Yeah, and all he had to do to maintain that image was keep his mouth shut and let the pr people talk for him, but no that wasn’t good enough for his ego.
I wonder what this timeline would be like if he had accepted that his submarine idea was naive despite the good intentions and just paid to have a nice setup with comfortable tents and catered food for the divers and kids as they got out of the cave (plus their families). Instead of attacking the guy and showing the world who he was, kicking off a cycle of him lashing out at his falling popularity, resulting in it falling even more, then more lashing out, etc.
Even if he was like that the whole time, he might have kept his mask on instead of leaning into it, probably would have never made that offer for Twitter, might have tried to appear neutral instead of joining Trump’s campaign.
Though hard to say because the self-driving bs and cybertruck would have still happened and might have kicked off that cycle anyways.
if he was the person to do that he probably wouldn’t have been the person to put himself in the position he was in. The ruthlessness and amorality is what floated him to the top.
one of the most retroactively embarrassing moments in my life is in like 2015 or '16 I was doing some dumb team-building thing for some school-adjacent activity, and the task was to create a “new Mount Rushmore,” basically as a group nominate four people who are doing good and important work in the world. I suggested musk. at the time most people there hadn’t heard of him, so I gave a little spiel about how he was the “founder” (which I thought was true at the time) of PayPal, Tesla (which people were just becoming aware of), and SpaceX. every time I remember it I cringe and hope nobody else does. although most other people in the group suggested Beyonce as someone doing “important work for humanity” so idk if they have much of a leg to stand on to criticize my choice
It’s fine. He had potential, and he really did move fast and break things to make Tesla what it was. I don’t think EVs would be where they are today without him.
The pedophile thing really was the turning point. It was possible to see before then, but it wasn’t even the event itself that did it. He just changed fast around that time period. Whether his views changed or he just started revealing and acting on them much more is debatable.
He ditched his handlers and PR team. He never had potential. He had a team covering up what a meddling moronic piece of shit he is. Thing is, he’s also a fat piggy bank.
His money had gotten things done because smarter people around him have been able to use it to advance tech from time to time, but he always takes credit in some way.
He has done nothing but throw around his daddy’s money.
I read his biography long ago. While it didn’t pull punches, even then he seemed really promising and I left it with a good feeling, just flawed character traitsany people have. It was easy to believe those things true until negative sentiment was revealed and it clicked on what he must have been like during those times.
one of the vocally pro-nazi people I still have on Facebook did a paper at university on “Elon Musk: a case for transformational leadership” and has that posted on his company website. he also has clippy as his fb pp, and his profile tag line or whatever has “I am devoted to the well being of the people”
it’s an interesting mix of beliefs
mind you this guy is Canadian. he’s gradually been becoming more and more right-wing because he has been radicalized by his view of the left through mainstream media. however when it became clear that he was pro-Nazi was when he posted about how the people who were calling Nazis Nazis have blood on their hand for Good’s murder and that it was entirely clear it was justified self-defense
I remember when I first heard about him, knew nothing about him. Just some guy who owned Tesla who was open-sourcing some EV tech. That sounded great!
That’s about when it all fell apart. I learned who he was. Fired for incompetence. Fumbles basic questions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE_xHVYwHw8 tldr, guy asks about maglev and airbearings and Elon stumbles around a while to say… “wheels” 🤦♂️). He’s not now, nor has he ever been a genius. I genuinely don’t think he’s even smart by any standard. I think he’s just rich and that’s it. I remember watching videos about Hyperloop, and the engineering behind it was painfully obvious how unsafe it was going to be, and somewhere between impossible and impractical to build/maintain. Like, that idea only works on paper, or in Sci-Fi. The test track they built rusted out and was poorly secured. And it rusted out largely, because the engineers didn’t account for the water in the cement or something…
Or the Boring company. It could have been the best company if it were just called the Boring company but sold cool shit, like the flamethrower. I get the real reason behind it was to stop some public transit project, blah blah, I know, I get it, I’ve seen and heard it a million times. But the proposed idea he gave, the fact anyone looked at it, at him and was like “Yeah, this seem even remotely possible and definitely not a bat-shit crazy idea” astounds me. At best, it was a worse version of every single subway system ever invented anywhere on earth. At worse, a giant death trap machine that would make the Final Destination movies look tame.
I’ve riden on many planes, trains, and automobiles. And the only time I’ve ever felt really unsafe was in a Tesla. Poorly built, poorly designed. Yet people keep buying them. You have mechanics saying their a POS, you have tech folk saying it’s a POS, you have the news showing you it’s a POS. I don’t understand. Hell, he’s made so many claims that just haven’t happened. Vehicles that he said were coming out, “next year”…
Explaining Elon to people, it’s like explaining why “Solar freaking roadways” doesn’t work and is a stupid fucking idea.
Elon is very skilled. Some of his great skills, just off the top of my head; riding the shit out of every coat tail, failing upwards, shooting himself in his bulletproof foot, looking like a complete dweeb/asshat to most of the world almost as much as the potus, and so much more! He’s truly remarkable… -ly foolish.
