I think it was a two-stage thing: first, he got off the leash, then second, he spiraled off into a fantasy world.

There's evidence that Musk has always been volatile and capricious and short-sighted, and that he's had handlers at his companies who specifically acted to limit the things he was told to try to keep him somewhat rational and to filter and recast the drivel that spilled out of his mouth anyway into policies that were at least not obviously harmful.

When he took over Twitter though, there were no handlers already in place, he didn't take any with him, snd they didn't have the opportunity to appoint any. So he was off the leash, and we got the first clear look at unfiltered Elon.

And it's just been in a self-reinforcing loop since then. He undoubtedly always believed that he was making nothing but sound decisions, but that was an easier belief to maintain when he was surrounded by handlers that filtered out his dumbassery. Now that he's off the leash, his dumbassery is front and center, but he still believes that he's making sound decisions. The disconnect between his fantasy and the reality is thus growing all the time, so he has a progressively poorer chance of making sound decisions, but grows ever more convinced that he is, and 'round and 'round it goes.

I expect that it's going to end in the complete collapse of his sanity.

Really.

You don't believe someone that's a narcissist and egocentric as all hell can't also be smart about thier public image? You should reconsider, because that's pretty much what happened. And he isn't the only one. Personally, I've always lived by a simple golden rule:

All those billionaires that wanna convince you that they're "cool and not like the other billionaires", they ever pull a Jimmy Carter and build houses for the poor, becoming a lecturer at a university, or do any other humanitarian work that requires them to physically bust thier ass working hard like the rest of us? No? Then they're no different.

If you don't wanna take the overwhelming documented evidence that shows he was always like that and didn't magically become unhinged one day tho, by all means, believe what you want.

Maybe he secretly loves mastodon but doesn’t want to admit it so he keeps making terrible changes and somehow people keep eating it up and buying twitter blue. He’s probably just dumb though

Many people, including myself personally, have been telling people how much of a liar he is for at least 6 or 7 years at this point. Ever since the "hyperloop" nonsense got big.

Pleasantly surprised with SpaceX and Starlink delivering, but even those are plagued by Musk over promising in what is actually doable.

There are lots of good answers here. I wanted to add that I had a similar experience. It felt like 10 or 15 years ago, Musk could do nothing wrong. Electric cars? Yes. Space? Yes. Mars? Yes. Futuristic public transit? Sounds great. These were (and are) good goals with human species survival in mind.

His big ideas haven't fully materialized, which is understandable. It's upsetting, though, to watch him act like Trump. He can't admit when he's made a mistake. He must be right. We see him make an ass of himself over and over and we can't help but see him as a would be fascist, an oligarch, or at least a corrupt capitalist pig.

Now, he's criticizing AI over safety concerns. I don't disagree, but it's clear he doesn't give two shits about that. He's just upset that he lost control. He's a narcissist. That's why he's disliked.

He has so much money and ego that he has transcend into a interdimensional ahole with no Fucks to give no more

I think Grimes literally fucked his brains out. That's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

I read today that a lot of US conservatives used to hate him because he was pro-electric car, to the point where places in the US actually banned sales of Teslas. I do wonder if his lean to the right wasn't, at least initially, partly a way of winning them over to his business interests.

Regardless, I still agree with the consensus here: he has always been both a moron and a dick, and his previous success, like most things in life, is best explained by luck.

In the last few years he's done stuff in the public eye that made people question their feelings about him. When he was only known by the companies he ran he seemed like a decent guy. Then the public got to know him better through his ramblings in the media.

I think this latest business with Twitter was about using his money and power to intentionally kill it for personal reasons and take the tax write-off. That's created a lot of angst for the users and inspired a lot of hate.

Personally I feel the guy is a total wingnut, always has been. I just didn't have enough exposure to him to make that determination. They say there's a fine line between genius and insanity, but there's little doubt now which side of the line he falls on.

Tldr: All in all, Elon hasn't really changed how he operates, it's just that since aligning openly with the right he has been more open about a lot of shit and also has been boosting a lot of shit he probably doesn't really believe. This in turn has extinguished a lot of the support he had in the internet which leads to people actually scrutinizing his character and a lot more than what he says has come to light or is being analyzed in a different light to what it was back then, painting Elon as the evil and stupid billionare he actually is.

The actual comment:

I know you said to not say he has always been like that, but the honest truth is he has been like that, it's just that the media was used to taking everything he said at face value and he was a bit more restrained (although not necessarily on interviews themselves).

The amount of controversy about him busting unions, having poor working conditions, stealing credit from his engineers, this was always public knowledge even when he was generally beloved by the common redditors. This is not meant to be a dig or anything, but at least on the leftists circles I tend to participate in this was always mentioned whenever he was in talks, it's just that most people don't care when billionares are exploitative pieces of shit, yhey just care about the image they sell.

He was also always surrounded by stupid scandals pre 2021, be it the submarine pedo (where for some reason I saw people on refdit defending him), him suddenly denying his family had shares on emerald mines, him and all his sex and abuse scandals, it all made news but got forgotten as soon as he pulled an "epic move" like doge coin...

What I said before is regarding his actions and actual contributions to the companies he controls, which is related to why he is do shit at handling twitter as a company, now about his public persona, the tweets he currently posts and why he is hated en mass.

Most his memes have always been reposts, buy the problem is that he now aligns with the far right in the united states, there are many reasons of why this happened and this has been absolutely clear when he daid that shit about Dems being shit now do he moved towards republicans (which is a lie but it's the poiny where the public noticed he is a republican despite him being on the forefront of electric cars), due to his alignment and changes to the poilitical spehere on the US being on the right now means believing a lot of racial conspiracy lies, that environmental change is a lie (which ironically hurts his own business), that January 6 was justified, etc. Elon right now boosts about any and all right wing accounts he ca find by replying "how curious" to the most insane racist meme about the DESPITE BEING 13% meme

I think winning the "paedo guy" lawsuit (somehow) makes him think he is beyond reproach, so he can do whatever he wants, with no consequences

Yeah dawg, waking up from sleep can be jarring sometimes. Might be time to think about the negatives of parasocial relationships.

Twitter has always been a toxic cesspool, man lol

How are you only noticing now?

Grimes breaking up with him. He doesn't take rejection very well.

The first time I remember seeing a hint of his true colors was the cave rescue/mini sub/pedo diver thing. It really laid bare what a fragile narcissistic ego maniac he really is.

Once you have seen it, you can’t really unsee it. It permeates everything he does.