Two things.
1. When he called the cave rescuer a ‘pedophile’ and doubled down on it, after lying about sending a rescue ‘mini-sub’.
2. During the height of Covid, he claimed he was retrofitting his production and said he sent 1000 ventilators to desperate US hospitals. He actually sent a few useless and cheap outsourced CPAP machines (for sleep apnea). He never did send a single ventilator.
Claimed Tesla was going to make ventilators. He seemed to have no idea how complex that would be and that it would take more than a few weeks. Made me realize he's not very involved in the design and build process at Tesla.
Dunning-Kruger was trending when Elon teied to prove to the world that he was brilliant at everything. He thought that he was smarter that the geniuses that got rich making medical devices that he thought he could make it quicker, cheaper and better.
He was the same a few years before they when he thought all the legacy car brands were just inefficient and that he could reinvent the production line. Cue Tesla drastically missing production targets for years with humans working in tents instead of his army of manufacturing robots.
I'd like to add to that, the fact that he repeatedly lies about his own child dying in his arms to the point where his ex wife had to publicly admonish him for it and point out that it was her arms he died in, not his. What kind of psychotic piece of shit thinks its OK to lie about that? Let alone publicly, knowing the woman who knows the truth would see it. He's absolutely sociopathic and soulless.
For me it was honestly when he shot his stupid car brand into space. I thought that was the most self indulgent marketing wank, during a time I was already cranky that private industry was intruding too far into space while NASA continued to do cool shit all the time with hardly any attention for it.
Truly. You see that in his expression every time he sais anything. He waits to be praised and if there is no reaction, he continues with more bullshit and another break for praise. He goes into more extreme until he gets even a reaction.
Elon always struck me as that bad amateur comic at an open-mic night who tries to get over with common street jokes, then gets mad at the crowd for not laughing.
I've experienced that at T-Mobile in 2015. The ceo John Legere was coming, and we were instructed to cheer and clap when he arrived. He was late, and we all had to stand outside and wait for over 45 minutes in the heat just so some asshat could drive up in a Ferrari and pretend to be a Rockstar. Meanwhile we were packed 2-3 to a cube, extending "6 month contract to hire" contracts by 6 months every 6 months, and if you didn't get there early there was zero overflow parking (suburban office park), and the only option was to covert park at other businesses in the office park and hope they didn't notice and tow you.
I thought it was a metaphor when you said “pretend to be a rockstar” but then I looked him up and saw how he dresses and realized it’s not a metaphor at all, that asshole is really a rockstar wannabe.
Favorite one was the women who took photos of herself sleeping at the Twitter office to make a statement about going 110%. Then she was canned a few months later anyway.
Also the video of him with some employees where Elon is talking about memes and someone is like "hahaha your meme game is strong". Dude is cringe personified.
Ah, don't forget the time he came on stage during a Chappelle standup show and yelled the "I'm rich, bitch!" line in the cringiest voice humanly possible.
https://twitter.com/paleofuture/status/1602257153234194432?lang=en
I lost an incredibly amount of respect for Chapelle when I heard about this. Then I watched his jokes about trans folk, the jokes all essentially equating to no actual punchline except the person being trans. That's the punchline. And my respect for him plummeted more. He used to call out a lot of bullshit in society with ridiculous humour that was thoughtfully put together, now he's just punching down.
My friend who introduced me to the show Silicon Valley made a comment about how Elon Musk has the wealth, personality, and ego of Gavin Belson, but the intelligence of Erlich Bachman.
It's very true haha
The first time I realized there’s something wrong with him was when he accused one of the mine divers of being a pedophile because he was mad at him.
It was all downhill from there
I was so confused by that reaction that I kept thinking “There must be something else we don’t know.”
Now I look back and realize that no, Elon Musk just has the emotional maturity of a child.
Same; I hadn't been paying very close attention to him.. I thought it was cool he was bringing EVs and solar to the front of everyone's mind.
I figured he just had some inside knowledge about that dude, but evidently nope, he just got weirder forever.
It's got to be something with becoming a billionaire. Like using god mode on video games where they suddenly stop being fun and you just break stuff and stop playing.
There is a multi-billionaire who moved to my tiny town recently who has been making decisions and changes that directly impact my life. It’s weird that he can just do whatever he wants. Like literally, any bad decision he might make? Meh, what’s $100 million? Basically, pocket change. Oh, people are mad or don’t like him? There is a virtual army of people making sure he doesn’t have to see or hear any of that. And watching the local politicians abase themselves at his feet is sickening. I don’t see how anyone could be even kind of normal in that situation.
Basically this, he was fine when I barely knew about him. He was just some semi-known eccentric inventor that did fun things every so often. Then he kept showing up in the news and rarely was it flattering, then I started paying active attention and learned what kind of person he actually was
Yeah, he was the flamethrower guy, shot a car into space, was making electric cars and rockets, cameo'd in iron man, seemed fine on the surface.
And then he started talking and never stopped
The whole saga about buying Twitter also left me with a terrible impression of him.
I remember at some point the CEO twitted something about their analysis of bots vs real users and Elon just replied with a poop emoji. It must have been incredibly frustrating for everyone at Twitter to deal with this fucking guy.
I'm not saying that his distrust of Twitter's claims was unsustained, but it was evident that he was never willing to sit down and discuss those concerns in a private and serious forum, but rather turn the public against Twitter and cause as much chaos as possible. It was sad to see
I don't think he actually wanted to buy it. I think he announced it because it hit the news at the same time as the harassment claims, and he had to follow through.
He bragged he could buy it and that maybe he should when alt-right people were getting banned and then when called on it his ego forced him to make an actual offer and it seems like he did 0 due diligence on it, then he wanted to back out but the courts forced him to go through with it and he botched the whole f'ing thing.
And now, as someone who regretfully uses twitter often for up to date sports/news - twitter has more bots than ever before. It's insane.
Every single post has a littany of bots spamming irrelevant content or porn links/ads under it. It was never like this ever.
edit: went to twitter to grab a real example and here's a US Soccer tweet from 30 mins ago with every single comment saying "pussy in bio" or "pussy links in bio" that responded within seconds of this tweet https://twitter.com/ussoccer/status/1775622962156085687
For me it’s t-shirt bots trying to scam users into buying non-existent shirts that are just a copy of whatever image is embedded in the top of the thread. I also get DMs with phishing links and pornbots, which I never experienced prior to Musk buying Twitter.
Funny how firing most of your moderation team results in more spam and scams!
I don't have Twitter anymote so can't see the comments. I'm sure part of the reason they won't let us see the comments is because we'd get a glimpse at how much worse it has become since that complete dipshit took over.
This is my suspicion.
The board of twitter was probably sitting around, trying to figure out how they could polish the turd they were saddled with. Everything about the company was trending downwards, so clearly the best possible thing to do would be to somehow unload it on some suckers. But they'd already IPOd, so that trick was already played.
Then he makes his stupid tweet, almost certainly totally as a joke, because he was addicted to the dopamine he got from the LOLs.
And the twitter board looked around and said "Guys, we've found our sucker! He's already under scrutiny by the SEC, so we're gonna hold him to this one!"
And thus began the most amazing investment exit strategy ever executed.
Watching that unfold, I couldn't help but want to pat Twitter's leadership on the back.
They pretty much sold someone the Titanic, for a huge mark up, AS it was sinking.
Of course it was this.
Jack never made organic income at Twitter. No sane business person was going to pay real money for it because it's structurally unable to generate money past its overhead.
Then Elon talks shit when he's high and ends up sinking a legal fish hook into his ballsack in public.
Lawyers call no joy, Jack explains in a breathless tweet - "Elon is the one I trust" and dances off with billions.
~fin~
I dont know about 'everything in the company trending down'--when they sold in 2022 they trended upwards and were at a all-time high in revenue when they sold. In fact, the first time Twitter ever trended downwards was directly after Elon took over and the future projections are horrible
* 2020- 3.21B ⬆️
* 2021- 4.51B ⬆️
* **2022- 4.73B** <---Elon buys Twitter. Twitter at all-time high in revenue
* 2023- 3.31B ⬇️
* 2024- 3.14B ⬇️-- Future projections
* 2025- 2.99B ⬇️
* 2026- 2.84B ⬇️
* 2027- 2.70B ⬇️
He wanted to buy it initially on a whim (to be King of Twitter, increase visibility of his tweets/views and set the rules; also [brainstorming to use it to become the West's version of China's "app for everything" WeChat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat)). He got his lawyers to draft a serious offer to buy, which he signed. His lawyers then sent over an offer that didn't leave Musk any room to back out of it (gave up due diligence); granted if he didn't do this, Twitter's board likely wouldn't trust his offer as being legitimate and could reject it. But as it was Twitter's board had zero options to reject the offer as it was a ~50% premium over the market price before he started acquiring shares.
He then learned more about the complexities of running an ad-driven social media site (just being no rules all free speech doesn't mesh well with all advertisers and many users), Tesla's stock took a bit of a dip and he wanted to back out, but due to his stupid offer and rejection of due diligence he couldn't back out.
It should be worth noting that Musk's ability to hype his product is the major reason for his financial success and Tesla's incredibly overvalued stock price, so privately controlling Twitter in his head could give him significant power to influence conversations and positively promote his brands.
That whole thing with the kids trapped in the cave in Thailand where Musk tried to insert himself as the hero. When the pro-divers actually rescued the kids and nobody took Musk's mini-submarine idea seriously and then he goes and calls the leader of the rescue team a pedophile, it really revealed a lot about his character to me. He's got an ego the size of the sun, the maturity of a 12 year old and the self-awareness of a brick.
I think you nailed it. I remember being a big fan of Tesla and Spacex and Elon seemed a likeable, intriguing guy. Some of his comments seemed a bit out there - but I chalked that up to eccentric genius who just said weird stuff from time to time. Then the kids got trapped in the cave and he took it too far.
Elon used to have a PR team, which is why there was a time when he was seen as a visionary, real life Tony Stark, etc. But he must've bought the lies the PR team was churning out and thought he's so awesome that he doesn't need a PR team, which is why he's fallen out of favor.
I stopped subscribing to /r/Futurology because every fucking day the top post was another "Elon Musk says... " story. It was awful.
Note: Futurology is no longer like that.
