he thinks it’s acceptable:

Is this acceptable @Twitter @elonmusk? And I don’t mean the grammar. pic.twitter.com/fCVIIq3we2

— Gary Lineker 💙💛 (@GaryLineker) March 14, 2023

It’s pretty awful on multiple levels really. Crappy grammar, a death threat, and shock that a son would stand up for his dad? What kind of braindead idiot are we dealing with here? Someone like this, I imagine:

As much as Elon Musk appreciates a good troll, I’m sure even he doesn’t think this is OK,  and it looks as though the account behind the DM (which boasted a total of 1 follower), has already been deleted or taken down.

I’m not sure what else Gary Lineker expects Elon Musk and Twitter to do about this as you can’t exactly control what people send in DMs to each other. Twitter can barely police what gets Tweeted out in public. I guess they could get the nerds at Twitter HQ to implement some kind of death threat/abuse detector that can automatically pick up on these messages and block them from being sent, but who knows how complicated that might be. Something probably needs to be done to at least discourage this kind of behaviour, though.

Will be interesting to see whether Elon Musk personally responds to Gary. He must be aware of who he is by now, with all the Twitter drama of last week. I just love the idea of Gary Lineker feeling he can take on the world after he essentially bent the BBC over his knee and spanked them like a little child. Let’s see if he has the influence to take on the richest man in the world.

Meanwhile, here’s what Gary’s brother Wayne Lineker is up to. Typical.