Critics pan Elon Musk’s SNL performance, but it got a lot of views

Elon Musk's critics continued to slam him for his SNL performance on Saturday night, but his viewership on YouTube tells a different tale.

Musk got a very respectable two-million-plus views for his appearance on the iconic and long-running comedy show, hosting live from NYC as always.

These numbers are on the heels of a dismal showing for this year's Oscars, for example, which had the lowest viewership in a long time, amounting to less than 50 percent of the previous year.

According to the Daily Wire, people reviewing the show on the media made fun of Elon for being "scripted". However, of course, the whole show has always been scripted.

Below is a clip of his performance, which went off without a hitch, despite cast members and writers' previous objections:

Critics not only typically had negative reviews of the show, they tended to mix their criticism of Musk's performance itself with other, more political reasons why they don't like him. For example, The Wrap, before talking about the performance itself, brought up "the time he mocked people’s gender pronouns. Or that time he publicly threatened labor organizers at Tesla."

"Elon Musk rushed through every single line so that it was hard to even understand what he was saying half the time, slipping from one accent to another seemingly without realizing he was doing it, and generally just being dramatically out of his league among the ‘SNL’ cast members," wrote The Wrap, calling Musk "a black hole of fun, without a shred of charisma, and he delivered a performance that’s on the level of what you’d expect to see in a middle school play."

"There were any number of reasons to be angry about ‘SNL’ tapping Elon Musk too host, including plenty of solid ethical and moral ones. Like the time he mocked people’s gender pronouns. Or that time he publicly threatened labor organizers at Tesla. Or any of the other many reasons," The Wrap went on.

The Daily Beast called Musk a "union-busting billionaire who’s repeatedly spread COVID and vaccine misinformation." Referring to his performance, they commented, "He stumbled nervously — albeit somewhat endearingly — through the rest of his scripted speech, sharing his ‘vision for the future’ (‘renewable energy’ and how ‘humanity must be a multiplanetary, space-bearing civilization’), and poking fun at his habit of making 4/20 and 69 jokes on Twitter."