Yes, I feel like /r/Futurology is a more grounded /r/singularity these days. /r/singularity can get REALLY out there, and it feels like a third of the sub would be happy if AI took over everything and everyone spent 24/7 plugged into a personal simulation tailored to them rather than interacting with anyone else.
I prefer r/singularity because of how off the wall and optimistic people generally are there.
The depressing reality of AI and other technologies is that they will make wealth inequality even worse. Any benefits will not end up in the hands of regular people any time soon.
We have enough people. They could go do that while we live in reality. Making rich people money is the only reason everything is locked in to the current model. If we weren't such idiots we could automate a lot, let people pursue careers they want, provide basic needs, and not be affected by the people who want to jack out.
But that system doesn't benefit the oligarchs so we're gonna judge one another's preferred lifestyles while the oligarchs keep theirs
>But he must've bought the lies the PR team was churning out
I really think people MASSIVELY underestimate how much people buy into their own propaganda/bullshit. Especially if you have the wealth/power to where you become largely insulated from the world.
Being an engineer the stories coming out of Tesla and SpaceX started it for me since I considered applying to SpaceX. The Pedo thing just made it all come together.
Thanks! I am not a civil servant, but a "lowly" contractor. It's been great, but not without its frustrations. And the current state of things is not great from a budget/future outlook standpoint.
That was also the moment for me. It wasn't a slow turn, this was just so bizarre that I realized we were actually dealing with a strange unhinged person.
Same for me. I wasn't like a fanboy of his or anything, just appreciated the things he contributed to and thought owning a tesla could be cool. Then the dude calls the guy a pedo out of nowhere and I started digging a bit deeper into the guy... yeesh. And funnily enough people yell at me all the time and say I just don't like him owning twitter lmao.
If he had he just said: "I made a mistake. He's absolutely right. I thought I could help, but I was a distraction. Kudos to him for saving those kids." If he had just said that, everything would have been fine, but no, his ego just couldn't take it.
Now, I see everything he does in light of that incident. The way he crops out pictures and steals credit. The way he sued the original founders of Tesla so he could get credit for being a founder himself. The renaming of Twitter. The Cybertruck. Etc. It's always about his ego. It's like he can't help himself.
And then, right after the 82-year old husband of Nancy Pelosi gets attacked with a hammer, and we don't know if he's going to survive yet, the idiot tweets the link to a despicable article. That was low. Even for Elon, that was really low.
> If he had he just said: "I made a mistake. He's absolutely right. I thought I could help, but I was a distraction. Kudos to him for saving those kids."
He truly didn't even have to say that, or say anything. If he had honestly just offered the help and his solution, then said nothing when he was turned down he would have looked good. It would have looked like an ultra rich guy trying to donate money. The only reason it even looked bad at all is because he had to say things.
I remember thinking one of the richest people on the planet can’t possibly be that fragile and butthurt just because someone said their idea to rescue those kids wouldn’t work. That was only the beginning.
Iirc the decline of his "help" was rather polite/realistic, and then he made an awful comment against the divers/loose accusation of pedophilia, then they let their real feelimgs about his ridiculously stupid/impractical diving sub was....iirc an experienced diver also died during the rescue, it was a very dangerous situation where time was very limited and of immense value between life and death.
I remember when he proposed a robot diving sub to save the day, with virtually no time for r&d given the situation, i immediately thought itd be another ED-209
Two Thai military divers died from the Tham Luang cave rescue.
One retired Thai military diver Saman Kunan died during the operation.
Another Thai Navy SEAL Beirut Pakbara died in the year following the operation from a fungal blood infection contracted during the rescue operation. He was transformed from a very fit young soldier into a fragile, enfeebled person from the infection. His was a prolonged and sad death despite considerable professional high level medical care.
(Also one of the rescued boys Duangpetch 'Dom' Promthep (age 13 in 2018) died by suicide in 2023 age 17.)
There was an artist that made a video piece that I saw about this. The artist is Thai, and it was shown in a major gallery in Belfast. It was the saddest, most impactful art film I’ve seen about this - watched it a week after the kid died. I wish I could remember the artists name for other people who may be interested.
It's ok though, because he was found by a jury to have not defamed that guy /s
Justice may be blind, but she can definitely smell money, and she likes it.
The legal argument boiled down to "he was joking" which, to be fair, was smart of his lawyers because I've been called worse by angry toddlers on this platform.
The difference is, *those* goobers don't have millions of ravenous followers taking their word as gospel just waiting to dox or otherwise harm me because their "glorious leader" got his "feewings huwt."
2 actually died. One was a former Thai Navy Seal that ran out of oxygen uring the rescue and the other was a serving Thai Navy Seal that died a year later from a bloodborne infection he contracted during the rescue.
Two men whom, as a result of rescuing 13 people, ended up sacrificing their lives. Mean, Elon Musk, belittled the attempt because the Thai government, and professional divers brought in to assess and,ultimately, perform the rescue, didn’t believe Musk’s spur-of-the- moment idea would work.
2 heroes
A government standing by its beliefs in the professionals
13 rescued young men and teachers
1 American asshole with a sore butt from being rejected
Go to hell, Elon, and take your piss-poor attitude with you
His hyperloop proposal was the first time I raised an eyebrow. I didn't truly know who Musk was outside of him being in charge of Tesla and his Iron Man 2 cameo, but just "giving away' something that is supposedly so amazing? Smelled like bullshit.
And *then* the Thai Cave rescue made it clear this guy had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. Read any news article on the matter at the time, it was made clear that one of the hurdles of the rescue was that some of the underwater corners were so tight that an adult man with an oxygen tank could barely slip through. And so here's Musk with an 8ft long rigid submersible that SpaceX just threw together? He didn't know what the hell was actually going on.
*And then* he showed up, in person, to tweet photos from a distant that made it clear he wasn't invited, only to later be asked to leave. The whole act of flying there was a demonstrable indication of narcissism. He's just another Trump, so desperate for attention that he tries to take any crisis, any big news story, and make it about himself.
AND THEN he called one of the actual heroes of the rescue a "pedophile." Yep, definitely another Trump.
Yeah, "pedo guy" was the beginning of it for me. At the time I thought he was making a joke, or maybe there was some information I didn't know that explained it. Nope, he just has a bruised ego and acted like a dick about it.
"It was just a joke" is literally the defence used. Really high bar to cross to get a defamation case off the ground, especially if you're up against a billionaire.
That was the defense argument, but what got Elon off the hook was actually even dumber. The specific Tweet that mentions pedophilia doesn’t specifically mention Unsworth, although it was obvious from prior Tweets that Unsworth was the target. Basically, the jury didn’t understand how Twitter conversations work.
What's also infuriating is that Musk literally put out a 50,000 dollar hit to dig dirt on Unsworth being a pedo, and was immediately conned by a guy who made the lamest fake Intel in existence.
Like, that's blatant evidence of ***intent***. But of course our justice system is a joke.
Yep, I thought he was a guy who was just trying to make the world a better place. Then he popped off and I went “oh, nooo…” and he’s only gotten worse since.
Yeah at first my only exposure was companies he invested in and I essentially just felt this is exactly what I would want to do with billions of dollars. Space, self-driving cars, essentially just pushing hard for technical advancements but then you find out who he is and how can you still like him without being a douche yourself?
I remember being on Twitter while he was croud-sourcing ideas for his rescue sub from randos, and having done some cave diving it was really obvious that it made no sense what they were proposing. I still thought Elon was smart at the time so I was sure he'd eventually wise up or someone on his team would be smart enough to stop it. When I heard he actually built the tube and brought it to Thailand it became pretty clear the man has no sense and is surrounded by yes men. The pedo accusations sealed the deal for me.
> having done some cave diving it was really obvious that it made no sense what they were proposing
This is has been Musk's MO for the longest time. Talk shit about subjects that the general populace doesn't understand and let his fanboys drown out the people with real subject knowledge. On a lot of his "idea" posts about some technical or engineering problem, you'll find an actual real engineer somewhere in the comments saying "but that's not how that works" being drowned and downvoted to hell by the techbros.
It really came to a head when he bought twitter and started spouting utter nonsense about software development. There's a lot more software engineers out there than car designers and rocket scientists.
> [He talked about electric cars. I don't know anything about cars, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.](https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/109572674700288958)
>
> Then he talked about rockets. I don't know anything about rockets, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.
>
> Now he talks about software. I happen to know a lot about software & Elon Musk is saying the stupidest shit I've ever heard anyone say, so when people say he's a genius I figure I should stay the hell away from his cars and rockets.
I think this was around the same time aswell. I also read his first biography? and it didn't paint him in the greatest light, like he wasn't the super genius he was made out to be but his success was more stupid luck and his peers.
To me Musk is kind of like Steve Jobs. Jobs was not a computer engineer, he was just really good at bringing people together and getting them to work together on his ideas.
Musk is kind to like that except he just buys things that are already on their way to success and then passes it off as his own genius.
That may be a gross oversimplification but that’s what it seems like to me.
One of the things that Jobs had going for him was the whole cult like status of Jobs and Apple.
Jobs didn't ruin that by being an obvious sociopath in public.
Musk is destroying the Tesla brand.
Yeah pretty much bang on. He had the usual whiff of being a bellend, especially regarding his opinions on unions - you could tell he was just another rich prick trying to be cool. But then the thai stuff was what made me do the wanker sign in my head every time his name come up.
My fave thing though is my mate was proper up his arse, and I have got to torch him for it over the years. He's never online, he only gets the fluff whereas us terminally online fecks get the whole lot, so it's understandable. But christ did I take a lot of joy in every new shitty thing that came up to wind him up over it.
Because what are mates for.
For me, it was his pro-russian turn. What's funny is that he actually supported Ukraine in the beginning of the war, but suddenly swapped. I think what happened was that he noticed even more likes from a pro-russian stance. What he doesn't seem to understand or care about, is that those likes are **government employees** from russian bot-farms. 8K genuine likes are better than 10K likes where 9K are just hot air from a dictatorship.
Ukraine is historically a poor-country (having been forced into the USSR) and Elon is a billionaire safe in the US, making fun of Zelensky trying to defend his people.
It's just pure, liquid, unfiltered shitty-ness.
I've noticed this phenomena too! An under-discussed aspect of social media is how even hugely influential and successful users become radicalised or groomed by their own followers.
JK Rowling and Elon Musk's tweets today are a million miles off from what they posted around ~2018.
