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!"
@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.
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.
Yeah, as critical as I am of Musk, I have to admit that Tesla and the electric car revolution it has spurred is definitely in large part the result of his efforts and investment. As much as I can’t stand the dude, I have to give credit where credit is due.
I mean yes, but also if i had 60 billion dollars i could also go: hey maybe i can make cars better. Hey you two, can you make cars better in exchange for a lot of money. And at the end he did not make cars better, he just made expensive cars that are held together by duck tape and hopes and dreams.
It's not like he was a middle class guy with a dream and a giga brain. He had a lot of money to spend.
Let me be crystal clear here that I have never, ever thought that.
@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.
Without the investment and PR explosion he gave them it is incredibly unlikely they could've made it this far. The legislative hurdles and competitive pressure Musk just shrugged off for years should not be discounted. He had his entire fortune to fall back on if the gamble didn't pay off, so the threats to his bottomline and prolonged battles did not impact him the same way it would a startup.
Again, I can't stand the dude. But Tesla made it because of him, warts and all.
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?
@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.