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The 19-year-old who has been tracking Elon Musk’s private jet is now selling merchandise, including shirts showing the world’s richest man smoking marijuana, to promote his flight surveillance-themed Twitter account.
Jack Sweeney, who turned down the Tesla chief’s offer of $5,000 to delete the account and was then blocked by the mogul after stating a counter-offer of $50,000, runs Ground Control, a web site that offers t-shirts, hoodies, sweaters, and stickers.
The merchandise is emblazoned with photos of Musk inhaling on a spliff while being interviewed on The Joe Rogan Experience in 2018. That infamous appearance was controversial since it made investors jittery and sent Tesla stock plummeting.
“I know how high Elon is,” reads the lettering on some of the shirts and sweaters. The phrase is a play on words meant to convey Musk’s being under the influence of marijuana as well as Sweeney’s flight-monitoring activities on the @ElonJet Twitter account.
Sweeney told Business Insider
that he created the company “a while back” and that while there are “not many sales,” he has raked in “somewhat decent donations and AdSense,” which is Google’s website monetization program.
He told Guardian that the Ground Control site is a fallback option if Twitter decides to remove the jet-monitoring account over potential safety concerns.
Sweeney has started tracking the private jets of other A-list celebrities and billionaires, including boxer Floyd Mayweather, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, singer Taylor Swift, retired baseball star Alex Rodriguez, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
After the @ElonJet Twitter account went viral, Sweeney managed to get a job offer from Stratos Jet Charters, the Orlando-based private charter flight firm, the Post reported.
Sweeney, a student who is enrolled at the University of Central Florida, was extended the offer from Stratos CEO Joel Thomas, who happens to be an alum of the Orlando-based school.
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