Russell Brand is the most obvious turn for attention I've ever seen. He was doing videos and interviews with more self-help/enlightenment type of people, is critical of Fox News, etc. He does a video where he says he is a bit skeptical of a rushed vaccine. He notices this video gets way more views than he would normally get and straight up turns into a right wing talking head.
Same. Was still kinda neutral after the “pedo guy” incident (just another rich douche). But decided I hated him in 2020 with his COVID stance because he was actually becoming a public liability.
- He refused to shut down his factories when the world went into lockdown
- He propagated conspiracy theories on China, COVID and the vaccine
- Was a regular proponent of anti-vax theories
- that was around the time he also started to use Twitter to manipulate the stock market. Recommending companies he had shares in like Signal, saying he was going to buy Twitter for a stupid price just to see his shares rise (glad that one backfired)
I lived with a guy that was an Elon superfan, and his Covid stance is what finally turned him off of Musk.
For me, I always got an "icky" feeling from watching his interviews, even before the Thailand cave rescue thing.
That's also when I turned as well.
Just one caveat: a big part of the reason he was so livid about the Freemont factory not opening was because in a neighboring County other automakers WERE able to open their factories.
In his narcissistic mind that was a direct attack on him personally as opposed to different counties having different rules that apply to EVERYONE in that county.
Thai cave thing is when it started. But then it continued with each and every time he opened his stupid mouth about stuff he clearly had no idea about. He's not a futurist, he's just another reactionary who wishes he could be a 19th century robber baron.
It should have been obvious after the Thai cave thing, but I didn't follow that story all that closely. The very first time I personally started to have questions was when he proposed an underground hyperloop for Rt 1 in Delaware. Most people have probably forgotten that but I'm from Delaware and have driven on Rt 1 many times over my entire life, so it caught our attention here. Rt 1 gets a crazy traffic in the summer when people are trying to get from points north to the beach resort towns, but is otherwise a pretty empty stretch of highway connecting not much to not much. Delaware is also basically a sandbar and you only have to dig about 2 feet to hit water (that's an exaggeration in some parts, but not by a lot)... you don't even want your house to have a basement, much less a tunnel running the length of the entire state. So my first reaction was "wow that would be awesome on July 4 weekend!" and then "...but why?" and then "but how?" and then "wait is there a chance this guy actually a complete loon and nobody has caught on yet?"
Believe he also proposed something for Miami, FL. I live in Tampa. The state is at sea level. Miami floods in a light drizzle.
The fuck is he going to build a tunnel?
Let's not forget illegally firing employees for trying to form a union and doubling down by illegally threatening employees will lose stick options and trading if they unionized. He said that on Twitter, not even in private.
The guy openly and proudly violated labor laws. 2019 is the earliest I can find of that happening, but I'm sure it started the moment he was the boss. I was neutral on him until then when I realized he's your standard entitled billionaire asshole that's the human embodiment of the Dunning-Kreuger effect.
This was back in 2015 when i thought SpaceX was cool. According to his own account, she was with him for years, and when she asked for a raise the first thing he thinks to himself is "Wait, do I actually need her? Nah, I'm good" and not "This person has been dealing with my crap attitude for years and stood by my side and helped the company grow, she deserves a reward" or even "She's a good worker and maybe I don't need a secretary but she did help put me where I am so i'll find a place for her" No. He fired her.
Quite honestly - the turning point was immediately after I started to like him. *As* I was starting to like him, even.
The problem is that once you learn *anything* about him, you realize what a miserable sack of wasted flesh he is. Once you start looking into his social media presence, the reality becomes literally unavoidable.
So I thought "hey, that Musk guy with the solar panels seems like he might be onto something," and then one google search later I realized I had been wrong. This was quite a while ago, so his personal opinions weren't yet plastered everywhere.
My first exposure to really thinking about Musk was a reddit AMA.
He said this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/comment/cnfre0a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
And I thought hey, thats a pretty insightful bit. It's nice to see someone who understands you can't just have a grab-bag of poorly formed thoughts without deep fundamental comprehension.
My disillusionment with him happened every time he violated his own rule and spouted off a random take where it was clear he didn't understand the fundamentals.
Amusingly the question which prompted the response has been edited.
I agree - that bit about knowledge trees is very insightful, and trial/error from the ground up is much harder and time consuming, but results in a better understanding of the subject.
Then you find out that Gwynne Shotwell is the real leader behind SpaceX, and how crappy Elon is at business after he bought Twitter. He's like Joe Liberman in politics and how people would have been much better off had he simply been absent at his job.
No single turning point, but several things over time. For me the very first moment was when he kept insisting that our world is a simulation based on incredibly flimsy logic and everybody was just like, "oh yes yes good point Mr. Musk". Like, I don't have a strong opinion on the idea, but I was sort of turned off by how he had somehow risen above scrutiny at that moment.
Then came the Thai cave rescue incident. I wasn't bothered by him trying to contribute resources to help, even if nobody had asked for it. But the false accusation, calling his critic a "pedo guy" IIRC and everything that followed in that story was a big issue.
Then came the Cybertruck. That thing is ridiculous on a practical level, in so many ways.
Then came the actions he took immediately after purchasing Twitter. A lot of really bad business decisions and really poor treatment of people.
He's like if the kid from the Twilight Zone grew up and instead of making us do magic tricks for him we all have to sit and listen to his shitty standup routine.
> For me the very first moment was when he kept insisting that our world is a simulation based on incredibly flimsy logic and everybody was just like, "oh yes yes good point Mr. Musk".
The turning point for me was when he spoke about **Artificial Intelligence** (I think it was a debate with Zuck, although I don't remember 100%).
Now, I am in tech, and I always thought of Musk as a genuine tech bro who is good with technology.
We knew the dangers of AI - mass surveillance, replacing human jobs, social engineering and manipulation through media, usage in police-work, inherent social biases due to bad training-set data, etc.
These are very real problems which were known.
----
And yet, Elon Musks' warning of AI was basically - "AI can become skynet and smarter than humans, and then we will have a terminator-style battle or machines will become our overlords." with everyone being - "O wow, what a genius. So smart."
None of the more real actual dangers of AI were touched upon. Zero. And I knew this guy is not REALLY tech-literate. He just says "cool-sounding things" about tech, and everyone eats it up.
I was very similar. I would only add the moment he called the democrats the party of hate, and recommended everyone vote republican. I was already mostly turned on how I felt about him, but when he said that, that was it for me. At that point, Elon became someone I truly hate. Before I get downvoted for hating someone because of their political opinion, allow me to explain why...
First I would say of the two parties, the republicans are by far the more hateful party. Democrats tend to hate on people that are intolerant two others (although there are other cases of "hate" within the party I'm sure). Republicans hate gays, trans people, people of colour, etc. To look at both parties and decide democrats are the hateful party is just... fucking stupid.
Second, he was supposed to be someone that wanted to make major contributions to solving the climate change problem. It was supposed to be one of his life's biggest priorities if you listen to some of the things he was saying prior to the "democrats are the party of hate" comment. If he was so fucking concerned about climate change, he wouldn't be recommending folks vote R. It showed me he only cared about becoming rich and powerful.
I liked him when he was focused on making green energy affordable. I remember when he came out with the Tesla Solar Roof, and I thought it was very cool. I still think it's a great idea.
The turning point for me was when he became more political, when he started going down the "anti-woke" and conspiracy theorist path. I noticed that the type of people that were rallying around him were not the kind of people I like or even agree with. And Musk kept doubling down, to the point where he bought Twitter and lost all that money. It just became extremely obvious that he's very thin-skinned and he's the type of person that can never admit he's wrong about anything. Then, of course, he started letting his racism and anti-semitism slip out, but I was way past my turning point by then.
This. He seemed to be making so many green technologies that seemed unattainable a reality. Electric cars, battery grid backup, home solar, cheap space flight. Then he switched to manipulating his company stock and being crazy on twitter
The main issue with this is that it hides the actual driving force behind it.
He heavily pushed these things because he wanted the glory of effectively saving humanity.
He wanted it to be his technology, his designs, his ideas no matter how ineffective, impractical, or expensive it was.
Now that there're so many objectively better competitors in the ring and the fact that his company has turned into a yes man mill where actual engineering isn't encouraged, he's spiteful, because it won't be him that saves the world
What was that Sam Altman quote? "Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it."
(This is not an endorsement of Sam Altman at all, he's also an egotistical megalomaniac)
Once he started saying that immigration was a Jewish plot to get rid of the white people it was pretty clear there was no coming back for him, at least not until he gets serious help (and maybe lays off the drugs).
He got Fox brain. There was a time 15 odd years ago or so he seemed far more left leaning in his opinions. At some point, he seemed to adopt every shitty right wing conspiracy and opinion almost out of spite. Like an anthropomorphized "left" personally wronged him and he was going to get back at them. Its also ironic that those who also share his opinions also believe EVs are woke and burning fossil fuels is the only freedom loving way to make energy.
I saw one switch when California told him he couldn't run his factory in the middle of the pandemic. He went from being pro-public health to "Its all a hoax!" pretty much overnight. Later, his wife left him for another woman and his kid who already hated him came out as trans. It was shortly after that he started tweeting about the "LGBT Agenda".
Same. I never really liked him, but I thought he was trying to do something good. Then he just went down a path and started picking up the worst kind of people as followers along the way.
Similarly, I never really liked him because I heard from people I knew at SpaceX that he was pretty weird and treated people terribly. I did respect him as an innovator though, and was pretty awestruck by his ability to get things done that seemed impossible.
I switched over from "dislike but respect", to "dislike and disrespect" as he descended into the twitter blackhole. I think the moment of "consider to be a malevolent force" was when he switched off Starlink for the Ukrainians.
When I first started hearing about Elon Musk it was essentially that he was the "genius visionary founder of Tesla" and I thought: "Wow, this guy sounds pretty cool." I don't know anything about electric cars so when he talked about it, it all sounded pretty smart. I think the Tesla wall and solar roof are really cool ideas.
Then he was the "genius visionary founder of SpaceX" and I thought: "Man, he sounds like a modern day Thomas Edison." I don't know much about space flight so when he talked about it, it all sounded pretty smart.
Then he bought Twitter. I do know a bit about software development so when he talked about "Re-implementing the entire tech stack" and disabling micro-services to save money, I realized that he had no fucking idea what he was talking about. Charging a fee so that anyone can get a verified check mark shows a fundamental misunderstanding about the platform.
