Elon Musk has called Instagram an app “for girls” in a post on X. He wrote it on October 1 as a reply to Geiger Capital, an investment firm that said it had deleted its Instagram account. Geiger called Instagram “an inherently female app” with “zero benefit.” Musk’s answer was four words: “Instagram is for girls.”
It is not the first time. Reports, including Vanguard, say he made a similar remark in May, when he also joked about men sending him their Instagram profiles. This time he gave no evidence or explanation, and no response from Meta, which owns Instagram, has been reported.
How people reacted
Replies on X split. Some users said the comment leans on gender stereotypes and puts down men who use the app. Others defended it or just joked. Many pointed out the obvious: people of all genders use Instagram, so one app does not belong to one group.
Why a one-line reply matters
Musk owns X, which competes with Meta’s apps, including Threads, the rival Meta launched in 2023. When the owner of one platform describes a rival’s app this way, it works as a marketing jab as much as an opinion.
Our take: this is a joke, not a finding. Saying an app is “for” one gender is a claim about who uses it, and Musk backed it with no numbers. A reply from the owner of a rival platform reaches a huge audience on X, which is why it travels, but the reach comes from who said it, not from any data behind it. It is also worth noting that the post that started this was written by a firm announcing it had left Instagram, so the original claim was one company’s opinion about one app.
Musk’s posts on X have driven other headlines this week too. We covered one in SpaceXAI Is Becoming SpaceXSI.
