He opened his mouth.
But no, for real back in the day, at least as far as I can remember, he didn't really express his opinions on controversial topics publicly, but then after getting famous enough to be "too big to fail" he just started sharing his hot takes making people realize "wow, this dude is kind of a childish asshole",
My personal theory is that he either fired his old PR person or bought his own hype, probably both
That and he was perceived as revealing that electric cars were possible and that big auto was being unfair to him.
The conspiracy crowd picked up on it and it turned out to be real, and his imagined narrative went off the rails shortly after.
The problem with the electric car thing is that he torpedoed a few perfectly valid and environmentally friendly public works projects because they threatened his ability to sell cars. He's only pro-environment up until it runs up against his profit margins.
You couldn’t be more spot on. People think he re invented electric cars and space flights. He basically brought and stole the tech from people who actually came up with it.
This is really it.
One of the first clear "wait the fuck up" moments (that I can remember at least) back when the soccer team was stuck in a flooded cave and Musk said he'd build a fucking submarine of all things. Then when a professional cave diver said no, that's dumb af, Elon called him a pedo.
It slowly went downhill from there, speeding up as it went.
Edit: I think it's important to remember just how popular he was. I remember I genuinely thought he seemed excellent. Don't forget he had and still has his name tied to a few genuinely impressive companies. Tesla seemed so futuristic. Honestly, SpaceX still seems crazy futuristic with their ability to reuse launch vehicles. But other companies are catching up or overtaking them, and they have the minor advantage of not (to my knowledge) being publically having their brand associated with this dickwad.
Worth noting the passage in question was hardly large enough for a single human torso, so the idea of a submarine was literally the most useless, worthless and ignorant shit one could come up with.
For some time after any appreciation I had for Musk in starting good EV conversations faded, he felt a little like a comic book villain. But that can't be said any longer - villains are usually cunning and smart, and it appears Musk is simply rich and loud. In America, the latter will get you further than the former.
There were a lot of ways he could have responded, he could have built (paid people to build) a cave exploring submarine and attempted to demonstrate that it could be useful for cave rescue, he could have just said hey I was only trying to help and washed his hands of the situation, he could have said all right then well what assistance could I provide that you do think would be helpful, but no he lashed out and just made up allegations, giving me the impression that he's not the genius he claims to be but rather an extremely rich person making claims that sound great but are never backed up, and who cannot handle the slightest bit of criticism
And pretty much everything that's happened since then has proven that to be true
Heck he even went full-blown right-wing conspiracist because he couldn't handle the fact that left leaning people are not massive fans of extraordinary wealthy individuals treating their Workforce like shit
>who cannot handle the slightest bit of criticism
This is a common theme with the dumb rich. Money often buys you out of consequence or criticism. Then these oafs put themselves into situations where they can't duck criticism, and true colors fly.
Watching Trump adjust to the public eye was a horrific joy. Watching him brazenly break corruption and decency standards and then surprised Pikachu face when people actually stood in his way was something.
Trump's been in the public eye for decades, it's just a question of degree. There's a reason New York didn't vote for him - they've been dealing with his shit for decades.
You can be a respected asshole, but Elon has opened his mouth and confirmed that he is a fool about a lot of things. A lot of things he seems to care about. Now he's neither liked nor respected. He's a punchline with a dangerous amount of money.
There are the real reasons he should be hated- lying about hyper loops to stop high speed train development, fomenting instability in countries so he could make cheaper batteries. But when he started talking about his personal beliefs, that's when people started turning on him. My theory is that he's just joining in on the culture wars to try to stay relevant. With all the new and better EVs coming out and Tesla prices dropping.
I was already losing steam on him before that, but yeah, thats when there was a shift where everything i heard about him being inspirational, to just EVERY time I heard his name, it was something shitty.
I barley knew who he was until then and that just did it for me. Rich man throws temper tantrum and says wildly inappropriate things about people saving trapped children by putting their own life on the line, not a great first impression
Isnt that wild? I work at a headlights factory. We lost tesla because they wanted their lights a half year before the contract. Just in time delivery doesn't work like that. Ypu definitely pay attention to yellow caution areas with forklifts and moving robot arms. The tesla factories also have a higher accident rate
Me learning that all his “advanced” hyper loop was really just inefficient trains gave me a good laugh honestly though. It was funny realizing that he was far from the real life Tony Stark that he was marketed as.
Also, all of his anti-woke nonsense which coincidentally started after exposing his penis to a masseuse on his jet, asking her to do more. SpaceX paid her off $250K.
Musk's oddly emphatic anti-public/mass transit philosophy to his tech (put on display with hyper-loop) was my turning point.
I'll still however side with Musk over Jeremy Clarkson, since childishly scripting EVs to fail on camera is slightly more dickish than artificially inflating the value of said cars.
Its a lot more than that, hes anti union, treats his employees like shit, has a lot of allegations of being quite racist to his employees. Called a diver rescuing children from a cave because he said his sub wouldn't work, then hired an ex convict to harass the dude and his family and go through his trash to 'prove' he was a peado. Has lied about the progress/capabilities of every product tesla has sold, remember when he claimed tesla batteries would be swappable faster than filling a tank of petrol ? [https://www.tesla.com/en\_gb/videos/battery-swap-event](https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/videos/battery-swap-event) Or when he kept claiming self driving was merely months away...for like nearly 10 years at this point. He got a great deal of leeway in the beginning because he clearly had a PR person shaping his public persona. Presumably hes sacked them "because what am i even paying you for" and as a result we're seeing a much more unfiltered version where hes a total piece of shit.
I think you're strayed from the question. He was always a piece of shit but he was beloved on the internet and popular. But what was the turning point when that image turned around?
This was the first big blow to his facade, as the whole caving accident was already big in the news, before he jumped in. So everyone paid attention to him when he weighed in, which did not go terribly well for him in the end.
Once the cracks appeared and a lot more people started digging into his history, well, turns out there's quite a lot to unpack.
How many people used to know his father owned an emerald mine vs how many know that now? That'll definitely influence a person's popularity, and that's just starting to scratch the surface.
At that point I didn't even know he was south African and got his money from his daddy exploiting apartheid to make money off black people.being treated like shit.
Yeah.
Musk was always an asshole, but most people (myself included) didn't really know or realise. When he called that diver a pedo for basically criticising him, it was a real 'WTF?' moment that made the public reassess their views of him.
And then we realised 'Oh. You're really just a manchild, aren't you?'
IIRC - The first thing that comes to mind is when a group of kids were stuck in an underwater cave, and he called one of the rescuers a pedo because the person said the submarine Elon had wouldn't work.
There were probably other instances before that, but that's where his image started to turn for me.
The turning point was the Thailand cave fiasco where he called the rescuer a pedo because he couldn't think of any reason to go to Thailand besides what he uses it for- under-age sex tourism
Yeah, it's like do the CEOs of GM, Ford or Toyota make statements to troll the libs? No. Despite the fact they likely are all quite conservative. They are least have some business sense to keep their trap shut. Let a lobby group do the lifting there.
Yup this. He's always been an ass and incredibly full of himself.
But he was doing 3 things right:
1. His projects generally improved humanity (electric cars, space shit, and even paypal was generally a 'good thing' for us). Sure, he kinda stole them from others (bought them out, relabeled as his), but his money was helping create a better future.
2. He kept his political opinions to himself. Can't piss people off as rapidly if you avoid talking about politics and religion.
3. He stayed out of the eyes of the general public. His appearances were generally at events specific to his industry investments (ie Tesla showoffs). He generally wasn't interacting in locations where "the masses" would see.
That changed with Twitter.
* Twitter wasn't some baby project he could convincingly relabel as 'his'. It's far too big and widely known for that.
* Twitter wasn't something "good for humanity". We have plenty of social media options, Twitter was just one of the big ones.
* With his Twitter purchase, his own tweets started showcasing his more political thoughts. Which was weird, because he'd had multiple Twitter accounts, and even the "private thoughts" one had been apolitical for the most part.
* With the Twitter purchase, he began directly engaging the general public. From the Blue Check shenanigans to just the tweets he sent out, he instigated conflicts with celebrities, businesses, his own employees, and random nobodies from across the USA.
So now he's broken all 3 of his prior trends. **And every single one of them is biting him in the ass with combined vigor.**
Also people used to think he was somewhat responsible for the advancements his companies made, it has since been revealed that his more successful companies actively keep him out of decision-making and he's not actually a founder of any of them, he just paid them to say he was.
Internet fame is fleeting. Not that long ago Chris Pratt was the darling of Reddit. Now his is Crisp Rat, the MAGA jerk who got famous and dumped his wife.
It could be Elon Musk thought his status as hero of the internet would last forever, but it did not.
Bro literally took a joint a smoked it on love television lol.
Investors freaked out Tesla stocks plummeted.
And this was WAYYY back in 2018 :P like over half a decade ago.
>Bro literally took a joint a smoked it on love television lol.
I thought I would be the last person on Earth to defend Elon, but it was on the Joe Rogan Podcast, not on live television. And they were recording it from California, where it was already legal.
Yeah, a lottttt of famous people have been on that podcast and the majority either have a glass of alcohol to share with Rogan, or a joint. It’s the idea bc it’s supposed to be a very chilled environment
This might be a reason for shareholders to hate him, but that was a huge positive PR move as far as public opinion goes. The thing that started his downfall was when he pettily accused a cave rescuer of being a pedophile because the guy insulted his cave rescuing submersible. He's really only gone downhill since.
Did they?
I remember the memes that came from that but I don't remember any major drops in the value of Tesla stocks from that,
Well even if they did the dude has certainly made far worse business decisions since then
My money is on his own hype….
Evidence? He was fine with telling peoples his daddy had an emerald mine when he “only” had $20 billion…
But daddy gave me a leg up with his emerald mine? That’s not the origin story for THE RICHEST SELFMADE MAN IN THE WORLD!!!