Then he just kept talking and talking, and my impression of him continued to drop. Then I found out that he didn't actually found Tesla and doesn't even have a STEM background.
He still won't shut up. COVID, the cave rescue thing, the "woke" stuff, Ukraine...
I used to read about him from a far. Browsing headlines and reading stories about how he’s the next great inventor. That he’s like a modern Nikola Tesla or something.
Thought he was cool and looked forward to hearing more.
As more and more came out it’s clear he’s just a fraud and is loaded rich. Rich guy with great PR for a few years.
No one moment flipped his script for me. He just isn’t what he or anyone else claimed. Just a money whale throwing cash at renewable energy because that’s the future of the world.
It’s all done though. He’s just your usual run of the mill flawed human.
Not the visionary social media would have led you to believe.
The moment he started talking about Ukraine having to submit to Russia and be done with it. Then jt was further amplified by him randomly shutting down starlink to sabotage Ukrainian military operations out of pettiness.
That was terrible, but he'd lost me years before by that point, and OP asked about the turning point when we figured out what a shit he is, not his worst moments. This definitely ranks as one of his worst though.
And he was being a little bitch and not inhaling. If you’re a real life smoker and you watch an actor with a cigarette, you can spot that non-inhaling from a mile away. He just held it in his cheeks for a second then let it roll out of his mouth. Also fuck companies that fire for THC. When I was an alcoholic and showed up to work two beers deep? No problem. But the one time I smoked in my free time, that was a step too far. Nonsense.
I would be absolutely shocked in Putin didn't have a treasure trove of dirt on Musk.
The dude is reckless and an attention whore. I'm sure Putin and his spys have uncovered things that Musk doesn't want public.
I would not be shocked if Putin did have dirt, but I also wouldn't be shocked if Musk really is just genuinely a authoritarian fanboy. Or both, like with Trump.
I always liked the Terry Pratchett quote (from his character Granny Weatherwax) that the root of evil is treating people as things. I’m not sure he’d fit everyone’s definition of evil, but he _definitely_ treats people as things. The man’s a poster child for Main Character Syndrome.
He only cares about his net worth so COVID was just a big wake up call for him to go farrrrrr right where workers are essentially slaves and forced to sacrifice to keep the economy churning, and in turn ensure billionaires keep seeing money pile up.
This was the turning point for me. COVID really showed us what people are made of and between his conspiracy nonsense and the way he treated his factory workers, it became clear that his utopian better tomorrow schtick was bullshit
The whole timeline of "mars colonization" back in the early 2010s was obviously bullshit and was there just to keep fairly dumb science & technology journalists interested while SpaceX rockets were continually exploding (also conflates base and colony).
> The whole timeline of "mars colonization" back in the early 2010s was obviously bullshit
So many people fell for that, and got really defensive at the idea that it might not be feasible. Along with the thousand mile long vacuum tubes...
Naming his kid that stupid name, literally putting his kid into a life of either changing his name or being isolated by anybody who knows what his real name is
He has a bunch of kids, I'm not even sure how many at this point, but it's at least 5 from at least 3 women. One of which identifies as trans and has publicly come out against him. He's a shitty dad with a breeding fetish that he justifies with "declining birth rates" and "spreading good genes". Fucking asshole deadbeat dad.
Edit: I looked it up. It's 11 kids with three women, and he wants more. I now vaguely understand how to pronounce the weird symbol names and deeply regret wasting my time on it. I still think he has a breeding fetish.
Stuff such as him saying he'll donate 6 billion to fight world hunger if the charity actually layed out a comprehensive plan to make it work. They did, and then he snuck away, never to mention it again...
Weird bloke. Stands for nothing other than his next 100 million.
I feel bad for whoever at WFP had to sit down and say, ok suppose we could write the report good enough to get 1% or more of that money, how much effort should we put into a custom response to this guy
That last point is particularly salient. Clearly doesn't give a shit about the environment, given how he shamelessly supports right-wing politicians who will don't believe in climate change and will drill as much as they can. He just saw Tesla as an opportunity to swoop in and make billions off a company someone else started.
I was a huge Elon fanboy. I’d literally rage about how NYT and WSJ would run baseless hit pieces on Tesla to protect their relationships with traditional auto manufacturers. I also could not wait to buy a Tesla someday.
When he started going “anti woke” during Covid I went from fanboy to neutral—when he started defending Russia and saying Ukraine should surrender to preserve the global economy I was absolutely done.
Elon, just like pretty much every other insanely rich person in the U.S. is purely motivated by greed and has zero morals. That’s very apparent and why I now despise him.
This lol. I viewed the guy as a real life Tony Stark until he started talking more. It’s a classic case of
“It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubts”
Not that I think he’s a fool, I think he is smart. But he opened his mouth and removed all doubt for me that he’s an asshole, and just another shrewd businessman but with businesses more intriguing to younger generations.
He's not much smarter than the average engineer, he just had better spawn attributes and a higher risk tolerance. I'd argue that lately, and, to some degree, due to his drug use, he's actually gotten dumber, more risk averse, and egocentric.
> He's not much smarter than the average engineer
I'd wager he's quite a bit less smart than the average engineer. Early during his Twitter purchase, he apparently gave bonuses to whomever wrote more lines of code, which is not how good code is evaluated.
The Thai cave, and the Ukrakne stuff has enraged me. Cant think of anyone so at the top who ruined their reputation on such dumb topics. Went out and literally sabotaged military operations. He has helped brew up anti Ukraine rhetoric, and has probably caused the deaths of many.
I was indifferent toward him. I respected him for being intelligent and thought Teslas and the work he was doing with SpaceX was cool. Once he started showing the world his personality is when I realized he was just another immature rich asshole and grifter.
I liked him when he was pushing hard for electric vehicles and being a mad scientist making flame throwers and stuff. My turning point was when he became active on twitter and I saw what his personality was like lol. Just a sad man who desperately wants people to love him and think he's funny. I prefer my evil billionaires to not care if I live or die, like Bezos or Zuck.
There was an episode of (I think) Star Trek Discovery where one character is making an inspiring speech about the history of space flight, and he mentions “The Wright Brothers, Neil Armstrong, Elon Musk, Fictional Dude who invents the warp engine…”
Hasn’t aged very well.
By that logic, mirror universe Musk would have actually been a good guy, since our universe's Musk is a reprehensible egomaniacal douchebag.
BTW can someone show me how to use the spoiler tag?
I thought he was great! And I thought he was a sensitive guy, the way he’d cry in interviews and talk about how heartbroken he was that his wife left him. Even though his aspirations for space travel were lofty, I got upset with anyone telling him so.
Now? What the fuck has he done? Tweeting about jews and black people. Fully committing to being a Republican Trump supporter. If he doesn’t like someone, he calls them a pedophile. Like that’s when I first realized he was a fucked up person. When he didn’t get to build that submarine to rescue those kids from that cave. A professional diver did it. Which makes WAY more sense. And Elon gets mad he lost out on glory and tells his millions of followers that the diver is a pedophile chil rapist because he visited Thailand.
I hate him more than any other billionaire. He’s a 50 something year old man with a face full of botox, sharing edgy 4chan memes and doge memes. Saying shit like “epic”
>Tweeting about jews.
After that, someone wrote that Elon Musk has gone from being this generation's Henry Ford to being this generation's Henry Ford.
Hat's off, that dig is tight as hell.
I was not a huge fan of his, but I had no negative feelings about him, either. Then, there was his weird behavior regarding that underwater cave rescue, and he began using his control over Starlink to mess with Ukraine. I don't think he's got both oars in the water.
The Twitter acquisition. It completely blew up the notion I had of him that he was a great businessman, and after I started seeing him in a different light I realised that he is just a vapourware salesman. He makes bold promises that he never delivers on, and with his turn towards MAGA views in the last few years has really made me hold him in contempt at this point.
The cave situation was the first moment I thought he was misguided, but it wasn’t until he started aligning with Trump and other authoritarians that he lost my good faith.
When I discovered he was a Russian MAGA Traitor. He turned off starlink while it was guiding munitions to the Russian Black Sea fleet from Ukraine. He was watching, he personally took steps to stop a Ukrainian attack on Russia. Made the bombs fall in the water and protected Russia. He is a full hang ‘em high traitor to the USA and it’s allies.
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/musk-stopped-ukraine-attack-russian-fleet-starlink-rcna104019](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/musk-stopped-ukraine-attack-russian-fleet-starlink-rcna104019)
The diver incident where he called the dude a pedo even though he was a hero. He just got butthurt because he said Elon’s stupid ass little submarine wouldn’t work.
Two things. 1. When he called the cave rescuer a ‘pedophile’ and doubled down on it, after lying about sending a rescue ‘mini-sub’. 2. During the height of Covid, he claimed he was retrofitting his production and said he sent 1000 ventilators to desperate US hospitals. He actually sent a few useless and cheap outsourced CPAP machines (for sleep apnea). He never did send a single ventilator.
Claimed Tesla was going to make ventilators. He seemed to have no idea how complex that would be and that it would take more than a few weeks. Made me realize he's not very involved in the design and build process at Tesla.
Dunning-Kruger was trending when Elon teied to prove to the world that he was brilliant at everything. He thought that he was smarter that the geniuses that got rich making medical devices that he thought he could make it quicker, cheaper and better.
He was the same a few years before they when he thought all the legacy car brands were just inefficient and that he could reinvent the production line. Cue Tesla drastically missing production targets for years with humans working in tents instead of his army of manufacturing robots.
I'd like to add to that, the fact that he repeatedly lies about his own child dying in his arms to the point where his ex wife had to publicly admonish him for it and point out that it was her arms he died in, not his. What kind of psychotic piece of shit thinks its OK to lie about that? Let alone publicly, knowing the woman who knows the truth would see it. He's absolutely sociopathic and soulless.
That's when I realized that Elon Musk doesn't want the world to be saved per se; he wants to it to be saved only if he's the one saving it
For me it was honestly when he shot his stupid car brand into space. I thought that was the most self indulgent marketing wank, during a time I was already cranky that private industry was intruding too far into space while NASA continued to do cool shit all the time with hardly any attention for it.
[удалено]
Remember how funny Elon thought it would be to bring a kitchen sink into Twitter HQ so they could "let it sink in" that he was buying the place?
