File this one under stories the internet simply refuses to let die. A short clip of an archery test against a Tesla Cybertruck is making the rounds yet again in 2026, and once more it has people arguing about physics, marketing, and whether anything can actually dent the thing.
An Old Clip Finds New Life
The clip itself isn’t new. It traces back to a 2023 Halloween taping of Joe Rogan’s podcast, where Rogan and Tesla’s Elon Musk turned a throwaway dare into one of the odder durability demos in recent memory. What’s new is the latest wave of attention: the video found fresh life on X this spring and promptly racked up another round of millions of views.
Why Stainless Steel Changes the Math
To understand why the test ended the way it did, it helps to start with what the Cybertruck is actually made of. Tesla skipped the painted sheet metal found on conventional pickups and wrapped the truck in a cold-rolled stainless steel exoskeleton, the structure that gives the body its strange flat-planed look and its reputation for shrugging off abuse. The result wasn’t subtle: the arrow came apart against the panel, the truck picked up little more than a scuff, and the whole thing was over in a heartbeat. Anyone expecting a clean puncture walked away disappointed.
Joe Rogan bet Elon Musk $1 that he could pierce the Cybertruck with his compound bow
The arrow literally exploded against the stainless steel exoskeleton… and barely scratched it 😂 pic.twitter.com/hlMxxcRZnG
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) May 7, 2026
A Three-Second Clip Built for Replay
Plenty of test footage is dull. This wasn’t. The shaft scattered into fragments, a spray of sparks lit up off the steel, and the dramatic little flash is exactly the kind of thing that travels well as a screenshot or looping GIF. By the time it resurfaced in May 2026, the visual had already done most of the marketing work on its own. From there, the reaction split along familiar lines — one camp dug into the materials science, another went straight for the jokes, riffing on the truck’s sci-fi silhouette and treating the bounced arrow as proof the thing belongs in a video game. Both responses, oddly, kept the clip circulating.
The Bystander Who Didn’t Flinch
A good chunk of the commentary fixated less on the arrow and more on Musk, who reportedly mentioned the risk of a ricochet and then watched the whole thing unfold without much visible concern. To fans, that nonchalance read as a man who already knew how the experiment would end. Whether you find that endearing or insufferable tends to track with how you feel about the truck in general, a vehicle that has spent its entire existence as one of the most argued-over designs on the road.
Not Everyone Called It a Win
Skeptics were quick to note the test proved less than it appeared. A broadhead is shaped to cut soft tissue, not defeat hardened metal, and several commenters argued a purpose-built armor-piercing point might have told a very different story. It’s a fair caveat, and it nudged the conversation away from memes and toward genuine questions about projectile design and penetration. Most viral car moments are crashes, burnouts, or recalls — it’s rare for a pickup to spark a thread about metallurgy, and the fact that this one did says as much about the Cybertruck’s polarizing reputation as it does about any arrow.
The Bottom Line
Strip away the spectacle and the takeaway is modest but real: a broadhead arrow is no match for a stainless steel exoskeleton, roughly what you’d expect if you thought about it for a second. The reason the clip keeps clawing its way back onto timelines has little to do with that conclusion and everything to do with the package around it: a celebrity dare, a recognizable truck, a shower of sparks, and a punchline that writes itself.
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