Elon Musk tells 226 million followers to cancel Netflix, movement goes viral

Elon Musk Calls for Net­flix Boy­cott Amid Con­tro­ver­sy Over Ani­mat­ed Show

Brownsville, Texas — Octo­ber 1, 2025

Elon Musk, the bil­lion­aire entre­pre­neur and SpaceX own­er, has sparked a wave of con­tro­ver­sy by urg­ing his 226 mil­lion X fol­low­ers to can­cel Net­flix for the “health of your kids.” The call comes after a series of posts high­light­ing con­tent from the ani­mat­ed series Dead End: Para­nor­mal Park and resur­faced remarks by the show’s cre­ator, Hamish Steele, fol­low­ing the Sep­tem­ber 10 assas­si­na­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive activist Char­lie Kirk.

Musk’s sequence of posts unfold­ed over three days. On Sep­tem­ber 29, he respond­ed to a clip shared by Libs of Tik­Tok with a sim­ple, “This is deeply wrong.” The fol­low­ing evening, he replied “Same” to a user show­ing their Net­flix can­cel­la­tion screen­shot and added, “This is not ok,” ref­er­enc­ing clips from the show. The explic­it call to action—“Cancel Net­flix for the health of your kids”—came at 7:42 a.m. on Octo­ber 1. With­in hours, the hash­tag #Can­cel­Net­flix was trend­ing across X, draw­ing mil­lions of views.

Finan­cial mar­kets react­ed quick­ly. Net­flix shares dipped rough­ly 2% in ear­ly trad­ing, although ana­lysts attrib­uted the drop in part to broad­er mar­ket jit­ters. Net­flix had not issued a for­mal response at press time.

The con­tro­ver­sy cen­ters on two key points. First, Dead End: Para­nor­mal Park, which end­ed in 2023, fea­tures a trans­gen­der lead char­ac­ter and con­tent that some crit­ics claim is inap­pro­pri­ate for chil­dren. Sec­ond, Steele’s pro­fan­i­ty-laced com­ments fol­low­ing Kirk’s death resur­faced online, fuel­ing fur­ther out­rage. Steele lat­er denied cel­e­brat­ing Kirk’s death and described the online harass­ment he’s received as “extreme­ly nasty” and “scary,” apol­o­giz­ing for any delayed respons­es to fans.

Musk’s post high­lights his ongo­ing influ­ence on social media and pop­u­lar cul­ture, and the rapid spread of his call to action under­scores the pow­er of a sin­gle voice with hun­dreds of mil­lions of fol­low­ers. As the debate over con­tent for young audi­ences and the respon­si­bil­i­ties of plat­forms like Net­flix con­tin­ues, the sto­ry is like­ly far from over.