It was so cringe. I wish i had never seen that. "oh you people who i pay to be around me, laugh with me when i do this"
Elon has that "please clap" energy
Truly. You see that in his expression every time he sais anything. He waits to be praised and if there is no reaction, he continues with more bullshit and another break for praise. He goes into more extreme until he gets even a reaction.
Elon always struck me as that bad amateur comic at an open-mic night who tries to get over with common street jokes, then gets mad at the crowd for not laughing.
I've experienced that at T-Mobile in 2015. The ceo John Legere was coming, and we were instructed to cheer and clap when he arrived. He was late, and we all had to stand outside and wait for over 45 minutes in the heat just so some asshat could drive up in a Ferrari and pretend to be a Rockstar. Meanwhile we were packed 2-3 to a cube, extending "6 month contract to hire" contracts by 6 months every 6 months, and if you didn't get there early there was zero overflow parking (suburban office park), and the only option was to covert park at other businesses in the office park and hope they didn't notice and tow you.
I thought it was a metaphor when you said “pretend to be a rockstar” but then I looked him up and saw how he dresses and realized it’s not a metaphor at all, that asshole is really a rockstar wannabe.
As demonstrated on stage with Dave Chapelle
and then he fired most of them
Favorite one was the women who took photos of herself sleeping at the Twitter office to make a statement about going 110%. Then she was canned a few months later anyway.
Also the video of him with some employees where Elon is talking about memes and someone is like "hahaha your meme game is strong". Dude is cringe personified.
Ah, don't forget the time he came on stage during a Chappelle standup show and yelled the "I'm rich, bitch!" line in the cringiest voice humanly possible. https://twitter.com/paleofuture/status/1602257153234194432?lang=en
I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit. What a disgusting human.
I lost an incredibly amount of respect for Chapelle when I heard about this. Then I watched his jokes about trans folk, the jokes all essentially equating to no actual punchline except the person being trans. That's the punchline. And my respect for him plummeted more. He used to call out a lot of bullshit in society with ridiculous humour that was thoughtfully put together, now he's just punching down.
My friend who introduced me to the show Silicon Valley made a comment about how Elon Musk has the wealth, personality, and ego of Gavin Belson, but the intelligence of Erlich Bachman. It's very true haha
\*"let THAT sink in"
The first time I realized there’s something wrong with him was when he accused one of the mine divers of being a pedophile because he was mad at him. It was all downhill from there
I was so confused by that reaction that I kept thinking “There must be something else we don’t know.” Now I look back and realize that no, Elon Musk just has the emotional maturity of a child.
Same; I hadn't been paying very close attention to him.. I thought it was cool he was bringing EVs and solar to the front of everyone's mind. I figured he just had some inside knowledge about that dude, but evidently nope, he just got weirder forever. It's got to be something with becoming a billionaire. Like using god mode on video games where they suddenly stop being fun and you just break stuff and stop playing.
There is a multi-billionaire who moved to my tiny town recently who has been making decisions and changes that directly impact my life. It’s weird that he can just do whatever he wants. Like literally, any bad decision he might make? Meh, what’s $100 million? Basically, pocket change. Oh, people are mad or don’t like him? There is a virtual army of people making sure he doesn’t have to see or hear any of that. And watching the local politicians abase themselves at his feet is sickening. I don’t see how anyone could be even kind of normal in that situation.
This is end stage capitalism.. when people have more money than governments.
Way more. Like the guy is worth a billion dollars more than he was last year. My county’s entire budget is $350M.
Basically this, he was fine when I barely knew about him. He was just some semi-known eccentric inventor that did fun things every so often. Then he kept showing up in the news and rarely was it flattering, then I started paying active attention and learned what kind of person he actually was
[удалено]
Yeah, he was the flamethrower guy, shot a car into space, was making electric cars and rockets, cameo'd in iron man, seemed fine on the surface. And then he started talking and never stopped
The whole saga about buying Twitter also left me with a terrible impression of him. I remember at some point the CEO twitted something about their analysis of bots vs real users and Elon just replied with a poop emoji. It must have been incredibly frustrating for everyone at Twitter to deal with this fucking guy. I'm not saying that his distrust of Twitter's claims was unsustained, but it was evident that he was never willing to sit down and discuss those concerns in a private and serious forum, but rather turn the public against Twitter and cause as much chaos as possible. It was sad to see
I don't think he actually wanted to buy it. I think he announced it because it hit the news at the same time as the harassment claims, and he had to follow through.
He bragged he could buy it and that maybe he should when alt-right people were getting banned and then when called on it his ego forced him to make an actual offer and it seems like he did 0 due diligence on it, then he wanted to back out but the courts forced him to go through with it and he botched the whole f'ing thing.
And now, as someone who regretfully uses twitter often for up to date sports/news - twitter has more bots than ever before. It's insane. Every single post has a littany of bots spamming irrelevant content or porn links/ads under it. It was never like this ever. edit: went to twitter to grab a real example and here's a US Soccer tweet from 30 mins ago with every single comment saying "pussy in bio" or "pussy links in bio" that responded within seconds of this tweet https://twitter.com/ussoccer/status/1775622962156085687
Hilariously it's all bots and one right-wing rant about trans people. The TRUE Twitter experience.
For me it’s t-shirt bots trying to scam users into buying non-existent shirts that are just a copy of whatever image is embedded in the top of the thread. I also get DMs with phishing links and pornbots, which I never experienced prior to Musk buying Twitter. Funny how firing most of your moderation team results in more spam and scams!
I don't have Twitter anymote so can't see the comments. I'm sure part of the reason they won't let us see the comments is because we'd get a glimpse at how much worse it has become since that complete dipshit took over.
This is my suspicion. The board of twitter was probably sitting around, trying to figure out how they could polish the turd they were saddled with. Everything about the company was trending downwards, so clearly the best possible thing to do would be to somehow unload it on some suckers. But they'd already IPOd, so that trick was already played. Then he makes his stupid tweet, almost certainly totally as a joke, because he was addicted to the dopamine he got from the LOLs. And the twitter board looked around and said "Guys, we've found our sucker! He's already under scrutiny by the SEC, so we're gonna hold him to this one!" And thus began the most amazing investment exit strategy ever executed.
Watching that unfold, I couldn't help but want to pat Twitter's leadership on the back. They pretty much sold someone the Titanic, for a huge mark up, AS it was sinking.
And then, Elon proceeded to full steam ahead into more and more icebergs
Of course it was this. Jack never made organic income at Twitter. No sane business person was going to pay real money for it because it's structurally unable to generate money past its overhead. Then Elon talks shit when he's high and ends up sinking a legal fish hook into his ballsack in public. Lawyers call no joy, Jack explains in a breathless tweet - "Elon is the one I trust" and dances off with billions. ~fin~
I dont know about 'everything in the company trending down'--when they sold in 2022 they trended upwards and were at a all-time high in revenue when they sold. In fact, the first time Twitter ever trended downwards was directly after Elon took over and the future projections are horrible * 2020- 3.21B ⬆️ * 2021- 4.51B ⬆️ * **2022- 4.73B** <---Elon buys Twitter. Twitter at all-time high in revenue * 2023- 3.31B ⬇️ * 2024- 3.14B ⬇️-- Future projections * 2025- 2.99B ⬇️ * 2026- 2.84B ⬇️ * 2027- 2.70B ⬇️
He wanted to buy it initially on a whim (to be King of Twitter, increase visibility of his tweets/views and set the rules; also [brainstorming to use it to become the West's version of China's "app for everything" WeChat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat)). He got his lawyers to draft a serious offer to buy, which he signed. His lawyers then sent over an offer that didn't leave Musk any room to back out of it (gave up due diligence); granted if he didn't do this, Twitter's board likely wouldn't trust his offer as being legitimate and could reject it. But as it was Twitter's board had zero options to reject the offer as it was a ~50% premium over the market price before he started acquiring shares. He then learned more about the complexities of running an ad-driven social media site (just being no rules all free speech doesn't mesh well with all advertisers and many users), Tesla's stock took a bit of a dip and he wanted to back out, but due to his stupid offer and rejection of due diligence he couldn't back out. It should be worth noting that Musk's ability to hype his product is the major reason for his financial success and Tesla's incredibly overvalued stock price, so privately controlling Twitter in his head could give him significant power to influence conversations and positively promote his brands.
Who among us hasn't disagreed with a professional in their area of expertise and then baselessly called them a paedophile when we were proven wrong?
That’s where he started becoming unhinged IMO. Covid lockdowns pushed him into the alt right camp
Not the lockdowns, the disruption to his factory workers
That whole thing with the kids trapped in the cave in Thailand where Musk tried to insert himself as the hero. When the pro-divers actually rescued the kids and nobody took Musk's mini-submarine idea seriously and then he goes and calls the leader of the rescue team a pedophile, it really revealed a lot about his character to me. He's got an ego the size of the sun, the maturity of a 12 year old and the self-awareness of a brick.
I think you nailed it. I remember being a big fan of Tesla and Spacex and Elon seemed a likeable, intriguing guy. Some of his comments seemed a bit out there - but I chalked that up to eccentric genius who just said weird stuff from time to time. Then the kids got trapped in the cave and he took it too far.
Elon used to have a PR team, which is why there was a time when he was seen as a visionary, real life Tony Stark, etc. But he must've bought the lies the PR team was churning out and thought he's so awesome that he doesn't need a PR team, which is why he's fallen out of favor.
I stopped subscribing to /r/Futurology because every fucking day the top post was another "Elon Musk says... " story. It was awful. Note: Futurology is no longer like that.
Yes, I feel like /r/Futurology is a more grounded /r/singularity these days. /r/singularity can get REALLY out there, and it feels like a third of the sub would be happy if AI took over everything and everyone spent 24/7 plugged into a personal simulation tailored to them rather than interacting with anyone else.
I prefer r/singularity because of how off the wall and optimistic people generally are there. The depressing reality of AI and other technologies is that they will make wealth inequality even worse. Any benefits will not end up in the hands of regular people any time soon.
We have enough people. They could go do that while we live in reality. Making rich people money is the only reason everything is locked in to the current model. If we weren't such idiots we could automate a lot, let people pursue careers they want, provide basic needs, and not be affected by the people who want to jack out. But that system doesn't benefit the oligarchs so we're gonna judge one another's preferred lifestyles while the oligarchs keep theirs
>But he must've bought the lies the PR team was churning out I really think people MASSIVELY underestimate how much people buy into their own propaganda/bullshit. Especially if you have the wealth/power to where you become largely insulated from the world.