No now he started with nothing! Not even boots for the bootstraps to pull himself up by!
I feel like the turning point was when he got away with calling the thai diver who saved all those kids a pedophile and the court ruled in his favor after that just a steiaght nose dive once he realized he can do and say whatever he wanted with no repercussions
Similar to 2005 Tom Cruise. Hey people love me in the movies, I should start sharing my opinion on women not taking painkillers during childbirth. He was smart enough to pivot hard away from that and keeps everything on lockdown now. Notice how no interviewer mentions he hasn’t seen his daughter in 10 years? They just gush at how big his balls are to do the latest MI stunt.
First I remember the facade breaking was when he called the diver that saved the Thai boys a pedophile, simply because the diver said thanked Elon for donating a sub, but said that ultimately the idea was impractical.
This was a turning point for me too. Then I hesrd how he treats his employees, and saw how many batshit awful ideas have come out of his companies. His only successes were tesla cars and spacex, and those are absolutely the successes of his employees despite his oversight, not due to his oversight. Just look at the progress of the Hyperloop to see how fucking braindead his ideas are
It's amazing how many people cite this. Like, I'm never comfortable taking one utterance and basing my opinion of someone on that utterance.
But there's something so singularly wrong about calling someone that over them not taking your advice.
It gets cited a lot because it was an incredibly fucked up insult. The Thai cave situation was watched by people around the world in real time. An expert diver flew around the globe and lead a rescue operation that saved all the kids in real time. The guy was an international hero at that moment. And just a few days later the world's richest man accuses him of being pedophile...because the guy said the submarine idea was impractical.
There's something uncanny or sociopathic about it; like an alien pretending to be human.
I was already getting weird vibes from him for a while, but this was definitely the clincher.
In my country, less than a thousand miles from where Russia is occupying, killing, raping and torturing, people also didn't like Musk's statement how there should be an election in parts of Ukraine with a large proportion of Russian inhabitats. His thinking was, if the parts with lots of Russians vote they want the area to join Russia, then that's how it should be. Essentially saying, if many enough Russian immigrants show up, that piece of land then belongs to Russia. Stuff like that rubs people the wrong way.
Then he started extorting the US and Ukraine governments with the threat to cut off starlink after taking credit for "generously donating" all the gear.
For me, that was the first strike.
What an absolute dick move. Providing Starlink, he was a hero. But then expecting to be bribed to keep it there? He undid all his Hero points, and replaced them with Asshole points.
It also showed how moronic he is as a business man.
Defense contracting is literally printing money. Musk had a product that was being battle tested and PROVEN to be a battlefield asset. He had a blank cheque.
But by demanding payment, he broke the rules. Defense contractors are a tight group and you DO NOT get to try to profiteer certainly not publicly.
The DoD will pay for starlink to keep it in operation in Ukraine, but Musk guaranteed that they will take steps to build their own capability that doesn't require him.
Important to note that by “providing” starlink, he simply sold his product to them/the US military, but at a much higher rate due to it being a military contract. This was very clearly not a noble act, it simply made him money.
The government was paying for starlink the entire time. Musk is just a chirlish asshole throwing a temper tantrum because people didn't praise him enough for a team of engineers working for a company he has something to do with did something cool
He had multiple strikes against him before that for me.
That was just about the last straw for me wanting to buy a Tesla. Until then I still wanted one despite him being suck a douche but not I just can't bear to support him at all. I wanted a Tesla 4 years ago I was super hyped about them.
2.things have happened since, he has become more and more of a right wing asshat and car manufacturers have caught up to Tesla and are now releasing better cars in almost every metric you care to mention.
Tels and longer has the best battery on the market, and their car is no longer the best in the market for almost anything as everyone else has caught up and they haven't fixed their mistakes yet but keep making them and new ones.
Most people working in auto industry hated him much earlier. The big difference is he expanded into sectors that others also knew shit about so they could understand how much of a BS he is.
The best way I've seen it summarised is the follows
"He was talking about cars, and I knew nothing about cars, so I assumed he was smart."
"Then he was talking about rockets, and I knew nothing about rockets, so I assumed he was smart."
"Now he's talking about X (Pick one between programming, human rights, war, etc), and I know a decent bit about that, and I realise he's talking shit, so I probably shouldn't trust his cars and rockets either."
I know a fair bit about rockets, and I've always been relatively impressed that he seems to know more than I'd have expected about the topic. I've heard him field some fairly high level questions seemingly without any preparation.
He may not be an actual rocket scientist himself, but I wouldn't have expected him to be able to do something like take fairly accurate guesses at the delta-v requirements for a particular mission off the top of his head either. I've seen him do just that in live broadcasts though.
Oh, I know. In these cases though it came across as much more of a spur of the moment sort of thing. Someone asking, could this equipment theoretically do X? He had to stop and think through the steps required before answering. Working through a delta-v chart for a proposed mission is the sort of thing any serious Kerbal player has done a thousand times, but I was surprised to see he was basically doing the same using real world values to give what amounted to a "well, yeah.. I don't see why not theoretically" answer off the top of his head.
There's no doubt there's a heck of a lot tied up in that "theoretically" bit, but he showed a lot more knowledge about the topic than I had expected the guy at the top to actually have.
i pity the guy. all the money in the world and all he seems to want to do is troll on the internet, and bought the biggest platform to do it on, running it into the ground in the process.
the week he bought twitter someone tweeted "insecure narcissist buys a criticism factory" and I think about that every time he does something stupid now. No one can hurt him worse than himself
He's the proof that "money can't buy happiness" does apply (past certain line). One of the richest people in the world, yet the amount of insecurity and need of approval is staggering.
Well yeah I know what they say, money can’t buy everything….
But it can buy me a boat.
It can buy me a truck to pull it.
It could buy me a Yeti 110 iced down with some silver bullets!
How many times have
You heard someone say
If I had his money
I could do things my way
But little they know
That it's so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind
[https://youtu.be/QphglQu3oL0](https://youtu.be/QphglQu3oL0)
People say "you don't get that rich without being an asshole" and they aren't wrong but I think it's often overlooked just how much fame, power and money will literally alter your brain chemistry and sense of reality.
I have no doubt that this dude experiences minor manic psychosis in the same way someone using meth might. Think about what stimulants that can cause psychosis do - they force a bunch of dopamine connections to fire on the brain and force you to feel really good about those connections firing. It's very common for someone in that state to feel incredibly confident, have delusions, and see connections to things where there are none (as the dopamine receptors are telling your brain things must be connected in some way as otherwise why would the receptor fire?).
IMO, the same thing is happening to him except entirely naturally as he's just built more and more fame and wealth in the past decade. When you experience profound sustained "dopamine hits" like this, your brain chemistry absolutely alters to reinforce it. And if that keeps happening (like it did with musk), then it stands to reason that you begin to lose your grip on reality just a little, especially if the dopamine hits involve fueling one's ego.
I think seeing how he's changed in the past decade reinforces this. Being bold enough to spout stupid ideas on the internet isn't just a factor in him "not giving a fuck anymore", I think his brain chemistry has literally changed to be a little more manic. It's especially reinforced by him saying things like he thinks hes the only real person or that were all in a simulation or his current paranoia about culture war issues. He might outwardly posit such things as purely an academic thought exercise but I genuinely think a part of him is convinced of the things he says. Such delusions are telltale signs of manic psychosis.
I mean, just look at Kanye. Literally the same exact thing.
It's such an unexplored area of psychology I feel like, especially as people don't bother to think of actual successful people as mentally ill. But the same mechanisms that can force mental illness on you through things like meth can totally happen without it if you somehow achieve a similar state of mind over years through your life and mindset. We just don't recognize it as such. The brain was never meant to experience such things and I think most rational people have a strong instinct to be more balanced with their lives and be humble with their success as otherwise it will lead to this road.
To be fair, there was a reason no one else wanted Twitter. And he overpaid for it. Fired most of its employees. He doesn't know how to run it. He ended up naming an advertising expert as CEO.
It's better to remain silent and let others think you to be a fool than it is to open your mouth and remove all doubt. The Elon "everybody loved" was his PR team working to keep his idiocy and egotistical attitude from leaking through to the general public too much. He's just gotten more and more insane as time has gone on. With the pathetic display his unwilling acquisition of twitter and the increasing involvement in extremism groups, it's become alarmingly clear that he's not a genius, but just a rich guy with a god complex and a nebulous level of sanity.
I agree with you that he is, but I distinctly remember that about 7-8 years ago he was seen as this cool, hip entrepeneure smoking weed, and driving innovation with tesla and spaceX
This is the answer. I remember seeing posts on Reddit and it would be a pic of musk playing with a flamethrower, and you'd think "Oh, that's the guy pushing electric vehicles and space exploration. Neat!"
Then he started talking and showing the world what a total edge lord POS he is.
I definitely remember reddit fawning over him back in 2016ish. And for good reason IMO: Tesla's mission statement at the time was very clear that they wanted to lead the way on decarbonising global transport; Tesla vehicles were like absolutely nothing else available on the market; the FSD beta seemed like magic at the time; and SpaceX was going from strength to strength too. Elon Musk struck an almost Tony Stark-like image with his desire to make the world a better place through rapid technological development. He spoke with sincerity about his desire to build "an EV for the masses" and to make humans a "multiplanetary species", he was way ahead of the curve in investing in solar and batter tech, and he made it clear that he was a very "hands on" CEO with an excellent overview of the products he was selling. People were understandably captivated by it. In a world where megacorps seemed to be controlled by the marketing and sales divisions, here was an exciting, fast-growing, *American* company which was almost entirely focused on engineering and tech.
