Normal people used to like Elon. Then he made a cave submarine and was made to look foolish and the mask slipped.
I started off with immense respect for Tesla succeeding in delivering a mainstream electric car, and SpaceX delivering on successful commercial space flight. Finally, I thought. A rich billionaire who might actually be doing good.
Then the paedo cave thing happened. Ok. Guy can’t take criticism. That comment as uncalled for.
Now? Holy shit. The guy is a full on racist, anti trans, misogynist, white supremacist, conspiracy peddling whack a doodle.
Remember that Musk didn't create Tesla, he bought Tesla and made it worse.
He wasn't just made to look foolish, he called the lead cave rescuer a pedophile just and only because the guy didn't wanted to use his insane contraption.
Also, that wasn't the first time. The asshole was fired for incompetence before and only became rich because of shares he had in the company that got bought out. Anything good he's ever done is the work or ideas of others. Anything else is just utter shit.
Hyperloop, anyone? I remember reading in the 80's about how dumb of an idea that was, and in sure he got it from older articles as the first ideas were from the beginning of the 1900's, but he basically popped that idea because he was against high speed rail in LA. You can basically -in part- thank Musk for not having good rail in LA. Meanwhile, china built out a huge rail system because well, at least dictatorships are good for something, I guess.
Do I need to talk about Twitter at all? Bought it for twice the value, and brought it's actual value to 50% within a year. Fired thousands of people for no reason, including loads of business critical employers. Rent on his Twitter loans are due soon, hope you have a billion dollar laying around somewhere asshole!
The guy is a black mark on humanity and I can't wait for the day to see him being bankrupt and having to live in a shitty small house, he deserves it.
The Hyperloop thing is more complicated and more like an elaborate plan. It was a way to distract California lawmakers from a high-speed rail project, in order to sell more Teslas.
A member of my extended family loves Tesla and SpaceX and thinks Musk is a genius. It's frustrating because he's a very smart, generous, and chill family member...but then there's his Musk fan boy thing. I do my best to ignore it and focus on his good traits.
It’s easy to forget that Musk was seen as an “IRL” iron man not that long ago. He was buying tech companies, taking credit for their accomplishments, and making seemingly credible promises of colonizing Mars in the near future.
It all went to shit with Twitter. Musk exposed himself as a guy born with the silverest of silver spoons who failed upward all his life on the backs of the work of his betters who he never paid properly. That’s where all the extra money came from.
ehh, he exposed himself earlier. I was a huge fan until the whole "accusing the diver of being a pedo because of how he looked", and from there Musk went downhill, quickly.
Glad someone else remembers this, all because ppl didn't like his "personal mini sub for every one of the trapped children" idea...meanwhile the guy he insulted literally saved every single one of them one by one.
There actually were brave men who saved the kids for real, none of which were involved in any way with the childish Musk name calling BS. Those men's names are John Volanthen, Richard Stanton, Jason Mallinson, Chris Jewell, Richard Harris, and Craig Challen and they are heros and they don't deserve to have their bravery credited to anyone else no matter how childish some random billionaire is.
That was basically the first hint I saw of what a dipshit Musk is/was, just because the guy criticized his water coffin idea. Before that though, I knew virtually nothing about Musk apart from Iron Man and whatever random news pieces were getting pushed out. He smoked weed! He made a flamethrower! They shot a car into space! The letters for the cars spell S3XY! In retrospect though and knowing what we know about him now, it just shows what an immature child he is.
Yeah that was the first time I had to do a second glance at one of his comments. The scuba thing really sent him down a dark path lol
Reminds me of Jobs and Wozniak. Jobs was a toxic jerk who was very good at taking credit for the genius of Wozniak and others. Jobs had some brains and talent, but he was mostly just a whip cracker and ruthless self promoter. His pedestal has always annoyed me. Musk is similar and probably worse.
Definitely worse. Jobs is dead, Musk is not.
One of the many truths we’ve really learned over the past few years is that it’s easier to con someone than it is to convince them they’ve been conned. In fact, it’s easier to keep conning them, over and over, than it is to convince them they’ve been conned. That’s what Musk does. That’s what Trump does. They also benefit from the tendency of people to believe there’s a close association between material success and ability, or success and intelligence, or success and moral standing. It’s a modernized version of the divine right of kings.
I don’t think the analogy to Jobs is great though. I never knew Jobs, but I know several people who knew him and worked with him. The consensus opinion among them seems to be that Jobs had a dysfunction like a lot of people in the industry do. He had poor control over a relatively short temper. He was also aware of it and worked to overcome it, but like we know about people with cognitive dysfunctions, it’s not something you can just will your way out of. We depend on our brains to tell us when something is going wrong, and so when the brain is the thing that’s going wrong, it can be pretty bad at that job.
What Jobs did have was an intuitive grasp of the relationship between a person and technology. He saw that there was more to it than a beige box that people worked or played on. He saw a way of creating an impression of a personal connection between a person and a personalizable but inanimate object in a way that few people have achieved before or since. Yes, Jobs could be a whole bag of dicks, but from all accounts that’s when he was at his least effective.