Back in the day I’ve listened to him at some panel gathering, about AI. And heard nothing that wasn’t already said by sci-fi writers and tech thinkers. So his ‘genius’ anyways eluded me, while him being the moneybag raised suspicions.
Hearing that he was in PayPal immediately put everything in place, because that company was known for decades for freezing people’s accounts on random pretext and keeping the money.
Tony Stark made his money primarily by inheriting and then massively expanding his father’s defense technology company, Stark Industries. You do not become the biggest weapon manufacturer in the world by not being a psychopath/sociopath so while the movies held up Tony as a genius, he like Elon is a genius at exploiting others and not really a genius at inventing new tech. I wish more people saw through it.
Tony Stark is 100% the genius Elon wishes he was. He entered MIT at about 14, and graduated with multiple degrees at 17. While he didn’t invent the arc reactor, he both miniaturized (As part of his origin story, when he created the first suit in a cave with a box of scraps.) and perfected it. If we go by MCU, he wasn’t in charge of Stark Industries for a large chunk of the weapon development days, and after his kidnapping and Iron Man origin story, he had his company stop developing weapons, so now they’re a tech conglomerate that does generic tech conglomerate things I guess.
He’s also not real, so huge grain of salt.
EDIT: I want to make sure that before they reply that folks understand that “He’s not real” is doing a LOT of lifting here. He (along with every other super-genius character like Bruce Banner and Reed Richards) doesn’t cure cancer (he can), he doesn’t give unlimited clean power to the planet (He could), he doesn’t solve world hunger (he could), because he’s not real. He’s a character created to sell comic books to children, man-children, and connoisseurs of the medium (Me, clearly.) and as such can’t solve any real problems with the world because then the comic would end as the we’d have world peace. He can absolutely do feats that don’t result in world peace, like not being shitty like basically every other billionaire is, not dragging out a court battle against a union formation for years with high priced lawyers, and not stealing others work and claiming it as his own.
That is why he is fiction as real geniuses are heads down creating not manipulating which is how you become a Billionaire. The Tony Stark story is fantasy because if real geniuses rose to power, we would not have most of the issues the world is currently facing.
A really amazing sixth grade math teacher I worked with had a life-size poster of Elon Musk taped to the back of her door 10 years ago. Not so much these days…
Oh man I miss the time when I thought this man was actually gonna be like the next Tony Stark.
If you read his reddit AmA he sounded like a pretty cool dude who wanted to advance science.
Yeah, and all he had to do to maintain that image was keep his mouth shut and let the pr people talk for him, but no that wasn’t good enough for his ego.
I wonder what this timeline would be like if he had accepted that his submarine idea was naive despite the good intentions and just paid to have a nice setup with comfortable tents and catered food for the divers and kids as they got out of the cave (plus their families). Instead of attacking the guy and showing the world who he was, kicking off a cycle of him lashing out at his falling popularity, resulting in it falling even more, then more lashing out, etc.
Even if he was like that the whole time, he might have kept his mask on instead of leaning into it, probably would have never made that offer for Twitter, might have tried to appear neutral instead of joining Trump’s campaign.
Though hard to say because the self-driving bs and cybertruck would have still happened and might have kicked off that cycle anyways.
Oh i had almost forgotten the submarine lash out, but you are right that it all started there more or less.
What a downward spiral.
It’s where it started for me but there was already signs that I only noticed afterwards when people started to kivk the dirt.
if he was the person to do that he probably wouldn’t have been the person to put himself in the position he was in. The ruthlessness and amorality is what floated him to the top.
He probably thought, “I could do their job!” and fired them to save money.
Worse. He believed them.
one of the most retroactively embarrassing moments in my life is in like 2015 or '16 I was doing some dumb team-building thing for some school-adjacent activity, and the task was to create a “new Mount Rushmore,” basically as a group nominate four people who are doing good and important work in the world. I suggested musk. at the time most people there hadn’t heard of him, so I gave a little spiel about how he was the “founder” (which I thought was true at the time) of PayPal, Tesla (which people were just becoming aware of), and SpaceX. every time I remember it I cringe and hope nobody else does. although most other people in the group suggested Beyonce as someone doing “important work for humanity” so idk if they have much of a leg to stand on to criticize my choice
It’s fine. He had potential, and he really did move fast and break things to make Tesla what it was. I don’t think EVs would be where they are today without him.
The pedophile thing really was the turning point. It was possible to see before then, but it wasn’t even the event itself that did it. He just changed fast around that time period. Whether his views changed or he just started revealing and acting on them much more is debatable.
He ditched his handlers and PR team. He never had potential. He had a team covering up what a meddling moronic piece of shit he is. Thing is, he’s also a fat piggy bank.
His money had gotten things done because smarter people around him have been able to use it to advance tech from time to time, but he always takes credit in some way.
He has done nothing but throw around his daddy’s money.
That’s it.
Period.
He didn’t “become shitty”.
He threw away the people covering it up.