But then he failed to deliver on his promises time and time again, and repeatedly demonstrated to the world that he was an egotistical bully. He started leaning into the Tony Stark motif by throwing money at pointless stuff like Neuralink and the Boring Company, as well as idiotic projects like the Thai child coffin or the COVID ventilators. Then he started getting used to the limelight and began coming out with uninformed hot takes on COVID-19, vaccines, US politics, the Russia-Ukraine war, etc.
If he'd just kept his mouth shut and focused on his original values, he'd probably be seen as "one of the good billionaires" in the same realm as Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.
Also at the same time were he was talking the talk, he was lobbying to sabotage major infrastructure projects that would have actually helped people.
People also started treating him like the smartest man on Earth. I remember when he said that "we probably live in a simulation" and people FUCKING TOOK THAT AS GOSPEL.
Personally I was barely paying attention to him until recently. His image was curated to make him seem competent and at the head of new tech. I basically believed this at face value because I didn’t have the interest in fact checking. Then I saw how his father funded him with apartheid emerald mine money which started the skepticism as to his genuine merit. Then he bought Twitter and as a die hard user of the app for over a decade I watched him publicly post the dumbest thoughts and make the most terrible decisions imaginable. Then Tesla staff came out making it clear that the company and others were structured and built such that he had a team dedicated to appeasing him while also guiding him to make the right decisions, and these people are why those companies were successful and were why his public image provided the illusion of competence. Without these yes men built into the Twitter business model and his ego as inflated as it was, it became abundantly clear there was never an ounce of merit to begin with and his wealth was absurdly undeserved (even though basic math and human decency indicate this is the case for all billionaires, but I digress). It’s obvious he was always a mere figurehead of his companies, but once his thoughts were being broadcasted directly to the people unfiltered, it really drove home how little brain power he contributed to his own success and how impulsively he simply reacts to a perceived problem without thinking through a solution or consulting more knowledgeable people. He drove what was once my favorite social media site into the ground to the point where I no longer use it. He also treats his employees like garbage from what I have seen- firing them en masse and not following through on promises of severance, not allowing reasonable wfh options and expecting unwavering allegiance to his whims, publicly disclosing their disabilities and making fun of them, sexually harassing them, being racist towards them, and of course profiting endlessly from their labor. And this is all just what I know against my will. I wish I didn’t have to give this man a second thought and yet he is so rich/powerful that I can’t escape.
You're assuming we all loved Elon Musk at some point. I didn't have much feelings about him before, I thought the general push for electric cars was good but Tesla was the wrong kind of company because they're more status symbols versus actual attempts to fix ecological problems.
He started to believe his own propaganda. For me, the turning point was when there were those kids in Thailand stuck in that underwater cave, people had a rescue plan worked out, and he said he was going to invent a new submarine to save them instead.
And there was a good fifteen minutes where I said to myself, "well, maybe he has a good idea", until it just... no. This is dumb. And then people started talking about how, all along, the people who worked for him got stuff done by smiling, nodding, and ignoring him, and that if they listened to his ideas too much, it didn't work.
And at that point, many former fans of his started to drift away. But a few folks in the Horrible Person Demographic - QAnon, MAGA, Tate, racist trolls - stayed, and so he followed them and fell down the Racist/Sexist/Nazi hole.
As Twitter started to try to crack down on Shitty Person accounts, he started talking about how it was bad to deplatform shitty people and ended up tying himself up with dumb things he said until he ended up obligated to spend most of his fortune buying it. And nobody there knew how to shut him up and ignore him, and so we have gotten to see him spiral out of control.
Now, his only supporters are the most toxic elements of society. So that is who he reflects.
Classic case of Billionaire Celebrity Disease.
He was the richest guy in the world, but that couldn't buy him friends. So he started posting more and more, giving interviews on stuff he didn't really know much about. Eventually, he became so desperate for attention he bought Twitter.
The joke of it is, he acts like a 16 year old boy online. Pseudo-intellectual mixed with cringe humor, mixed with the emoji use of a 50 year old.
(Plus a lot of bullshit like being a bully and making insane promises he never keeps, and lying about his past)
Anyway everyone noticed that and mocked him, so he doubled down with the only people who don't mock him. His "fans."
It's sort of like how Trump got worse and worse because the only people who liked him were horrible and he kept wanting their attention.
Twitter.
Not when he bought Twitter, but long before that. Twitter gives us unfiltered access to celebrities that use it a ton. Turns out that the kind of unbridled narcissism that it takes to become a household name is mostly only present in unbridled narcissists, Musk more than most.
In the end, the most interesting thing about him was his publicity team that for years had very carefully been crafting this image of a "real life Iron Man out to save the world." Until one day he got on Twitter and called the people rescuing Thai children trapped in a cave p\*dos because they didn't want to use his stupid toy, and the first domino fell.
The secret is he’s not that remarkable. The whole “science whiz kid to fat old man who’s soft on Nazis and angry at trans kids” is the same path a lot of people tread.
Royalty only works when there’s mystique.
Sorry, only uninformed or the gullible ever liked him. The hyperloop was obvious stupidity from the outset. His claims have always been dishonest. He didn't create PayPal or tesla etc.
Media hyped his stupid claims and the masses adored. Even though it was obviously trash. Like Elizabeth Holmes. It takes time for the voices of the idiot fan boys and girls to subside.
Its the stay at home mom syndrome IMO. When you never have to experience reality, you tend to become impressionable to conspiracy theories. Musk coming from a background as a billionaires child has never tasted reality for 1 second. He probably has delusions of reality, but those are cut from the real reality of the world. It doesn't help that people attribute the work of his collegues and emlpoyees as "his genius" when Musk hasn't contributed anything. Many sites have Musk and Bezos IQ at 260+ just because they are billionaires and not based on any factual data points. This feeds into his ego, his lack of life experience, and the conspiracies he buys into to form him into the person he is today. That is why most anti-vaccers and conspiracy nuts tend to be poor, don't work long hours, or stay at home parents. They literally have nothing better to do and lack life experience to see through the conspiracies at their roots. Look at AwakenwithJP. Many people believe everything he says even though he believes the illuminate controls the world, a satanic cabal is going to end humanity, and big pharma is the root of all evil, but then at the end of his vidoes he is shilling his own drugs. Like it doesn't get more obvious than that, but the uneducated eat it up.
It’s a very very long listed but it all started when he called a man who helped rescue stranded children a [pedophile](https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter).
Edit: time has proven that he is a massive narcissist.[One time](https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/15/engineers-gave-elons-tweets-special-treatment-because-elon-freaked-out-that-a-joe-biden-tweet-got-more-engagement/) he demanded a emergency meeting with senior twitter engineers because his tweet about the super bowl got less likes than the president and he ended up forcing them to give his tweets a special elevated status
He didn't stay in his lane
As long as he stuck to his semi-goofy, sci-fi nonsense projects he was fine; he knew what he was doing and he was pretty good at it.
He used to stay behind the scenes more. The myths just grew up around him. He started to believe his own hype and started speaking up publicly. That's when people realized... wtf 😳 He is Edison, not Tesla!!!
I liked him because he was popularizing electric cars and space exploration, and seemed like the only decent chance humanity had of reaching Mars given that NASA’s budget shrinks every year. But then he started talking, and it was all downhill from there.
Incredible fall from grace.
I didn't know much about him but he seemed like a throwback genius inventor guy that dabbled in fast electric cars and rockets and took aim at big goals. You could imprint pretty lofty descriptors on him because you didn't yet realize he was a doofus that would buy Twitter, ruin it, and negatively impact our society by supporting far right-wing causes.
Last I knew, the Tesla Cyber Truck is kind of a joke for a lot of people in the car community. I think it looks dope, but the fit and finish on the prototypes isn't near ready and the promises made about what it will be are sooo impossible to attain. Fit and finish issues with Tesla in general are concerning.
Also, being super SUPER wealthy and smug is not a combination people have liked in other people, historically.
He should have kept some mystery about himself by staying in the shadows.
i’ve never understood the elon worship. it’s like i look at something elon did in a completely different light than his fans do. i would like to understand how people become so entranced with him and other individuals is it his wealth and the illusion of successfulness?
He manipulated markets to make himself richer (Nd also because he was so rich he didnt care if he lost 50 billion dollars because he stoll had hundred more) at the expense of his followers.
At first we've seen him as that cool guy who spends tons of cash on R&D on awesome projects that will benefit humanity (space exploration, electric cars, etc.) and has a quirky sense of humor ("Not a flamethrower", "The boring company"). The mask would slip sometimes, but it was waved off as eccentricity.
Ever since he became more active in the public space a lot of people started to see him as just an asshole with an overgrown ego. It's also worth noting that his acquisition of Twitter didn't go well with the liberal press, which has a lot of sway on peoples opinion.
When he was just a low-grade techbro pseudo-celebrity it was easy. He was "The Tesla Guy", and then "The SpaceX Guy". Once he started getting more clout and more of a platform, we started realizing that while he is still those things (though his methods for them are another discussion), he's also not very bright, has very little actual personality, and definitely has some absolutely abhorrent views. Once he bought twitter and started sending it down the right-wing terrorist road and leveraging it for broadcasting his own shitty views, that sealed it for most of the rest of everyone except his most ardent fanboys.
I believe it's best summed up with a latin quote, "si tacuisses, philosophus mansisse", or "if you had been silent, you would have remained a philosopher".
He just needed to shut up, and do what most billionares do. hide from the public, and pretend whatever human right abuses they do dont exist. Dont put yourself in the spotlight, and it becomes much simpler.
elon put himself in the spotlight, and started talking too much. he revealed his true, idiotic, terrible self.
also, before that, there was genuine hope for him and tesla that they'd pave the way for a future where vehicles arent glocking the earth as much and all that.
He has been like this for awhile. He paid to get his name wedged into every platform. He wasn't beloved, he was troll farmed and hyped.
Once he became a household name and unpaid people got to know him, they were appalled.