But at the end of the day, before Jobs was hired back as CEO to rescue Apple, things had gone to shit because they had started to think of themselves as just a computer manufacturer. There was no vision for an iMac, an iPod, or an iPhone. He got it wrong sometimes, too. The Lisa was as big a disaster as the Edsel. Ping was a disaster. The original Maps was a disaster. The job of the CEO - Jobs’ job if you will - is to provide vision and direction, and to get it right.
That wasn’t what Woz was good at. He is intelligent and a creative thinker. He is a tinkerer and a hacker. He can be a bit of a tech bro, but he has a genuine love for technology and understanding. I hope he fully recovers from his recent minor stroke and that they can take measures to prevent any sequelae.
That was longer than I intended. The short version is that Jobs was more like Miranda Priestly from the Devil Wears Prada and Musk is more like Michael Scott would be if he had a couple of hundred billion dollars but lacked the moral framework that made his character likable.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply. I'm not saying Jobs deserves zero credit. Woz himself respected the man, so who am I to disagree. As you pointed out, he had some visionary traits. I just think he's highly overrated, and his contributions, while significant, could have been provided by many others. He just wasn't the magic unicorn he was lauded as, IMO.
Comparing Musk to a billionaire Michael Scott is gold. And I agree with the point that Jobs was smart and Musk is a dumbass.
You can appreciate what the actual talent at Tesla and SpaceX have accomplished while still seeing Musk as a horrible person. It's just too bad supporting either company puts money in his pocket.
Yeah musk has very little to do with the accomplishments of Tesla or SpaceX. He provides the money. It’s the incredibly skilled workers of said companies that are making things happen. We can absolutely champion removing musk from every position he holds while pushing forward the ideas that space exploration and EVs are good things.
At the same time, we should push for:
-
space exploration to be about the search for knowledge and for making a better life for all of humanity based on the resources available in space, instead of building off-planet bunkers for billionaires once their climate change profits run out of steam
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EVs to be efficient, affordable to everyone, and generally more environmentally friendly than any fossil fuel vehicle. This will require significant research into battery technology and production processes. Time for car manufacturers to start spending all those profits they have. The strikes are a good start
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X/Twitter to fail. No bailouts, no buyouts. Let elon lose the 40 Billion he spent on it. For those that supposedly champion capitalism, this should be a win win in demonstrating what the market does when you are no longer competitive.
Spacex is tough.. Musk can choke on a bag of dicks but spacex is doing some cool stuff that I'm excited about, but I've always been a space and rocket nerd.
See that's my problem with all this. SpaceX and Tesla aren't successful because of Elon Musk. they are successful in spite of Elon Musk.
Elon Musk just puts money in big things. Elon Musk only cares about Elon Musk. Not even money. Elon Musk cares more about Elon Musk than money.
First competitor to Public sector contracts for space flight? Elon Musk can see Elon Musks name on it. First mass produced electric car on the road and in garages? Elon Musk gets to see Elon Musk associated with it. Twitter? Elon Musk gets to be famous even more for tanking a $44b social media company with little to no effort.
Elon Musk gets to be famous even more for tanking a $44b social media company with little to no effort.
I disagree. Elon put a lot of effort into tanking Twitter. All he had to do to keep it from tanking (as bad as it did) was make no effort.
I have a coworker like this. He's always been a big fan of Joe Rogan, which was simply a harmless hobby five years ago, but now means that he gets sucked into some very dangerous ideas. He's a great guy to work with though.
I had an old coworker try and convince me I didn't need high blood pressure meds because of Rogan. "You just need to exercise and take vitamins". Yea. I'm going to listen to a podcaster more than my personal doctor that has examined me sixteen million times.
They aren't wrong that these things can help. But there are other people just prone to things and need extra assistance.
I feel like 80 percent of the internet revolves around bullying other people while somehow insisting you have the moral high ground.
EDIT:
The responses are proving my point.
He's not calling out Elon. He's calling anyone who likes Elon a massive loser. Dude's an asshole.
I think there's a difference between bullying and calling out asshole behaviour.
Elon Musk is fair game because he's a total twat to everyone around him. If he was nice to everyone it would be a different matter.
He could be nice to everyone, it's totally possible, he'd still be rich as hell his asshole behaviour did not make him rich, it isn't an excuse and it isn't a requirement.
To be fair to him, loads of Elon followers are rather dickish in their behavior, anything to defend Elon. That brings me to point two: anyone who defended an incompetent asshole just because he managed to get rich, is an idiot and an asshole himself.
Elon is incompetent as fuck (he got fired for incompetence, anything good he did is basically other people's ideas or work, Hyperloop anyone, and just the entire Twitter debacle) and he's a huge asshole (mistreats his employees, called the cave rescuers pedophiles because they didn't wanted to use his retarded solution, yaddah yaddah yaddah)
Anyone defending that piece of shit honestly deserves to be called anything.
Devil doesn’t need an advocate. And victims don’t need to be gaslit.
I’m sure it feels that way from a certain perspective when victims finally get a platform to speak about oppressors who have been the real world bullies without being questioned because they have too much leverage. They should be able to handle it. If not maybe they should change if they don’t like it when crunching people results in getting told how they be.
Is this Seth Meyers writer?
Hard to recognize him without a tank top
I had the same thought, and like you I have no intention of looking it up, lol.
Elon musk, Lord of the incels
Nah,they may just be gullible. My little cousin is a musk fan and I've been trying uh, encourage him to look a little deeper
Beautiful
Solid double tap
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