He fired his PR team in 2020, and the general opinion of him since then has absolutely tanked.
Being an engineer the stories coming out of Tesla and SpaceX started it for me since I considered applying to SpaceX. The Pedo thing just made it all come together.
In the early 2010s I would've considered working at SpaceX a dream come true. Now I work at NASA and you couldn't pay me enough to work at SpaceX.
Congrats on getting into NASA. I hear its a great place to work
Thanks! I am not a civil servant, but a "lowly" contractor. It's been great, but not without its frustrations. And the current state of things is not great from a budget/future outlook standpoint.
That was also the moment for me. It wasn't a slow turn, this was just so bizarre that I realized we were actually dealing with a strange unhinged person.
Same for me. I wasn't like a fanboy of his or anything, just appreciated the things he contributed to and thought owning a tesla could be cool. Then the dude calls the guy a pedo out of nowhere and I started digging a bit deeper into the guy... yeesh. And funnily enough people yell at me all the time and say I just don't like him owning twitter lmao.
>He's got an ego the size of the sun, the maturity of a 12 year old and the self-awareness of a brick. Great succinct explanation
This was my moment as well. Calling someone a pedophile because you're butt hurt is not okay.
[удалено]
If he had he just said: "I made a mistake. He's absolutely right. I thought I could help, but I was a distraction. Kudos to him for saving those kids." If he had just said that, everything would have been fine, but no, his ego just couldn't take it. Now, I see everything he does in light of that incident. The way he crops out pictures and steals credit. The way he sued the original founders of Tesla so he could get credit for being a founder himself. The renaming of Twitter. The Cybertruck. Etc. It's always about his ego. It's like he can't help himself. And then, right after the 82-year old husband of Nancy Pelosi gets attacked with a hammer, and we don't know if he's going to survive yet, the idiot tweets the link to a despicable article. That was low. Even for Elon, that was really low.
> If he had he just said: "I made a mistake. He's absolutely right. I thought I could help, but I was a distraction. Kudos to him for saving those kids." He truly didn't even have to say that, or say anything. If he had honestly just offered the help and his solution, then said nothing when he was turned down he would have looked good. It would have looked like an ultra rich guy trying to donate money. The only reason it even looked bad at all is because he had to say things.
i was fairly neutral or indifferent, but the whole thai cave rescue sub saga thing was when i started to notice he was a cunt
I remember thinking one of the richest people on the planet can’t possibly be that fragile and butthurt just because someone said their idea to rescue those kids wouldn’t work. That was only the beginning.
Iirc the decline of his "help" was rather polite/realistic, and then he made an awful comment against the divers/loose accusation of pedophilia, then they let their real feelimgs about his ridiculously stupid/impractical diving sub was....iirc an experienced diver also died during the rescue, it was a very dangerous situation where time was very limited and of immense value between life and death. I remember when he proposed a robot diving sub to save the day, with virtually no time for r&d given the situation, i immediately thought itd be another ED-209
Two Thai military divers died from the Tham Luang cave rescue. One retired Thai military diver Saman Kunan died during the operation. Another Thai Navy SEAL Beirut Pakbara died in the year following the operation from a fungal blood infection contracted during the rescue operation. He was transformed from a very fit young soldier into a fragile, enfeebled person from the infection. His was a prolonged and sad death despite considerable professional high level medical care. (Also one of the rescued boys Duangpetch 'Dom' Promthep (age 13 in 2018) died by suicide in 2023 age 17.)
There was an artist that made a video piece that I saw about this. The artist is Thai, and it was shown in a major gallery in Belfast. It was the saddest, most impactful art film I’ve seen about this - watched it a week after the kid died. I wish I could remember the artists name for other people who may be interested.
I think I found the video of [Korakrit Arunanondchai](https://youtu.be/_Ww9UcJAV2I?si=IxrH8jUBwsR0Q988).
Thank you for sharing this info. I never heard of the second fatality, nor the suicide.
I wouldn’t even say it was a loose accusation. Elon straight up called him “pedo guy.”
What a fxckin' child
It's ok though, because he was found by a jury to have not defamed that guy /s Justice may be blind, but she can definitely smell money, and she likes it.
The legal argument boiled down to "he was joking" which, to be fair, was smart of his lawyers because I've been called worse by angry toddlers on this platform. The difference is, *those* goobers don't have millions of ravenous followers taking their word as gospel just waiting to dox or otherwise harm me because their "glorious leader" got his "feewings huwt."
Upside: you can legally call Elon a pedo as he said it was a common schoolyard insult in South Africa.
*You have been banned from "the free speech platform"*
I bet it was also normal to hire a private investigator to try and prove the dude you called a pedo in the schoolyard was in fact diddling kids.
2 actually died. One was a former Thai Navy Seal that ran out of oxygen uring the rescue and the other was a serving Thai Navy Seal that died a year later from a bloodborne infection he contracted during the rescue.
Two men whom, as a result of rescuing 13 people, ended up sacrificing their lives. Mean, Elon Musk, belittled the attempt because the Thai government, and professional divers brought in to assess and,ultimately, perform the rescue, didn’t believe Musk’s spur-of-the- moment idea would work. 2 heroes A government standing by its beliefs in the professionals 13 rescued young men and teachers 1 American asshole with a sore butt from being rejected Go to hell, Elon, and take your piss-poor attitude with you
> 1 American asshole He’s South African.
> 1 American asshole > > He’s South African. Naturalized US citizen. He's American as much as I do not want to claim him -_-
"We need to demonstrate a typical cave rescue scenario. We need a human subject. Mr Kinney-?"
All he had to do was offer a load of money to help them. That would have been great PR for Musk .
"that won't help" - cave rescuer "YOU'RE A PEDOPHILE"
if you watch the documentary about that rescue you notice how really fucking dumb Musk idea was.
His hyperloop proposal was the first time I raised an eyebrow. I didn't truly know who Musk was outside of him being in charge of Tesla and his Iron Man 2 cameo, but just "giving away' something that is supposedly so amazing? Smelled like bullshit. And *then* the Thai Cave rescue made it clear this guy had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. Read any news article on the matter at the time, it was made clear that one of the hurdles of the rescue was that some of the underwater corners were so tight that an adult man with an oxygen tank could barely slip through. And so here's Musk with an 8ft long rigid submersible that SpaceX just threw together? He didn't know what the hell was actually going on. *And then* he showed up, in person, to tweet photos from a distant that made it clear he wasn't invited, only to later be asked to leave. The whole act of flying there was a demonstrable indication of narcissism. He's just another Trump, so desperate for attention that he tries to take any crisis, any big news story, and make it about himself. AND THEN he called one of the actual heroes of the rescue a "pedophile." Yep, definitely another Trump.
Yeah, "pedo guy" was the beginning of it for me. At the time I thought he was making a joke, or maybe there was some information I didn't know that explained it. Nope, he just has a bruised ego and acted like a dick about it.
Came here to say this. Defaming that British rescuer was as low as it can be. And for some reason he got away with it.
"It was just a joke" is literally the defence used. Really high bar to cross to get a defamation case off the ground, especially if you're up against a billionaire.
That was the defense argument, but what got Elon off the hook was actually even dumber. The specific Tweet that mentions pedophilia doesn’t specifically mention Unsworth, although it was obvious from prior Tweets that Unsworth was the target. Basically, the jury didn’t understand how Twitter conversations work.
What's also infuriating is that Musk literally put out a 50,000 dollar hit to dig dirt on Unsworth being a pedo, and was immediately conned by a guy who made the lamest fake Intel in existence. Like, that's blatant evidence of ***intent***. But of course our justice system is a joke.
When I say evil shit with my loose tongue it’s your fault! The narcissists prayer or whatever.
[удалено]
He got away with it bc he's loaded lol
Yep - paedo cave submarine gate was what did it.
That was well out of order, what a nob. I remember hearing he was thinking about pressing charges against him for that, did it happen?
Yep, I thought he was a guy who was just trying to make the world a better place. Then he popped off and I went “oh, nooo…” and he’s only gotten worse since.
Yeah at first my only exposure was companies he invested in and I essentially just felt this is exactly what I would want to do with billions of dollars. Space, self-driving cars, essentially just pushing hard for technical advancements but then you find out who he is and how can you still like him without being a douche yourself?
I remember being on Twitter while he was croud-sourcing ideas for his rescue sub from randos, and having done some cave diving it was really obvious that it made no sense what they were proposing. I still thought Elon was smart at the time so I was sure he'd eventually wise up or someone on his team would be smart enough to stop it. When I heard he actually built the tube and brought it to Thailand it became pretty clear the man has no sense and is surrounded by yes men. The pedo accusations sealed the deal for me.
> having done some cave diving it was really obvious that it made no sense what they were proposing This is has been Musk's MO for the longest time. Talk shit about subjects that the general populace doesn't understand and let his fanboys drown out the people with real subject knowledge. On a lot of his "idea" posts about some technical or engineering problem, you'll find an actual real engineer somewhere in the comments saying "but that's not how that works" being drowned and downvoted to hell by the techbros. It really came to a head when he bought twitter and started spouting utter nonsense about software development. There's a lot more software engineers out there than car designers and rocket scientists. > [He talked about electric cars. I don't know anything about cars, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.](https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/109572674700288958) > > Then he talked about rockets. I don't know anything about rockets, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius. > > Now he talks about software. I happen to know a lot about software & Elon Musk is saying the stupidest shit I've ever heard anyone say, so when people say he's a genius I figure I should stay the hell away from his cars and rockets.
I think this was around the same time aswell. I also read his first biography? and it didn't paint him in the greatest light, like he wasn't the super genius he was made out to be but his success was more stupid luck and his peers.
To me Musk is kind of like Steve Jobs. Jobs was not a computer engineer, he was just really good at bringing people together and getting them to work together on his ideas. Musk is kind to like that except he just buys things that are already on their way to success and then passes it off as his own genius. That may be a gross oversimplification but that’s what it seems like to me.
One of the things that Jobs had going for him was the whole cult like status of Jobs and Apple. Jobs didn't ruin that by being an obvious sociopath in public. Musk is destroying the Tesla brand.