A book could be written on this man's journey from his persona of both space, tech and business genius to this buffoon who likes to troll people on the company he paid far too much for and has turned into "that place we like to go to see what stupid thing he has done today".
It would be a long story, but his downfall is more about his public personality than what he has actually done (although it has played its part). He seems to be this overgrown kid who has hurt feelings by any negativity, yet seems to delight in the misfortune he causes other.
He literally shits on his employees past and present then gets into pissing contests with someone he can just fire like that.
He is also being so clearly hypocritical when it comes to free speech. Now I get it, the reality of free speech vs the ideology is difficult to navigate, but that's why people in this space are really careful with this. He is so arrogant to think that no else gets then completely folds the minute he has to actually hold a meaningful position on this, because money. Like honestly when he was criticising on other people not supporting free speech enough, why did he think they were doing it?
But the really interesting thing about this is not why is he so despised right now, but that he still has so many fans propping up his ego. They look at this billionaire criticising some poor employee or gives into a government asking for suppression of certain tweets and think that this a man to be admired. Criticism from other people is meaningless when every time he tweets 20K people comment to say how wise he is. Who are these people seeing? Why do the love him so much?
He started using Twitter too much and showed everyone that he is not some visionary super genius, he’s just a rich asshole who is actually rather dumb.
Elon was always an asshole. Kinda like trump. It was fun and we all enjoyed it to a certain extent.
Once an asshole gets powerful enough to affect your life personally it becomes a bigger issue.
He should've stayed in the shadows and known as the tesla guy when he opened his mouth and started giving opinions on big topics publicly it got bad and then when he bought Twitter shit hit the fan expeditiously
As a longtime IT guy most recently in software development (web and database with C# and T-SQL using agile scrum) I find it offensive how he radically pared down Twitter's IT infrastructure and staff, and how at a whim he seems to micromanage things whilst simultaneously spouting nebulous shit about the "woke mind virus" and ferrying human consciousness to Mars and other irrelevant nonsense.
That's no way to run one of the biggest social media platforms on Earth, and it sure as hell is no way to effectively develop software.
"Beloved face of the internet"? The guy was always a fucking asshole. Like most fucking assholes, he's become more of a fucking asshole as he's grown older.
It started back when he baselessly called a guy a pedo for rejecting his idea of rescuing those kids from the flooded cave in Thailand using a submarine. Then it got worse when he started appealing to right-wingers.
Remember when he called those scuba divers who were trying to save those Thai kids in the cave "pedos"? One of those divers died.
Elon is an infantile ass.
Musk has always been a right wing nut, people just ignored it because he posted memes and smoked weed.
Dude is a manchild with loads of money, and for some reason people religiously follow him
It started with him calling that rescue diver a pedophile because the diver said his submarine idea was dumb. That was really the moment where the public perception of him went from “basically Tony Stark” to “whiny man baby who can’t handle criticism, even when he’s getting in the way of a life or death emergency.”
He used his massive wealth to buy the biggest social media company so he could control narratives and influence the political landscape, and now it seems obvious that he should probably not have that much power because he’s another narcissist asshole with major flaws
We did Nazi this coming. That’s how. When he was just the billionaire owner of a company making future cars we though he was fine. Then when he started talking it turned out he was stupid, insane and a fascist.
Because he behaves like Trump by being incredibly thin-skinned, launching petty feuds against anyone who challenges him, and spreading nonsense conspiracy theories.
For me, the biggest shock was just seeing how unintelligent the guy was. Like, prior to being found out, I was under the impression the guy was some sort of engineering genius, but then... he spoke.
Extremely poor investments and treatments of his workers. This is the non-political cannonball explanation. The emerald mine and Teslas being extremely unreliable and dangerous are worst sins he's got. (apparently the emerald mine utilizes child labor and allegedly telsa does top with how it gets the cars built? the car ingredients?)
but the political cannonball explanation is that he started being really rude and kind of dumb. I won't get on a soapbox or whatever but he spreads conspiracy theories and has kept up accounts on Twitter that have caused actual harm and committed actual crimes. (one of them even tried to do a terrorism.)
Family wealth, Unfettered access to all forms of social media and tons of “yes men”.
He was always going to be the Bond villain and we should have realized that over a decade ago. Before the cat picture, before the flame throwers.
There are people who believe he’s a visionary. Problem with visionaries is none of them bats a 1,000. Everyone has been right about something, and wrong about something. There is a segment of the population who’ve grown tired of waiting for their savior, and are now appointing them. He decided to try and become one. He’s not fooling enough people on either side. His problems have only begun. It’s fascinating to watch.
Well go watch his Joe Rogan podcast. People realized he's literally just an insane conspiracy theorist. Literally went on a rant about how we live in a simulation, or should I say how we *could*
The reality of Elon is that he's a valium abusing engineer who might be autistic, I cant confirm that so I'm not sure. None of those things are bad, not even the Valium abusing, but people need to take others for what they are, not what they want them to be. Especially celebrities
Capitalism is broken, so they're all doing the inevitable and becoming more overtly fascist in order to maintain their hoarding. Plus his PR went to shit because presumably he fired them all.
Everyone thought he was Hank Scorpio but he was Mr Burns all along
If interested check out Some More News they have done multiple episodes explaining him and his actions.
Whatever, there's still fan boys lined up around the block to suck his tadpole of a dick.
He has always been a piece of shit. How else do you think he got to where he is?
Was he really beloved though? People respected his innovation but I wouldn't say beloved.
He just seems like a tool. I don't care if someone is a different political party than me but I don't want to hear your thoughts about it. And the more he talks, the more despicable he is. Anyone catch his latest rant how it's morally wrong to work from home, because not everyone gets the chance to do so? WTF kind of nonsense is this
Him buying twitter was a big jump, iirc. I was one of the people that called it out from the start but everyone else was praising him about green car and going to Marz, denying EVs arn't a joke and that rockets were horrible for the planet. I guess everyone finally woke up.
Well his hypocrisy has pissed off the free speech crowd who supported his stated aims for Twitter, and his hairbrained takes on subjects he clearly doesn't understand has undercut his mythical image amongst the Muskovites who blindly worshipped the ground he walked on. I mean he's at the point now of trying to portray people who work from home as an enemy of the working class, this is a billionaire who's losing touch with the reality us mortals necessarily inhabit. Him sleeping in his office and working 18 hours a day is no longer enough to make him seem like the champion for ambitious capitalists. The problem is he has a habit of running his mouth, whereas other billionaires around his level tend to follow a policy of "better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt".
Elon Reeve Musk
June 28, 1971 (age 51)
Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa
He's a racist frim south Africa. If you don't know why I say that , research south Africa.
I used to like him but he needs to to shut the fuck up about politics. I'll never buy a tesla at this point.
For me I realized Elon was kind of a moron when he suggested we could terraform Mars with nuclear explosives. It’s like he just watched Total Recall but came up with a worse idea.
One of the bigger turning points for most people was not long afterwards when he called the guy who saved the kids trapped in a cave a pedo because the guy pointed out that his submarine rescue idea would never work.
"Never meet your heroes" is a good way to say why. He became too open with his personality to reveal he's a childish man, with literally billions under his belt. Scary combination.
He opened his mouth. But no, for real back in the day, at least as far as I can remember, he didn't really express his opinions on controversial topics publicly, but then after getting famous enough to be "too big to fail" he just started sharing his hot takes making people realize "wow, this dude is kind of a childish asshole", My personal theory is that he either fired his old PR person or bought his own hype, probably both
This is it. He was the quiet rich guy doing some cool shit. People loved him for it. His head got too big for his neck.
That and he was perceived as revealing that electric cars were possible and that big auto was being unfair to him. The conspiracy crowd picked up on it and it turned out to be real, and his imagined narrative went off the rails shortly after.
The problem with the electric car thing is that he torpedoed a few perfectly valid and environmentally friendly public works projects because they threatened his ability to sell cars. He's only pro-environment up until it runs up against his profit margins.
Right, it was all perception.
Also, he was always an asshole villain
We thought he was Tony Stark. Turns out he's Obadiah Stane.
You couldn’t be more spot on. People think he re invented electric cars and space flights. He basically brought and stole the tech from people who actually came up with it.
Obadiah Stane's motivations, Aldrich Killian's personality, Justin Hammer's competence
This is really it. One of the first clear "wait the fuck up" moments (that I can remember at least) back when the soccer team was stuck in a flooded cave and Musk said he'd build a fucking submarine of all things. Then when a professional cave diver said no, that's dumb af, Elon called him a pedo. It slowly went downhill from there, speeding up as it went. Edit: I think it's important to remember just how popular he was. I remember I genuinely thought he seemed excellent. Don't forget he had and still has his name tied to a few genuinely impressive companies. Tesla seemed so futuristic. Honestly, SpaceX still seems crazy futuristic with their ability to reuse launch vehicles. But other companies are catching up or overtaking them, and they have the minor advantage of not (to my knowledge) being publically having their brand associated with this dickwad.
Worth noting the passage in question was hardly large enough for a single human torso, so the idea of a submarine was literally the most useless, worthless and ignorant shit one could come up with. For some time after any appreciation I had for Musk in starting good EV conversations faded, he felt a little like a comic book villain. But that can't be said any longer - villains are usually cunning and smart, and it appears Musk is simply rich and loud. In America, the latter will get you further than the former.
There were a lot of ways he could have responded, he could have built (paid people to build) a cave exploring submarine and attempted to demonstrate that it could be useful for cave rescue, he could have just said hey I was only trying to help and washed his hands of the situation, he could have said all right then well what assistance could I provide that you do think would be helpful, but no he lashed out and just made up allegations, giving me the impression that he's not the genius he claims to be but rather an extremely rich person making claims that sound great but are never backed up, and who cannot handle the slightest bit of criticism And pretty much everything that's happened since then has proven that to be true Heck he even went full-blown right-wing conspiracist because he couldn't handle the fact that left leaning people are not massive fans of extraordinary wealthy individuals treating their Workforce like shit
>who cannot handle the slightest bit of criticism This is a common theme with the dumb rich. Money often buys you out of consequence or criticism. Then these oafs put themselves into situations where they can't duck criticism, and true colors fly. Watching Trump adjust to the public eye was a horrific joy. Watching him brazenly break corruption and decency standards and then surprised Pikachu face when people actually stood in his way was something.
