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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Graphine@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

I think people need a refresher course of the last 5 years or so. Because here's the deal.

About 2017 to 2020, maybe 2021, the internet was a huge fucking fan of Elon. Including me. I LOVED Elon. Seemed like such a down to earth guy who genuinely wanted to help the human race and was super ambitious. Even if he was flawed. From what I remember, the general consensus was you either liked him, or you felt indifferent and just didn't really care.

NOW that headspace has changed. Either you fucking hate him, or you do like him and get destroyed. Now, it took me about a year before I started to really dislike him the way the internet does. Because I felt like at the time the internet was doing what it always does. Blows shit outta proportion. That was, until I started seeing things change. Because starting about 2-3 years ago, there has been a massive ego fluctuation in Elon. His Twitter is not the same as it was back in 2019 for example. He was actually fairly level headed and would post the occasional meme. But it was always something amazing to do with Space X or Tesla. Okay, no harm there. NOW it's full of nonsensical retarded tweets, dumbass memes left and right, tweets pretty much shitting on his own users...It's a toxic fucking cesspool there. I mean this guy is at a point where he thinks rebranding a social media site that has been widely known to the public with one name, and one name only for YEARS, is a good idea. Let alone to rebrand it to a single fucking letter. Because why not? Kill your user base apparently.

What the hell happened to him? I understand why people dislike him now. As do I. But dude. How can someone fall from greatness like that? Being seen as the next Steve Jobs, flaws and all. To just a shadowy figure of himself? What made him go fucking insane and gain that huge ego?

To the people that would comment, "Well he's always been like that he just shows it now", I don't believe it. When you have such massive egotistical and narcissistic traits, you could give two shits about showing it. He would've done so his whole career if he was like this. I'm not saying he NEVER had an ego, but it wasn't anywhere fucking near the levels of where it is now.

"We were on the verge of greatness, we were THIS close!"

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[-] BeardedPip@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Who he really was all along started to shine through the PR bullshit. He did not change, we just got to start seeing the truth.

[-] whenever8186@feddit.uk 0 points 1 year ago
[-] Poggervania@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

With a glass of tiger’s blood or w/e Martin Sheen said?

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[-] WhipperSnapper@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

Coincidentally I was just listening to a podcast episode asking this very question. If anyone here used to listen to Reply All, it's the new podcast from PJ. Only a couple episodes out, but this is titled "What's going on with Elon Musk?" and talks about him, social media, and the convergence of the two. Podcast is called Search Engine, and I think it's on all the usual platforms.

...this post kinda reads like an AI-generated plug, but I just really loved Reply All, and am hoping this fills that niche for me.

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[-] weew@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think it's one of the problems with success... people end up being surrounded by yes-men, they start believing their own hype, and they go downhill.

During the founding of Tesla and SpaceX, he was nothing more than a rich guy who had ideas. Crazy ideas. Sometimes a crazy idea is revolutionary, sometimes crazy ideas are just stupid. He would be on equal, or even lower footing than most engineers, who would probably rein in his stupid crazy ideas but properly investigate his revolutionary crazy ideas. Probably a lot of back-and-forth going on.

As he got more famous and richer, people stop questioning him and just assume he's some kind of genius. Even his own engineers would be afraid of questioning his decisions. So nobody's stopping him from doing his stupid crazy shit. Plus everyone's giving him a platform so all his stupid opinions are public knowledge instead of private conversation.

You can see this to a lesser extent with other people who got "too successful". George Lucas and Star Wars, for example. During the original trilogy, he had lots of ideas but he bounced ideas back and forth with the rest of the crew. He got super famous, and when he made the prequel trilogy nobody dared question him.

[-] Hypx@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

@weew

@Graphine

That’s at best half the story. The other half is that Musk was always this crazy nut-case. People just ignored the truth, just like they ignored the same stories about Steve Jobs. Hell, he didn’t even found Tesla. That entire story is something he made up, and in fact the rest of the company has to keep Musk from interfering.

[-] weew@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

the whole "he didn't found Tesla" is in itself partly bullshit as well. At the time Musk joined, "Tesla" was literally nothing more than a legally registered entity. No engineers, no office, no designs, no technology, nothing. It was just two dudes with an idea looking for investors. Musk brought the money to hire actual engineers and start getting work done.

And it wasn't so much that people "ignored the truth", it's that nobody talked about it or cared. There was basically no actual information out there aside from the actual results of his company. People didn't even know who Musk was, they knew Tesla and SpaceX. They only saw the results.

[-] Hypx@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

@weew

@Graphine He was purely an investor. By that metric, many venture capitalists could claim to be the founder of dozens or even hundreds of companies.

[-] weew@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes? That's exactly what they do. It's just that most of these companies don't get big enough to be talked about. People don't like putting "founder of 50 failed companies" on their resume.

And now you're obviously spreading FUD. Either Elon took a direct role in the company and was a shitty boss, or he did nothing at all and only invested money. Which is it?

[-] Hypx@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

@weew

@Graphine He "became" the founder by taking over directly. But he was totally incompetent and the rest of the company basically had to keep him from interfering.

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Huh? People always loved and hated him, I just think that with buying Twitter, both sides got way louder, and so we notice them more.

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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
278 points (90.2% liked)

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