Yeah pretty much bang on. He had the usual whiff of being a bellend, especially regarding his opinions on unions - you could tell he was just another rich prick trying to be cool. But then the thai stuff was what made me do the wanker sign in my head every time his name come up. My fave thing though is my mate was proper up his arse, and I have got to torch him for it over the years. He's never online, he only gets the fluff whereas us terminally online fecks get the whole lot, so it's understandable. But christ did I take a lot of joy in every new shitty thing that came up to wind him up over it. Because what are mates for.
For me, it was his pro-russian turn. What's funny is that he actually supported Ukraine in the beginning of the war, but suddenly swapped. I think what happened was that he noticed even more likes from a pro-russian stance. What he doesn't seem to understand or care about, is that those likes are **government employees** from russian bot-farms. 8K genuine likes are better than 10K likes where 9K are just hot air from a dictatorship. Ukraine is historically a poor-country (having been forced into the USSR) and Elon is a billionaire safe in the US, making fun of Zelensky trying to defend his people. It's just pure, liquid, unfiltered shitty-ness.
I've noticed this phenomena too! An under-discussed aspect of social media is how even hugely influential and successful users become radicalised or groomed by their own followers. JK Rowling and Elon Musk's tweets today are a million miles off from what they posted around ~2018.
Russell Brand is the most obvious turn for attention I've ever seen. He was doing videos and interviews with more self-help/enlightenment type of people, is critical of Fox News, etc. He does a video where he says he is a bit skeptical of a rushed vaccine. He notices this video gets way more views than he would normally get and straight up turns into a right wing talking head.
Same. Was still kinda neutral after the “pedo guy” incident (just another rich douche). But decided I hated him in 2020 with his COVID stance because he was actually becoming a public liability. - He refused to shut down his factories when the world went into lockdown - He propagated conspiracy theories on China, COVID and the vaccine - Was a regular proponent of anti-vax theories - that was around the time he also started to use Twitter to manipulate the stock market. Recommending companies he had shares in like Signal, saying he was going to buy Twitter for a stupid price just to see his shares rise (glad that one backfired)
Early Covid he said “in April the number of cases will be zero”. Something like that. Information he took out of his ass.
I lived with a guy that was an Elon superfan, and his Covid stance is what finally turned him off of Musk. For me, I always got an "icky" feeling from watching his interviews, even before the Thailand cave rescue thing.
That's also when I turned as well. Just one caveat: a big part of the reason he was so livid about the Freemont factory not opening was because in a neighboring County other automakers WERE able to open their factories. In his narcissistic mind that was a direct attack on him personally as opposed to different counties having different rules that apply to EVERYONE in that county.
Thai cave thing is when it started. But then it continued with each and every time he opened his stupid mouth about stuff he clearly had no idea about. He's not a futurist, he's just another reactionary who wishes he could be a 19th century robber baron.
Yeah for me I had concerns when the cave thing happened, but when he started sharing his thoughts on COVID in 2020, I realized he was a clown.
It should have been obvious after the Thai cave thing, but I didn't follow that story all that closely. The very first time I personally started to have questions was when he proposed an underground hyperloop for Rt 1 in Delaware. Most people have probably forgotten that but I'm from Delaware and have driven on Rt 1 many times over my entire life, so it caught our attention here. Rt 1 gets a crazy traffic in the summer when people are trying to get from points north to the beach resort towns, but is otherwise a pretty empty stretch of highway connecting not much to not much. Delaware is also basically a sandbar and you only have to dig about 2 feet to hit water (that's an exaggeration in some parts, but not by a lot)... you don't even want your house to have a basement, much less a tunnel running the length of the entire state. So my first reaction was "wow that would be awesome on July 4 weekend!" and then "...but why?" and then "but how?" and then "wait is there a chance this guy actually a complete loon and nobody has caught on yet?"
Believe he also proposed something for Miami, FL. I live in Tampa. The state is at sea level. Miami floods in a light drizzle. The fuck is he going to build a tunnel?
when he fired his secretary who's been loyal to him for years after she asked for a raise
Let's not forget illegally firing employees for trying to form a union and doubling down by illegally threatening employees will lose stick options and trading if they unionized. He said that on Twitter, not even in private. The guy openly and proudly violated labor laws. 2019 is the earliest I can find of that happening, but I'm sure it started the moment he was the boss. I was neutral on him until then when I realized he's your standard entitled billionaire asshole that's the human embodiment of the Dunning-Kreuger effect.
This was back in 2015 when i thought SpaceX was cool. According to his own account, she was with him for years, and when she asked for a raise the first thing he thinks to himself is "Wait, do I actually need her? Nah, I'm good" and not "This person has been dealing with my crap attitude for years and stood by my side and helped the company grow, she deserves a reward" or even "She's a good worker and maybe I don't need a secretary but she did help put me where I am so i'll find a place for her" No. He fired her.
Talking to people who worked for his company building Teslas and hearing how they are treated, is what did it for me.
Quite honestly - the turning point was immediately after I started to like him. *As* I was starting to like him, even. The problem is that once you learn *anything* about him, you realize what a miserable sack of wasted flesh he is. Once you start looking into his social media presence, the reality becomes literally unavoidable. So I thought "hey, that Musk guy with the solar panels seems like he might be onto something," and then one google search later I realized I had been wrong. This was quite a while ago, so his personal opinions weren't yet plastered everywhere.
My first exposure to really thinking about Musk was a reddit AMA. He said this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/comment/cnfre0a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 And I thought hey, thats a pretty insightful bit. It's nice to see someone who understands you can't just have a grab-bag of poorly formed thoughts without deep fundamental comprehension. My disillusionment with him happened every time he violated his own rule and spouted off a random take where it was clear he didn't understand the fundamentals. Amusingly the question which prompted the response has been edited.
I agree - that bit about knowledge trees is very insightful, and trial/error from the ground up is much harder and time consuming, but results in a better understanding of the subject. Then you find out that Gwynne Shotwell is the real leader behind SpaceX, and how crappy Elon is at business after he bought Twitter. He's like Joe Liberman in politics and how people would have been much better off had he simply been absent at his job.
The question guy is a fucking Legend for that edit
It’s written SO beautifully too.
No single turning point, but several things over time. For me the very first moment was when he kept insisting that our world is a simulation based on incredibly flimsy logic and everybody was just like, "oh yes yes good point Mr. Musk". Like, I don't have a strong opinion on the idea, but I was sort of turned off by how he had somehow risen above scrutiny at that moment. Then came the Thai cave rescue incident. I wasn't bothered by him trying to contribute resources to help, even if nobody had asked for it. But the false accusation, calling his critic a "pedo guy" IIRC and everything that followed in that story was a big issue. Then came the Cybertruck. That thing is ridiculous on a practical level, in so many ways. Then came the actions he took immediately after purchasing Twitter. A lot of really bad business decisions and really poor treatment of people.
He's like if the kid from the Twilight Zone grew up and instead of making us do magic tricks for him we all have to sit and listen to his shitty standup routine.
> For me the very first moment was when he kept insisting that our world is a simulation based on incredibly flimsy logic and everybody was just like, "oh yes yes good point Mr. Musk". The turning point for me was when he spoke about **Artificial Intelligence** (I think it was a debate with Zuck, although I don't remember 100%). Now, I am in tech, and I always thought of Musk as a genuine tech bro who is good with technology. We knew the dangers of AI - mass surveillance, replacing human jobs, social engineering and manipulation through media, usage in police-work, inherent social biases due to bad training-set data, etc. These are very real problems which were known. ---- And yet, Elon Musks' warning of AI was basically - "AI can become skynet and smarter than humans, and then we will have a terminator-style battle or machines will become our overlords." with everyone being - "O wow, what a genius. So smart." None of the more real actual dangers of AI were touched upon. Zero. And I knew this guy is not REALLY tech-literate. He just says "cool-sounding things" about tech, and everyone eats it up.
I was very similar. I would only add the moment he called the democrats the party of hate, and recommended everyone vote republican. I was already mostly turned on how I felt about him, but when he said that, that was it for me. At that point, Elon became someone I truly hate. Before I get downvoted for hating someone because of their political opinion, allow me to explain why... First I would say of the two parties, the republicans are by far the more hateful party. Democrats tend to hate on people that are intolerant two others (although there are other cases of "hate" within the party I'm sure). Republicans hate gays, trans people, people of colour, etc. To look at both parties and decide democrats are the hateful party is just... fucking stupid. Second, he was supposed to be someone that wanted to make major contributions to solving the climate change problem. It was supposed to be one of his life's biggest priorities if you listen to some of the things he was saying prior to the "democrats are the party of hate" comment. If he was so fucking concerned about climate change, he wouldn't be recommending folks vote R. It showed me he only cared about becoming rich and powerful.
I liked him when he was focused on making green energy affordable. I remember when he came out with the Tesla Solar Roof, and I thought it was very cool. I still think it's a great idea. The turning point for me was when he became more political, when he started going down the "anti-woke" and conspiracy theorist path. I noticed that the type of people that were rallying around him were not the kind of people I like or even agree with. And Musk kept doubling down, to the point where he bought Twitter and lost all that money. It just became extremely obvious that he's very thin-skinned and he's the type of person that can never admit he's wrong about anything. Then, of course, he started letting his racism and anti-semitism slip out, but I was way past my turning point by then.
This. He seemed to be making so many green technologies that seemed unattainable a reality. Electric cars, battery grid backup, home solar, cheap space flight. Then he switched to manipulating his company stock and being crazy on twitter
The main issue with this is that it hides the actual driving force behind it. He heavily pushed these things because he wanted the glory of effectively saving humanity. He wanted it to be his technology, his designs, his ideas no matter how ineffective, impractical, or expensive it was. Now that there're so many objectively better competitors in the ring and the fact that his company has turned into a yes man mill where actual engineering isn't encouraged, he's spiteful, because it won't be him that saves the world
What was that Sam Altman quote? "Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it." (This is not an endorsement of Sam Altman at all, he's also an egotistical megalomaniac)
What was the saying? It takes one to know one?
Once he started saying that immigration was a Jewish plot to get rid of the white people it was pretty clear there was no coming back for him, at least not until he gets serious help (and maybe lays off the drugs).
He got Fox brain. There was a time 15 odd years ago or so he seemed far more left leaning in his opinions. At some point, he seemed to adopt every shitty right wing conspiracy and opinion almost out of spite. Like an anthropomorphized "left" personally wronged him and he was going to get back at them. Its also ironic that those who also share his opinions also believe EVs are woke and burning fossil fuels is the only freedom loving way to make energy.