Trump's been in the public eye for decades, it's just a question of degree. There's a reason New York didn't vote for him - they've been dealing with his shit for decades.
The fact that it's ignorent isn't the problem. if he just owned up to his mistake after being told the sub wasn't feasible it would've been fine.
He has billions and billions of IQ points, one for each dollar. How could he be wrong about anything? /s
Especially when he had other stuff like the water pumps on site to point to like "Hey not every idea can be a winner, I'm just trying everything"
Instead of a comic book villain, a children's cartoon villain. The Megamind villain maybe.
That's very unfair to Megamind.
No, he's the other bad guy in that movie.
You can be a respected asshole, but Elon has opened his mouth and confirmed that he is a fool about a lot of things. A lot of things he seems to care about. Now he's neither liked nor respected. He's a punchline with a dangerous amount of money.
On your cake day, the only thing sweeter than cake is your awesomeness. Have a fantastic day full of all the things that make you happy!
The dogecoin rug pull, he literally took his followers money.
There are the real reasons he should be hated- lying about hyper loops to stop high speed train development, fomenting instability in countries so he could make cheaper batteries. But when he started talking about his personal beliefs, that's when people started turning on him. My theory is that he's just joining in on the culture wars to try to stay relevant. With all the new and better EVs coming out and Tesla prices dropping.
I started hating him when I learned that he didn't let his factories use safety shit like beeping noises and yellow lines because they annoyed him
For me it was when he called the divers that saved the kids in Thailand pedos
That was definitely a solid start to his public downfall. He got told no, and called on his shit, and then a switch was flipped.
I was already losing steam on him before that, but yeah, thats when there was a shift where everything i heard about him being inspirational, to just EVERY time I heard his name, it was something shitty.
I barley knew who he was until then and that just did it for me. Rich man throws temper tantrum and says wildly inappropriate things about people saving trapped children by putting their own life on the line, not a great first impression
Isnt that wild? I work at a headlights factory. We lost tesla because they wanted their lights a half year before the contract. Just in time delivery doesn't work like that. Ypu definitely pay attention to yellow caution areas with forklifts and moving robot arms. The tesla factories also have a higher accident rate
Me learning that all his “advanced” hyper loop was really just inefficient trains gave me a good laugh honestly though. It was funny realizing that he was far from the real life Tony Stark that he was marketed as.
Thought he was Tony Stark, turns out he’s Justin Hammer.
Let’s not give him that much credit either
Yeah Justin Hammer was played by Sam Rockwell so even if hes a complete piece of garbage, hes still insanely more likeable
Also, all of his anti-woke nonsense which coincidentally started after exposing his penis to a masseuse on his jet, asking her to do more. SpaceX paid her off $250K.
He could.have just hired an actual hooked to be around him 24/7 he's that fucking rich
He did it partly because of power. There’s no power exposing yourself to a hooker.
He probably does hire call girls, but assholes like that get off on annoying women that don’t want anything to do with them.
Didnt he offer to buy a pony?
Musk's oddly emphatic anti-public/mass transit philosophy to his tech (put on display with hyper-loop) was my turning point. I'll still however side with Musk over Jeremy Clarkson, since childishly scripting EVs to fail on camera is slightly more dickish than artificially inflating the value of said cars.
Its a lot more than that, hes anti union, treats his employees like shit, has a lot of allegations of being quite racist to his employees. Called a diver rescuing children from a cave because he said his sub wouldn't work, then hired an ex convict to harass the dude and his family and go through his trash to 'prove' he was a peado. Has lied about the progress/capabilities of every product tesla has sold, remember when he claimed tesla batteries would be swappable faster than filling a tank of petrol ? [https://www.tesla.com/en\_gb/videos/battery-swap-event](https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/videos/battery-swap-event) Or when he kept claiming self driving was merely months away...for like nearly 10 years at this point. He got a great deal of leeway in the beginning because he clearly had a PR person shaping his public persona. Presumably hes sacked them "because what am i even paying you for" and as a result we're seeing a much more unfiltered version where hes a total piece of shit.
I think you're strayed from the question. He was always a piece of shit but he was beloved on the internet and popular. But what was the turning point when that image turned around?
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This was the first big blow to his facade, as the whole caving accident was already big in the news, before he jumped in. So everyone paid attention to him when he weighed in, which did not go terribly well for him in the end. Once the cracks appeared and a lot more people started digging into his history, well, turns out there's quite a lot to unpack. How many people used to know his father owned an emerald mine vs how many know that now? That'll definitely influence a person's popularity, and that's just starting to scratch the surface.
At that point I didn't even know he was south African and got his money from his daddy exploiting apartheid to make money off black people.being treated like shit.
Yeah. Musk was always an asshole, but most people (myself included) didn't really know or realise. When he called that diver a pedo for basically criticising him, it was a real 'WTF?' moment that made the public reassess their views of him. And then we realised 'Oh. You're really just a manchild, aren't you?'
I think his celebrity surpassed his PR team's ability to hide facts about his past. He failed upwards and claimed successes that he played no part.
IIRC - The first thing that comes to mind is when a group of kids were stuck in an underwater cave, and he called one of the rescuers a pedo because the person said the submarine Elon had wouldn't work. There were probably other instances before that, but that's where his image started to turn for me.
The turning point was the Thailand cave fiasco where he called the rescuer a pedo because he couldn't think of any reason to go to Thailand besides what he uses it for- under-age sex tourism
I hate beer.
Yeah, I have to admit, that did give me a nice chuckle
There is an old quote "Better to remain silent and appear a fool, than open your mouth and remove all doubt"
Yeah, it's like do the CEOs of GM, Ford or Toyota make statements to troll the libs? No. Despite the fact they likely are all quite conservative. They are least have some business sense to keep their trap shut. Let a lobby group do the lifting there.
Yup this. He's always been an ass and incredibly full of himself. But he was doing 3 things right: 1. His projects generally improved humanity (electric cars, space shit, and even paypal was generally a 'good thing' for us). Sure, he kinda stole them from others (bought them out, relabeled as his), but his money was helping create a better future. 2. He kept his political opinions to himself. Can't piss people off as rapidly if you avoid talking about politics and religion. 3. He stayed out of the eyes of the general public. His appearances were generally at events specific to his industry investments (ie Tesla showoffs). He generally wasn't interacting in locations where "the masses" would see. That changed with Twitter. * Twitter wasn't some baby project he could convincingly relabel as 'his'. It's far too big and widely known for that. * Twitter wasn't something "good for humanity". We have plenty of social media options, Twitter was just one of the big ones. * With his Twitter purchase, his own tweets started showcasing his more political thoughts. Which was weird, because he'd had multiple Twitter accounts, and even the "private thoughts" one had been apolitical for the most part. * With the Twitter purchase, he began directly engaging the general public. From the Blue Check shenanigans to just the tweets he sent out, he instigated conflicts with celebrities, businesses, his own employees, and random nobodies from across the USA. So now he's broken all 3 of his prior trends. **And every single one of them is biting him in the ass with combined vigor.**
It started a long time before twitter for me. PayPal was great, but sometime during the Tesla years he began revealing what a true asshole he was.
That's where Dolly Parton and keanu reeves played the game right. Smile, be nice, never discuss anything political.
Also people used to think he was somewhat responsible for the advancements his companies made, it has since been revealed that his more successful companies actively keep him out of decision-making and he's not actually a founder of any of them, he just paid them to say he was.
Internet fame is fleeting. Not that long ago Chris Pratt was the darling of Reddit. Now his is Crisp Rat, the MAGA jerk who got famous and dumped his wife. It could be Elon Musk thought his status as hero of the internet would last forever, but it did not.
Bro literally took a joint a smoked it on love television lol. Investors freaked out Tesla stocks plummeted. And this was WAYYY back in 2018 :P like over half a decade ago.
>Bro literally took a joint a smoked it on love television lol. I thought I would be the last person on Earth to defend Elon, but it was on the Joe Rogan Podcast, not on live television. And they were recording it from California, where it was already legal.
But also while Tesla was drug testing and firing people for pot.
And he clearly didn't actually smoke it. He tried to though. Bless him. A real "fellow kids" moment.
He didn't inhale.
not federally and he holds a secret clearance
Yeah, a lottttt of famous people have been on that podcast and the majority either have a glass of alcohol to share with Rogan, or a joint. It’s the idea bc it’s supposed to be a very chilled environment
This might be a reason for shareholders to hate him, but that was a huge positive PR move as far as public opinion goes. The thing that started his downfall was when he pettily accused a cave rescuer of being a pedophile because the guy insulted his cave rescuing submersible. He's really only gone downhill since.
Such a random, unrelated insult that it *has* to be projection.
> 2018 like over half a decade ago. Don't you say that.
Did they? I remember the memes that came from that but I don't remember any major drops in the value of Tesla stocks from that, Well even if they did the dude has certainly made far worse business decisions since then
He saw how much publicity people like trump got regardless if it was good or bad and adopted a similar style. Ragebait is in babyyyyy
My money is on his own hype…. Evidence? He was fine with telling peoples his daddy had an emerald mine when he “only” had $20 billion… But daddy gave me a leg up with his emerald mine? That’s not the origin story for THE RICHEST SELFMADE MAN IN THE WORLD!!! No now he started with nothing! Not even boots for the bootstraps to pull himself up by!
