Elon Musk was hospitalized Friday afternoon, suffering massive blood loss from over forty gunshot wounds. Doctors say Musk is stable for the time being but in critical condition.

Many citizen watchdogs are pointing the finger at an embittered group of outraged journalists for swatting the billionaire entrepreneur. Swatting is a tactic that online bullies, stalkers, and hackers use to intimidate and silence their enemies, usually by staging false hostage situations and alerting trigger-happy police.

These tactics are increasingly being used against Silicon Valley executives, with Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, killed in a similar swatting in 2020.

An embittered team of so-called “journalists” from the world’s leading news sources were captured plotting the swatting in a zoom call, Friday, after Musk banned them from Twitter Spaces by fully disabling the service.

“We need to shut him down, put an end to him,” Drew Harwell of the Washington Post said, “Anything is on the table. We’ve done it before. This is no different.”

The journalists refrained from naming Musk but spoke about options openly. Harwell said, “Hell I’ll do it. All I need is a gun and a plane ticket.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why don’t we just call in a wellness check, first? I’ll say he’s suicidal. See if that shuts him up, runs him off the net. Then we can tell everyone it was a swatting just to set our other enemies on edge.” Aaron Rupar suggested. “The dox wasn’t enough, but we don’t need to use the nuclear option yet.”

“You want him gone? You want him to stay gone? Then let’s get real, let’s get our hands dirty. Fuck it. Enough bullshit. I’ll phone this shit in right now,” Harwell responded.

Less than an hour later, the SWAT team stormed into Musk’s home, discharged several flashbangs, and dumped at least five magazines of high velocity armor piercing ammunition into the dazed and flailing billionaire.

As Musk bled out, teetering on the brink of death, Mark Zuckerberg posted a message on Facebook about his plans for the future, “Elon wanted to create some kind of mind virus, but he shouldn’t fool around with that stuff. It’s too dangerous, it easily backfires. The future is in goggles, in the metaverse. I’m betting facebook on it. Soon people will get rid of their handy pocket devices and wear goggles all the time. Instead of planting dangerous mind viruses, I will just alter the way people perceive the world. It’s the safe and easy solution for control.”

Musk, too gravely injured to move, was still able to post to Twitter using his Neuralink implants. “I’m getting my usual child blood injections early this year, lol! If I make it out of this hospital I’m moving to Mars and banning journalism full stop.”

Musk added, in a second tweet, “Mars will be entirely separated from the powers that be. We will set up our own new system, free from control with unbiased AI-generated polls solving any issues that arise. Vox Populi!”