I read his biography long ago. While it didn’t pull punches, even then he seemed really promising and I left it with a good feeling, just flawed character traitsany people have. It was easy to believe those things true until negative sentiment was revealed and it clicked on what he must have been like during those times.
one of the vocally pro-nazi people I still have on Facebook did a paper at university on “Elon Musk: a case for transformational leadership” and has that posted on his company website. he also has clippy as his fb pp, and his profile tag line or whatever has “I am devoted to the well being of the people”
it’s an interesting mix of beliefs
mind you this guy is Canadian. he’s gradually been becoming more and more right-wing because he has been radicalized by his view of the left through mainstream media. however when it became clear that he was pro-Nazi was when he posted about how the people who were calling Nazis Nazis have blood on their hand for Good’s murder and that it was entirely clear it was justified self-defense
I remember when I first heard about him, knew nothing about him. Just some guy who owned Tesla who was open-sourcing some EV tech. That sounded great!
That’s about when it all fell apart. I learned who he was. Fired for incompetence. Fumbles basic questions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE_xHVYwHw8 tldr, guy asks about maglev and airbearings and Elon stumbles around a while to say… “wheels” 🤦♂️). He’s not now, nor has he ever been a genius. I genuinely don’t think he’s even smart by any standard. I think he’s just rich and that’s it. I remember watching videos about Hyperloop, and the engineering behind it was painfully obvious how unsafe it was going to be, and somewhere between impossible and impractical to build/maintain. Like, that idea only works on paper, or in Sci-Fi. The test track they built rusted out and was poorly secured. And it rusted out largely, because the engineers didn’t account for the water in the cement or something…
Or the Boring company. It could have been the best company if it were just called the Boring company but sold cool shit, like the flamethrower. I get the real reason behind it was to stop some public transit project, blah blah, I know, I get it, I’ve seen and heard it a million times. But the proposed idea he gave, the fact anyone looked at it, at him and was like “Yeah, this seem even remotely possible and definitely not a bat-shit crazy idea” astounds me. At best, it was a worse version of every single subway system ever invented anywhere on earth. At worse, a giant death trap machine that would make the Final Destination movies look tame.
I’ve riden on many planes, trains, and automobiles. And the only time I’ve ever felt really unsafe was in a Tesla. Poorly built, poorly designed. Yet people keep buying them. You have mechanics saying their a POS, you have tech folk saying it’s a POS, you have the news showing you it’s a POS. I don’t understand. Hell, he’s made so many claims that just haven’t happened. Vehicles that he said were coming out, “next year”…
Explaining Elon to people, it’s like explaining why “Solar freaking roadways” doesn’t work and is a stupid fucking idea.
I think of him more like the next John McAfee.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but McAfee must have been at least somewhat skilled in the past, no? That doesn’t sound much like Musk.
I guess there is one way he could become the next McAfee…
Elon is very skilled. Some of his great skills, just off the top of my head; riding the shit out of every coat tail, failing upwards, shooting himself in his bulletproof foot, looking like a complete dweeb/asshat to most of the world almost as much as the potus, and so much more! He’s truly remarkable… -ly foolish.
Back in the day I’ve listened to him at some panel gathering, about AI. And heard nothing that wasn’t already said by sci-fi writers and tech thinkers. So his ‘genius’ anyways eluded me, while him being the moneybag raised suspicions.
Hearing that he was in PayPal immediately put everything in place, because that company was known for decades for freezing people’s accounts on random pretext and keeping the money.
Tony Stark made his money primarily by inheriting and then massively expanding his father’s defense technology company, Stark Industries. You do not become the biggest weapon manufacturer in the world by not being a psychopath/sociopath so while the movies held up Tony as a genius, he like Elon is a genius at exploiting others and not really a genius at inventing new tech. I wish more people saw through it.
Tony Stark is 100% the genius Elon wishes he was. He entered MIT at about 14, and graduated with multiple degrees at 17. While he didn’t invent the arc reactor, he both miniaturized (As part of his origin story, when he created the first suit in a cave with a box of scraps.) and perfected it. If we go by MCU, he wasn’t in charge of Stark Industries for a large chunk of the weapon development days, and after his kidnapping and Iron Man origin story, he had his company stop developing weapons, so now they’re a tech conglomerate that does generic tech conglomerate things I guess.
He’s also not real, so huge grain of salt.
EDIT: I want to make sure that before they reply that folks understand that “He’s not real” is doing a LOT of lifting here. He (along with every other super-genius character like Bruce Banner and Reed Richards) doesn’t cure cancer (he can), he doesn’t give unlimited clean power to the planet (He could), he doesn’t solve world hunger (he could), because he’s not real. He’s a character created to sell comic books to children, man-children, and connoisseurs of the medium (Me, clearly.) and as such can’t solve any real problems with the world because then the comic would end as the we’d have world peace. He can absolutely do feats that don’t result in world peace, like not being shitty like basically every other billionaire is, not dragging out a court battle against a union formation for years with high priced lawyers, and not stealing others work and claiming it as his own.
That is why he is fiction as real geniuses are heads down creating not manipulating which is how you become a Billionaire. The Tony Stark story is fantasy because if real geniuses rose to power, we would not have most of the issues the world is currently facing.
A really amazing sixth grade math teacher I worked with had a life-size poster of Elon Musk taped to the back of her door 10 years ago. Not so much these days…