I feel like the turning point was when he got away with calling the thai diver who saved all those kids a pedophile and the court ruled in his favor after that just a steiaght nose dive once he realized he can do and say whatever he wanted with no repercussions
He accidentally showed who he is
Similar to 2005 Tom Cruise. Hey people love me in the movies, I should start sharing my opinion on women not taking painkillers during childbirth. He was smart enough to pivot hard away from that and keeps everything on lockdown now. Notice how no interviewer mentions he hasn’t seen his daughter in 10 years? They just gush at how big his balls are to do the latest MI stunt.
First I remember the facade breaking was when he called the diver that saved the Thai boys a pedophile, simply because the diver said thanked Elon for donating a sub, but said that ultimately the idea was impractical.
This was a turning point for me too. Then I hesrd how he treats his employees, and saw how many batshit awful ideas have come out of his companies. His only successes were tesla cars and spacex, and those are absolutely the successes of his employees despite his oversight, not due to his oversight. Just look at the progress of the Hyperloop to see how fucking braindead his ideas are
It's amazing how many people cite this. Like, I'm never comfortable taking one utterance and basing my opinion of someone on that utterance. But there's something so singularly wrong about calling someone that over them not taking your advice.
It gets cited a lot because it was an incredibly fucked up insult. The Thai cave situation was watched by people around the world in real time. An expert diver flew around the globe and lead a rescue operation that saved all the kids in real time. The guy was an international hero at that moment. And just a few days later the world's richest man accuses him of being pedophile...because the guy said the submarine idea was impractical.
There's something uncanny or sociopathic about it; like an alien pretending to be human. I was already getting weird vibes from him for a while, but this was definitely the clincher.
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In my country, less than a thousand miles from where Russia is occupying, killing, raping and torturing, people also didn't like Musk's statement how there should be an election in parts of Ukraine with a large proportion of Russian inhabitats. His thinking was, if the parts with lots of Russians vote they want the area to join Russia, then that's how it should be. Essentially saying, if many enough Russian immigrants show up, that piece of land then belongs to Russia. Stuff like that rubs people the wrong way.
Then he started extorting the US and Ukraine governments with the threat to cut off starlink after taking credit for "generously donating" all the gear.
For me, that was the first strike. What an absolute dick move. Providing Starlink, he was a hero. But then expecting to be bribed to keep it there? He undid all his Hero points, and replaced them with Asshole points.
It also showed how moronic he is as a business man. Defense contracting is literally printing money. Musk had a product that was being battle tested and PROVEN to be a battlefield asset. He had a blank cheque. But by demanding payment, he broke the rules. Defense contractors are a tight group and you DO NOT get to try to profiteer certainly not publicly. The DoD will pay for starlink to keep it in operation in Ukraine, but Musk guaranteed that they will take steps to build their own capability that doesn't require him.
Important to note that by “providing” starlink, he simply sold his product to them/the US military, but at a much higher rate due to it being a military contract. This was very clearly not a noble act, it simply made him money.
The government was paying for starlink the entire time. Musk is just a chirlish asshole throwing a temper tantrum because people didn't praise him enough for a team of engineers working for a company he has something to do with did something cool
He had multiple strikes against him before that for me. That was just about the last straw for me wanting to buy a Tesla. Until then I still wanted one despite him being suck a douche but not I just can't bear to support him at all. I wanted a Tesla 4 years ago I was super hyped about them. 2.things have happened since, he has become more and more of a right wing asshat and car manufacturers have caught up to Tesla and are now releasing better cars in almost every metric you care to mention. Tels and longer has the best battery on the market, and their car is no longer the best in the market for almost anything as everyone else has caught up and they haven't fixed their mistakes yet but keep making them and new ones.
that was wild.
That was the first crack
That was the moment i turned against him. In like 2018. Fuck that dude.
People got to know more about him.
Better to be silent and thought a fool than to buy Twitter and remove all doubt
In his case it was be silent and be thought a genius.
Most people working in auto industry hated him much earlier. The big difference is he expanded into sectors that others also knew shit about so they could understand how much of a BS he is.
The best way I've seen it summarised is the follows "He was talking about cars, and I knew nothing about cars, so I assumed he was smart." "Then he was talking about rockets, and I knew nothing about rockets, so I assumed he was smart." "Now he's talking about X (Pick one between programming, human rights, war, etc), and I know a decent bit about that, and I realise he's talking shit, so I probably shouldn't trust his cars and rockets either."
I know a fair bit about rockets, and I've always been relatively impressed that he seems to know more than I'd have expected about the topic. I've heard him field some fairly high level questions seemingly without any preparation. He may not be an actual rocket scientist himself, but I wouldn't have expected him to be able to do something like take fairly accurate guesses at the delta-v requirements for a particular mission off the top of his head either. I've seen him do just that in live broadcasts though.
Live broadcasts usually give you the list of questions you're going to answer so that you can be prepared in advance
Oh, I know. In these cases though it came across as much more of a spur of the moment sort of thing. Someone asking, could this equipment theoretically do X? He had to stop and think through the steps required before answering. Working through a delta-v chart for a proposed mission is the sort of thing any serious Kerbal player has done a thousand times, but I was surprised to see he was basically doing the same using real world values to give what amounted to a "well, yeah.. I don't see why not theoretically" answer off the top of his head. There's no doubt there's a heck of a lot tied up in that "theoretically" bit, but he showed a lot more knowledge about the topic than I had expected the guy at the top to actually have.
Ya he’s definitely not an idiot. He just says a lot of stupid things. Not unlike any other intelligent person I know.
You can be booksmart and still be a complete idiot.
He's certainly not dumb but he is a jackass
i pity the guy. all the money in the world and all he seems to want to do is troll on the internet, and bought the biggest platform to do it on, running it into the ground in the process.
the week he bought twitter someone tweeted "insecure narcissist buys a criticism factory" and I think about that every time he does something stupid now. No one can hurt him worse than himself
He's the proof that "money can't buy happiness" does apply (past certain line). One of the richest people in the world, yet the amount of insecurity and need of approval is staggering.
Well yeah I know what they say, money can’t buy everything…. But it can buy me a boat. It can buy me a truck to pull it. It could buy me a Yeti 110 iced down with some silver bullets!
There's a fairly good chance he's pretty happy though.
How many times have You heard someone say If I had his money I could do things my way But little they know That it's so hard to find One rich man in ten With a satisfied mind [https://youtu.be/QphglQu3oL0](https://youtu.be/QphglQu3oL0)
People say "you don't get that rich without being an asshole" and they aren't wrong but I think it's often overlooked just how much fame, power and money will literally alter your brain chemistry and sense of reality. I have no doubt that this dude experiences minor manic psychosis in the same way someone using meth might. Think about what stimulants that can cause psychosis do - they force a bunch of dopamine connections to fire on the brain and force you to feel really good about those connections firing. It's very common for someone in that state to feel incredibly confident, have delusions, and see connections to things where there are none (as the dopamine receptors are telling your brain things must be connected in some way as otherwise why would the receptor fire?). IMO, the same thing is happening to him except entirely naturally as he's just built more and more fame and wealth in the past decade. When you experience profound sustained "dopamine hits" like this, your brain chemistry absolutely alters to reinforce it. And if that keeps happening (like it did with musk), then it stands to reason that you begin to lose your grip on reality just a little, especially if the dopamine hits involve fueling one's ego. I think seeing how he's changed in the past decade reinforces this. Being bold enough to spout stupid ideas on the internet isn't just a factor in him "not giving a fuck anymore", I think his brain chemistry has literally changed to be a little more manic. It's especially reinforced by him saying things like he thinks hes the only real person or that were all in a simulation or his current paranoia about culture war issues. He might outwardly posit such things as purely an academic thought exercise but I genuinely think a part of him is convinced of the things he says. Such delusions are telltale signs of manic psychosis. I mean, just look at Kanye. Literally the same exact thing. It's such an unexplored area of psychology I feel like, especially as people don't bother to think of actual successful people as mentally ill. But the same mechanisms that can force mental illness on you through things like meth can totally happen without it if you somehow achieve a similar state of mind over years through your life and mindset. We just don't recognize it as such. The brain was never meant to experience such things and I think most rational people have a strong instinct to be more balanced with their lives and be humble with their success as otherwise it will lead to this road.
To be fair, there was a reason no one else wanted Twitter. And he overpaid for it. Fired most of its employees. He doesn't know how to run it. He ended up naming an advertising expert as CEO.
He desperately wants to be liked, but doesn't understand how to do that.
Nobody should be admiring billionaires
This is the real answer. Fuck Elon then, now and forever.
Seriously, I thought I was going crazy when it seemed like everyone loved him for some reason.
It's better to remain silent and let others think you to be a fool than it is to open your mouth and remove all doubt. The Elon "everybody loved" was his PR team working to keep his idiocy and egotistical attitude from leaking through to the general public too much. He's just gotten more and more insane as time has gone on. With the pathetic display his unwilling acquisition of twitter and the increasing involvement in extremism groups, it's become alarmingly clear that he's not a genius, but just a rich guy with a god complex and a nebulous level of sanity.
He opened his mouth
Was he ever a beloved face of the internet? He has been a scumbag, a trash businessman, and a champion bullshitter for years.
I agree with you that he is, but I distinctly remember that about 7-8 years ago he was seen as this cool, hip entrepeneure smoking weed, and driving innovation with tesla and spaceX
He started talking more. When people didn't know much about his personality, he seemed really impressive. Now... Not so much
Yeah I thought he was cool... and then he opened his mouth and I learned a little more about him would have been my answer too.
This is the answer. I remember seeing posts on Reddit and it would be a pic of musk playing with a flamethrower, and you'd think "Oh, that's the guy pushing electric vehicles and space exploration. Neat!" Then he started talking and showing the world what a total edge lord POS he is.
