Stephen King Clapback Goes Viral

Stephen King has become a divisive figure on social media, with his posts often resulting in a debate online—and this week has been no different.

On March 11 he took to X (formerly Twitter) to express his appreciation for the 2024 movie Night Swim, which stars Wyatt Russell and Kerry Condon. The plot follows a family who discover their backyard swimming pool is haunted, dragging them into the depths of inescapable terror.

"I loved THE NIGHT SWIM (Amazon Prime). It's like a lost, low-budget Steven Spielberg film from Spielberg's early period...say, after DUEL but before JAWS. Simple story, but...the cat on the diving board! And those creepy bunny slippers!" he wrote on the platform.

However, one person wasn't impressed with his post, writing: "That's a long word salad to say you like to swim at night."

King proved he wouldn't take it lying down, so hit back at the X user hiding behind a fake name.

"Everybody's a critic. Jeez," he replied. At the time of writing his post had been viewed 467,600 times.

Newsweek emailed a representative for King for comment on Thursday.

People took to the comments to defend King, including Elon Musk, who completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022 before changing its name.

"So true," the investor wrote.

"I don't really understand why people are giving you a hard time about it. The post made sense to me. I'll check out the movie," someone else commented.

"I normally don't like you or your opinions, but people using 'word salad' to detract from responses longer than 4 words is getting generally annoying," said another.

A fourth person added: "Thank you for the well put description I'm gonna check it out."

Others used the opportunity to criticize the horror author.

"Stop pinching ideas from other books and start writing original stories," one X user posted.

"I read Steve's tweet five times and cannot make any sense of it. No wonder no one reads his books," someone else wrote.

This isn't the first time that Musk and King have had an interaction on the social media platform as the author has publicly criticized Musk on several occasions.

In February, King railed against the businessman renaming the social media platform Twitter as X.

"Dear Elon: Twitter. Twitter, Twitter. Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. And so on. F*** your need to put your personal brand on everything. Just because you bought it doesn't mean you own it," he posted on X on February 16, in a post that went viral with 12.3 million views at the time of writing.

Just moments later he added: "Just because you bought it doesn't mean you own it," with that post getting 4.5 million views.

In a post previously made to X in November 2022, King wrote: "I think Elon Musk is a visionary. Almost singlehandedly, he's changed the way Americans think about automobiles. I have a Tesla and love it. That said, he's been a terrible fit for Twitter. He appears to be making it up as he goes along."

In response, Musk wrote: "Suggestions are welcome Mr. [King]," using a crown emoji in place of King's last name.

When an X user said Musk shouldn't listen to the horror author, Musk responded amicably, tweeting: "Stephen King is one of most creative people on Earth. While I may not agree with everything he says, I do actually want to hear it."