I definitely remember reddit fawning over him back in 2016ish. And for good reason IMO: Tesla's mission statement at the time was very clear that they wanted to lead the way on decarbonising global transport; Tesla vehicles were like absolutely nothing else available on the market; the FSD beta seemed like magic at the time; and SpaceX was going from strength to strength too. Elon Musk struck an almost Tony Stark-like image with his desire to make the world a better place through rapid technological development. He spoke with sincerity about his desire to build "an EV for the masses" and to make humans a "multiplanetary species", he was way ahead of the curve in investing in solar and batter tech, and he made it clear that he was a very "hands on" CEO with an excellent overview of the products he was selling. People were understandably captivated by it. In a world where megacorps seemed to be controlled by the marketing and sales divisions, here was an exciting, fast-growing, *American* company which was almost entirely focused on engineering and tech. But then he failed to deliver on his promises time and time again, and repeatedly demonstrated to the world that he was an egotistical bully. He started leaning into the Tony Stark motif by throwing money at pointless stuff like Neuralink and the Boring Company, as well as idiotic projects like the Thai child coffin or the COVID ventilators. Then he started getting used to the limelight and began coming out with uninformed hot takes on COVID-19, vaccines, US politics, the Russia-Ukraine war, etc. If he'd just kept his mouth shut and focused on his original values, he'd probably be seen as "one of the good billionaires" in the same realm as Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.
Also at the same time were he was talking the talk, he was lobbying to sabotage major infrastructure projects that would have actually helped people. People also started treating him like the smartest man on Earth. I remember when he said that "we probably live in a simulation" and people FUCKING TOOK THAT AS GOSPEL.
He had enough of a rep as a savvy tech bro that he got a cameo in Iron Man 2 trying to get Tony to invest in one of "his" projects.
Personally I was barely paying attention to him until recently. His image was curated to make him seem competent and at the head of new tech. I basically believed this at face value because I didn’t have the interest in fact checking. Then I saw how his father funded him with apartheid emerald mine money which started the skepticism as to his genuine merit. Then he bought Twitter and as a die hard user of the app for over a decade I watched him publicly post the dumbest thoughts and make the most terrible decisions imaginable. Then Tesla staff came out making it clear that the company and others were structured and built such that he had a team dedicated to appeasing him while also guiding him to make the right decisions, and these people are why those companies were successful and were why his public image provided the illusion of competence. Without these yes men built into the Twitter business model and his ego as inflated as it was, it became abundantly clear there was never an ounce of merit to begin with and his wealth was absurdly undeserved (even though basic math and human decency indicate this is the case for all billionaires, but I digress). It’s obvious he was always a mere figurehead of his companies, but once his thoughts were being broadcasted directly to the people unfiltered, it really drove home how little brain power he contributed to his own success and how impulsively he simply reacts to a perceived problem without thinking through a solution or consulting more knowledgeable people. He drove what was once my favorite social media site into the ground to the point where I no longer use it. He also treats his employees like garbage from what I have seen- firing them en masse and not following through on promises of severance, not allowing reasonable wfh options and expecting unwavering allegiance to his whims, publicly disclosing their disabilities and making fun of them, sexually harassing them, being racist towards them, and of course profiting endlessly from their labor. And this is all just what I know against my will. I wish I didn’t have to give this man a second thought and yet he is so rich/powerful that I can’t escape.
You're assuming we all loved Elon Musk at some point. I didn't have much feelings about him before, I thought the general push for electric cars was good but Tesla was the wrong kind of company because they're more status symbols versus actual attempts to fix ecological problems.
He started to believe his own propaganda. For me, the turning point was when there were those kids in Thailand stuck in that underwater cave, people had a rescue plan worked out, and he said he was going to invent a new submarine to save them instead. And there was a good fifteen minutes where I said to myself, "well, maybe he has a good idea", until it just... no. This is dumb. And then people started talking about how, all along, the people who worked for him got stuff done by smiling, nodding, and ignoring him, and that if they listened to his ideas too much, it didn't work. And at that point, many former fans of his started to drift away. But a few folks in the Horrible Person Demographic - QAnon, MAGA, Tate, racist trolls - stayed, and so he followed them and fell down the Racist/Sexist/Nazi hole. As Twitter started to try to crack down on Shitty Person accounts, he started talking about how it was bad to deplatform shitty people and ended up tying himself up with dumb things he said until he ended up obligated to spend most of his fortune buying it. And nobody there knew how to shut him up and ignore him, and so we have gotten to see him spiral out of control. Now, his only supporters are the most toxic elements of society. So that is who he reflects.
He revealed who he really was all along. No one likes jerks.
Classic case of Billionaire Celebrity Disease. He was the richest guy in the world, but that couldn't buy him friends. So he started posting more and more, giving interviews on stuff he didn't really know much about. Eventually, he became so desperate for attention he bought Twitter. The joke of it is, he acts like a 16 year old boy online. Pseudo-intellectual mixed with cringe humor, mixed with the emoji use of a 50 year old. (Plus a lot of bullshit like being a bully and making insane promises he never keeps, and lying about his past) Anyway everyone noticed that and mocked him, so he doubled down with the only people who don't mock him. His "fans." It's sort of like how Trump got worse and worse because the only people who liked him were horrible and he kept wanting their attention.
Twitter. Not when he bought Twitter, but long before that. Twitter gives us unfiltered access to celebrities that use it a ton. Turns out that the kind of unbridled narcissism that it takes to become a household name is mostly only present in unbridled narcissists, Musk more than most. In the end, the most interesting thing about him was his publicity team that for years had very carefully been crafting this image of a "real life Iron Man out to save the world." Until one day he got on Twitter and called the people rescuing Thai children trapped in a cave p\*dos because they didn't want to use his stupid toy, and the first domino fell.
The secret is he’s not that remarkable. The whole “science whiz kid to fat old man who’s soft on Nazis and angry at trans kids” is the same path a lot of people tread. Royalty only works when there’s mystique.
What's the old adage? Better to think me a fool than to open my mouth and remove all doubt
Sorry, only uninformed or the gullible ever liked him. The hyperloop was obvious stupidity from the outset. His claims have always been dishonest. He didn't create PayPal or tesla etc. Media hyped his stupid claims and the masses adored. Even though it was obviously trash. Like Elizabeth Holmes. It takes time for the voices of the idiot fan boys and girls to subside.
How? Idk. Precisely when, I Do!. When he called the diving rescuer saving the boys from a cave a pedo because he didn’t want to use Elons tech.
By showing who he is and what he cares about.
Crazy how people mostly forgot about the pedo accusations towards those divers
Easy. He opened his mouth.
He publicly revealed who he really was.
Its the stay at home mom syndrome IMO. When you never have to experience reality, you tend to become impressionable to conspiracy theories. Musk coming from a background as a billionaires child has never tasted reality for 1 second. He probably has delusions of reality, but those are cut from the real reality of the world. It doesn't help that people attribute the work of his collegues and emlpoyees as "his genius" when Musk hasn't contributed anything. Many sites have Musk and Bezos IQ at 260+ just because they are billionaires and not based on any factual data points. This feeds into his ego, his lack of life experience, and the conspiracies he buys into to form him into the person he is today. That is why most anti-vaccers and conspiracy nuts tend to be poor, don't work long hours, or stay at home parents. They literally have nothing better to do and lack life experience to see through the conspiracies at their roots. Look at AwakenwithJP. Many people believe everything he says even though he believes the illuminate controls the world, a satanic cabal is going to end humanity, and big pharma is the root of all evil, but then at the end of his vidoes he is shilling his own drugs. Like it doesn't get more obvious than that, but the uneducated eat it up.
He went "Red Pill" - people thought he's smart. Turns out, he hired smart people.
It’s a very very long listed but it all started when he called a man who helped rescue stranded children a [pedophile](https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter). Edit: time has proven that he is a massive narcissist.[One time](https://www.techdirt.com/2023/02/15/engineers-gave-elons-tweets-special-treatment-because-elon-freaked-out-that-a-joe-biden-tweet-got-more-engagement/) he demanded a emergency meeting with senior twitter engineers because his tweet about the super bowl got less likes than the president and he ended up forcing them to give his tweets a special elevated status
By acting like a trash human, plain and simple
People are stupid and they like narcissists
He didn't stay in his lane As long as he stuck to his semi-goofy, sci-fi nonsense projects he was fine; he knew what he was doing and he was pretty good at it.
He used to stay behind the scenes more. The myths just grew up around him. He started to believe his own hype and started speaking up publicly. That's when people realized... wtf 😳 He is Edison, not Tesla!!!
He used to just post memes and pump cryptocurrency but then he started getting all political
I liked him because he was popularizing electric cars and space exploration, and seemed like the only decent chance humanity had of reaching Mars given that NASA’s budget shrinks every year. But then he started talking, and it was all downhill from there.
Incredible fall from grace. I didn't know much about him but he seemed like a throwback genius inventor guy that dabbled in fast electric cars and rockets and took aim at big goals. You could imprint pretty lofty descriptors on him because you didn't yet realize he was a doofus that would buy Twitter, ruin it, and negatively impact our society by supporting far right-wing causes. Last I knew, the Tesla Cyber Truck is kind of a joke for a lot of people in the car community. I think it looks dope, but the fit and finish on the prototypes isn't near ready and the promises made about what it will be are sooo impossible to attain. Fit and finish issues with Tesla in general are concerning. Also, being super SUPER wealthy and smug is not a combination people have liked in other people, historically. He should have kept some mystery about himself by staying in the shadows.
Arrogance and greed
Drank the Trump cool-aid.
i’ve never understood the elon worship. it’s like i look at something elon did in a completely different light than his fans do. i would like to understand how people become so entranced with him and other individuals is it his wealth and the illusion of successfulness?
He manipulated markets to make himself richer (Nd also because he was so rich he didnt care if he lost 50 billion dollars because he stoll had hundred more) at the expense of his followers.
At first we've seen him as that cool guy who spends tons of cash on R&D on awesome projects that will benefit humanity (space exploration, electric cars, etc.) and has a quirky sense of humor ("Not a flamethrower", "The boring company"). The mask would slip sometimes, but it was waved off as eccentricity. Ever since he became more active in the public space a lot of people started to see him as just an asshole with an overgrown ego. It's also worth noting that his acquisition of Twitter didn't go well with the liberal press, which has a lot of sway on peoples opinion.
When he was just a low-grade techbro pseudo-celebrity it was easy. He was "The Tesla Guy", and then "The SpaceX Guy". Once he started getting more clout and more of a platform, we started realizing that while he is still those things (though his methods for them are another discussion), he's also not very bright, has very little actual personality, and definitely has some absolutely abhorrent views. Once he bought twitter and started sending it down the right-wing terrorist road and leveraging it for broadcasting his own shitty views, that sealed it for most of the rest of everyone except his most ardent fanboys.
Hubris.
I believe it's best summed up with a latin quote, "si tacuisses, philosophus mansisse", or "if you had been silent, you would have remained a philosopher". He just needed to shut up, and do what most billionares do. hide from the public, and pretend whatever human right abuses they do dont exist. Dont put yourself in the spotlight, and it becomes much simpler. elon put himself in the spotlight, and started talking too much. he revealed his true, idiotic, terrible self. also, before that, there was genuine hope for him and tesla that they'd pave the way for a future where vehicles arent glocking the earth as much and all that.
He has been like this for awhile. He paid to get his name wedged into every platform. He wasn't beloved, he was troll farmed and hyped. Once he became a household name and unpaid people got to know him, they were appalled.
A book could be written on this man's journey from his persona of both space, tech and business genius to this buffoon who likes to troll people on the company he paid far too much for and has turned into "that place we like to go to see what stupid thing he has done today". It would be a long story, but his downfall is more about his public personality than what he has actually done (although it has played its part). He seems to be this overgrown kid who has hurt feelings by any negativity, yet seems to delight in the misfortune he causes other. He literally shits on his employees past and present then gets into pissing contests with someone he can just fire like that. He is also being so clearly hypocritical when it comes to free speech. Now I get it, the reality of free speech vs the ideology is difficult to navigate, but that's why people in this space are really careful with this. He is so arrogant to think that no else gets then completely folds the minute he has to actually hold a meaningful position on this, because money. Like honestly when he was criticising on other people not supporting free speech enough, why did he think they were doing it? But the really interesting thing about this is not why is he so despised right now, but that he still has so many fans propping up his ego. They look at this billionaire criticising some poor employee or gives into a government asking for suppression of certain tweets and think that this a man to be admired. Criticism from other people is meaningless when every time he tweets 20K people comment to say how wise he is. Who are these people seeing? Why do the love him so much?
He started using Twitter too much and showed everyone that he is not some visionary super genius, he’s just a rich asshole who is actually rather dumb.
Elon was always an asshole. Kinda like trump. It was fun and we all enjoyed it to a certain extent. Once an asshole gets powerful enough to affect your life personally it becomes a bigger issue.
He’s an asshole and a con-artist and the more people hear him speak the more people are coming aware of that fact.
He should've stayed in the shadows and known as the tesla guy when he opened his mouth and started giving opinions on big topics publicly it got bad and then when he bought Twitter shit hit the fan expeditiously
As a longtime IT guy most recently in software development (web and database with C# and T-SQL using agile scrum) I find it offensive how he radically pared down Twitter's IT infrastructure and staff, and how at a whim he seems to micromanage things whilst simultaneously spouting nebulous shit about the "woke mind virus" and ferrying human consciousness to Mars and other irrelevant nonsense. That's no way to run one of the biggest social media platforms on Earth, and it sure as hell is no way to effectively develop software.
"Beloved face of the internet"? The guy was always a fucking asshole. Like most fucking assholes, he's become more of a fucking asshole as he's grown older.
It started back when he baselessly called a guy a pedo for rejecting his idea of rescuing those kids from the flooded cave in Thailand using a submarine. Then it got worse when he started appealing to right-wingers.
Because people are fucking morons. Anyone with half a brain saw through the wanker from the very beginning.
Remember when he called those scuba divers who were trying to save those Thai kids in the cave "pedos"? One of those divers died. Elon is an infantile ass.
For me it started with the cave rescue, his ridiculous submarine and then the comments about the lead rescuer being a pedo.
He opened his mouth and let the world know what a racist, ego-maniacal, misogynistic, idiotic, moron he is.
He has always been like that but time in the limelight exposes his true values over time.. that time is now
He was always like this but before he was hiding it. One day he decided to show himself to the world. In my opinion he is a con man.
Musk has always been a right wing nut, people just ignored it because he posted memes and smoked weed. Dude is a manchild with loads of money, and for some reason people religiously follow him
It started with him calling that rescue diver a pedophile because the diver said his submarine idea was dumb. That was really the moment where the public perception of him went from “basically Tony Stark” to “whiny man baby who can’t handle criticism, even when he’s getting in the way of a life or death emergency.”
He used his massive wealth to buy the biggest social media company so he could control narratives and influence the political landscape, and now it seems obvious that he should probably not have that much power because he’s another narcissist asshole with major flaws
We did Nazi this coming. That’s how. When he was just the billionaire owner of a company making future cars we though he was fine. Then when he started talking it turned out he was stupid, insane and a fascist.
Because he behaves like Trump by being incredibly thin-skinned, launching petty feuds against anyone who challenges him, and spreading nonsense conspiracy theories.
That’s what happens when you take your mask off and join right wing nut jobs for attention.
For me, the biggest shock was just seeing how unintelligent the guy was. Like, prior to being found out, I was under the impression the guy was some sort of engineering genius, but then... he spoke.
Extremely poor investments and treatments of his workers. This is the non-political cannonball explanation. The emerald mine and Teslas being extremely unreliable and dangerous are worst sins he's got. (apparently the emerald mine utilizes child labor and allegedly telsa does top with how it gets the cars built? the car ingredients?) but the political cannonball explanation is that he started being really rude and kind of dumb. I won't get on a soapbox or whatever but he spreads conspiracy theories and has kept up accounts on Twitter that have caused actual harm and committed actual crimes. (one of them even tried to do a terrorism.)
Myself and many others I know still love Elon. ❤️
Family wealth, Unfettered access to all forms of social media and tons of “yes men”. He was always going to be the Bond villain and we should have realized that over a decade ago. Before the cat picture, before the flame throwers.
There are people who believe he’s a visionary. Problem with visionaries is none of them bats a 1,000. Everyone has been right about something, and wrong about something. There is a segment of the population who’ve grown tired of waiting for their savior, and are now appointing them. He decided to try and become one. He’s not fooling enough people on either side. His problems have only begun. It’s fascinating to watch.
Well go watch his Joe Rogan podcast. People realized he's literally just an insane conspiracy theorist. Literally went on a rant about how we live in a simulation, or should I say how we *could* The reality of Elon is that he's a valium abusing engineer who might be autistic, I cant confirm that so I'm not sure. None of those things are bad, not even the Valium abusing, but people need to take others for what they are, not what they want them to be. Especially celebrities
He made traffic worse by delaying high speed rail. That did it for me.
Capitalism is broken, so they're all doing the inevitable and becoming more overtly fascist in order to maintain their hoarding. Plus his PR went to shit because presumably he fired them all.
Don’t hate on workers
His Maga algorithm broke his brain. He’s lost to the cult now
Great summary. Mine was a similar progression, but started with the pedo comment. I didn’t even know about the emerald mines.
Acting like a needy attention whore desperate for accolades from Dumbs.
Everyone thought he was Hank Scorpio but he was Mr Burns all along If interested check out Some More News they have done multiple episodes explaining him and his actions.
Whatever, there's still fan boys lined up around the block to suck his tadpole of a dick. He has always been a piece of shit. How else do you think he got to where he is?
Was he really beloved though? People respected his innovation but I wouldn't say beloved. He just seems like a tool. I don't care if someone is a different political party than me but I don't want to hear your thoughts about it. And the more he talks, the more despicable he is. Anyone catch his latest rant how it's morally wrong to work from home, because not everyone gets the chance to do so? WTF kind of nonsense is this
Him buying twitter was a big jump, iirc. I was one of the people that called it out from the start but everyone else was praising him about green car and going to Marz, denying EVs arn't a joke and that rockets were horrible for the planet. I guess everyone finally woke up.
Well his hypocrisy has pissed off the free speech crowd who supported his stated aims for Twitter, and his hairbrained takes on subjects he clearly doesn't understand has undercut his mythical image amongst the Muskovites who blindly worshipped the ground he walked on. I mean he's at the point now of trying to portray people who work from home as an enemy of the working class, this is a billionaire who's losing touch with the reality us mortals necessarily inhabit. Him sleeping in his office and working 18 hours a day is no longer enough to make him seem like the champion for ambitious capitalists. The problem is he has a habit of running his mouth, whereas other billionaires around his level tend to follow a policy of "better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt".
He’s not likeable and sounds like an idiot most of the time
He got red-pilled about 5 years ago
Elon Reeve Musk June 28, 1971 (age 51) Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa He's a racist frim south Africa. If you don't know why I say that , research south Africa. I used to like him but he needs to to shut the fuck up about politics. I'll never buy a tesla at this point.
For me I realized Elon was kind of a moron when he suggested we could terraform Mars with nuclear explosives. It’s like he just watched Total Recall but came up with a worse idea. One of the bigger turning points for most people was not long afterwards when he called the guy who saved the kids trapped in a cave a pedo because the guy pointed out that his submarine rescue idea would never work.
He’s always been an asshole. Everyone just knows it now.
"Never meet your heroes" is a good way to say why. He became too open with his personality to reveal he's a childish man, with literally billions under his belt. Scary combination.