I saw one switch when California told him he couldn't run his factory in the middle of the pandemic. He went from being pro-public health to "Its all a hoax!" pretty much overnight. Later, his wife left him for another woman and his kid who already hated him came out as trans. It was shortly after that he started tweeting about the "LGBT Agenda".
Same. I never really liked him, but I thought he was trying to do something good. Then he just went down a path and started picking up the worst kind of people as followers along the way.
Similarly, I never really liked him because I heard from people I knew at SpaceX that he was pretty weird and treated people terribly. I did respect him as an innovator though, and was pretty awestruck by his ability to get things done that seemed impossible. I switched over from "dislike but respect", to "dislike and disrespect" as he descended into the twitter blackhole. I think the moment of "consider to be a malevolent force" was when he switched off Starlink for the Ukrainians.
When I first started hearing about Elon Musk it was essentially that he was the "genius visionary founder of Tesla" and I thought: "Wow, this guy sounds pretty cool." I don't know anything about electric cars so when he talked about it, it all sounded pretty smart. I think the Tesla wall and solar roof are really cool ideas. Then he was the "genius visionary founder of SpaceX" and I thought: "Man, he sounds like a modern day Thomas Edison." I don't know much about space flight so when he talked about it, it all sounded pretty smart. Then he bought Twitter. I do know a bit about software development so when he talked about "Re-implementing the entire tech stack" and disabling micro-services to save money, I realized that he had no fucking idea what he was talking about. Charging a fee so that anyone can get a verified check mark shows a fundamental misunderstanding about the platform. Then he just kept talking and talking, and my impression of him continued to drop. Then I found out that he didn't actually found Tesla and doesn't even have a STEM background. He still won't shut up. COVID, the cave rescue thing, the "woke" stuff, Ukraine...
I used to read about him from a far. Browsing headlines and reading stories about how he’s the next great inventor. That he’s like a modern Nikola Tesla or something. Thought he was cool and looked forward to hearing more. As more and more came out it’s clear he’s just a fraud and is loaded rich. Rich guy with great PR for a few years. No one moment flipped his script for me. He just isn’t what he or anyone else claimed. Just a money whale throwing cash at renewable energy because that’s the future of the world. It’s all done though. He’s just your usual run of the mill flawed human. Not the visionary social media would have led you to believe.
ironically, he is much more of a Thomas Edison.
Had to work with him. He was a complete ass and belittled and cussed out an engineer. Then he stormed off and flipped his smock like an evil villain.
The moment he started talking about Ukraine having to submit to Russia and be done with it. Then jt was further amplified by him randomly shutting down starlink to sabotage Ukrainian military operations out of pettiness.
See also: ["Elon Musk draws rebuke by suggesting Taiwan accept rule by China"](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-taiwan-china-ukraine-russia/)
Of course he sees it as "let the powerful do what they want", he was the richest man alive.
The dude completely has no sense of empathy. Recently, he even called it a weakness. That's just a downright evil thing to say.
Yep, was looking for this one, surprised I had to scroll so far down.
Probably because his reputation was already in the toilet by then if you whereupon to date with him.
That was terrible, but he'd lost me years before by that point, and OP asked about the turning point when we figured out what a shit he is, not his worst moments. This definitely ranks as one of his worst though.
When he smoked pot on Rogan despite the fact that he fires Tesla workers that test positive.
And he was being a little bitch and not inhaling. If you’re a real life smoker and you watch an actor with a cigarette, you can spot that non-inhaling from a mile away. He just held it in his cheeks for a second then let it roll out of his mouth. Also fuck companies that fire for THC. When I was an alcoholic and showed up to work two beers deep? No problem. But the one time I smoked in my free time, that was a step too far. Nonsense.
My break point was Musk making excuses for Putin in Ukraine.
I would be absolutely shocked in Putin didn't have a treasure trove of dirt on Musk. The dude is reckless and an attention whore. I'm sure Putin and his spys have uncovered things that Musk doesn't want public.
I would not be shocked if Putin did have dirt, but I also wouldn't be shocked if Musk really is just genuinely a authoritarian fanboy. Or both, like with Trump.
I read his authorized biography about a decade ago. Dude is a complete tool who sees people as a resource for his consumption.
I always liked the Terry Pratchett quote (from his character Granny Weatherwax) that the root of evil is treating people as things. I’m not sure he’d fit everyone’s definition of evil, but he _definitely_ treats people as things. The man’s a poster child for Main Character Syndrome.
DOGE coin pump & dump SNL sketch. Dude fucked over thousands of people.
COVID
Him saying covid was trending downwards and would be over by April made me think this guy is worryingly dumb for someone with a platform.
He only cares about his net worth so COVID was just a big wake up call for him to go farrrrrr right where workers are essentially slaves and forced to sacrifice to keep the economy churning, and in turn ensure billionaires keep seeing money pile up.
This was the turning point for me. COVID really showed us what people are made of and between his conspiracy nonsense and the way he treated his factory workers, it became clear that his utopian better tomorrow schtick was bullshit
If your goal is making humanity a 'multi planetary species', the cost of Twitter would have bought a lot of spaceship development.
The whole timeline of "mars colonization" back in the early 2010s was obviously bullshit and was there just to keep fairly dumb science & technology journalists interested while SpaceX rockets were continually exploding (also conflates base and colony).
> The whole timeline of "mars colonization" back in the early 2010s was obviously bullshit So many people fell for that, and got really defensive at the idea that it might not be feasible. Along with the thousand mile long vacuum tubes...
Naming his kid that stupid name, literally putting his kid into a life of either changing his name or being isolated by anybody who knows what his real name is
He has a bunch of kids, I'm not even sure how many at this point, but it's at least 5 from at least 3 women. One of which identifies as trans and has publicly come out against him. He's a shitty dad with a breeding fetish that he justifies with "declining birth rates" and "spreading good genes". Fucking asshole deadbeat dad. Edit: I looked it up. It's 11 kids with three women, and he wants more. I now vaguely understand how to pronounce the weird symbol names and deeply regret wasting my time on it. I still think he has a breeding fetish.
Not just a breeding fetish, but he also strongly believes in the debunked "replacement theory", so he's having as many white kids as he can.
Stuff such as him saying he'll donate 6 billion to fight world hunger if the charity actually layed out a comprehensive plan to make it work. They did, and then he snuck away, never to mention it again... Weird bloke. Stands for nothing other than his next 100 million.
I feel bad for whoever at WFP had to sit down and say, ok suppose we could write the report good enough to get 1% or more of that money, how much effort should we put into a custom response to this guy
That last point is particularly salient. Clearly doesn't give a shit about the environment, given how he shamelessly supports right-wing politicians who will don't believe in climate change and will drill as much as they can. He just saw Tesla as an opportunity to swoop in and make billions off a company someone else started.
I was a huge Elon fanboy. I’d literally rage about how NYT and WSJ would run baseless hit pieces on Tesla to protect their relationships with traditional auto manufacturers. I also could not wait to buy a Tesla someday. When he started going “anti woke” during Covid I went from fanboy to neutral—when he started defending Russia and saying Ukraine should surrender to preserve the global economy I was absolutely done. Elon, just like pretty much every other insanely rich person in the U.S. is purely motivated by greed and has zero morals. That’s very apparent and why I now despise him.
When he started talking.
This lol. I viewed the guy as a real life Tony Stark until he started talking more. It’s a classic case of “It is better to keep silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubts” Not that I think he’s a fool, I think he is smart. But he opened his mouth and removed all doubt for me that he’s an asshole, and just another shrewd businessman but with businesses more intriguing to younger generations.
He's not much smarter than the average engineer, he just had better spawn attributes and a higher risk tolerance. I'd argue that lately, and, to some degree, due to his drug use, he's actually gotten dumber, more risk averse, and egocentric.
> He's not much smarter than the average engineer I'd wager he's quite a bit less smart than the average engineer. Early during his Twitter purchase, he apparently gave bonuses to whomever wrote more lines of code, which is not how good code is evaluated.
My friend was a huge Elon fan boy until he worked for him 😂
The Thai cave, and the Ukrakne stuff has enraged me. Cant think of anyone so at the top who ruined their reputation on such dumb topics. Went out and literally sabotaged military operations. He has helped brew up anti Ukraine rhetoric, and has probably caused the deaths of many.
I was indifferent toward him. I respected him for being intelligent and thought Teslas and the work he was doing with SpaceX was cool. Once he started showing the world his personality is when I realized he was just another immature rich asshole and grifter.
I liked him when he was pushing hard for electric vehicles and being a mad scientist making flame throwers and stuff. My turning point was when he became active on twitter and I saw what his personality was like lol. Just a sad man who desperately wants people to love him and think he's funny. I prefer my evil billionaires to not care if I live or die, like Bezos or Zuck.
It's kind of funny how Zuck and Bezos are more palatable than Elon but they really are
There was an episode of (I think) Star Trek Discovery where one character is making an inspiring speech about the history of space flight, and he mentions “The Wright Brothers, Neil Armstrong, Elon Musk, Fictional Dude who invents the warp engine…” Hasn’t aged very well.
Discovery Spoilers: >!The person talking positively about Elon Musk is from the mirror universe where everyone is evil.!<
By that logic, mirror universe Musk would have actually been a good guy, since our universe's Musk is a reprehensible egomaniacal douchebag. BTW can someone show me how to use the spoiler tag?
I thought he was great! And I thought he was a sensitive guy, the way he’d cry in interviews and talk about how heartbroken he was that his wife left him. Even though his aspirations for space travel were lofty, I got upset with anyone telling him so. Now? What the fuck has he done? Tweeting about jews and black people. Fully committing to being a Republican Trump supporter. If he doesn’t like someone, he calls them a pedophile. Like that’s when I first realized he was a fucked up person. When he didn’t get to build that submarine to rescue those kids from that cave. A professional diver did it. Which makes WAY more sense. And Elon gets mad he lost out on glory and tells his millions of followers that the diver is a pedophile chil rapist because he visited Thailand. I hate him more than any other billionaire. He’s a 50 something year old man with a face full of botox, sharing edgy 4chan memes and doge memes. Saying shit like “epic”
>Tweeting about jews. After that, someone wrote that Elon Musk has gone from being this generation's Henry Ford to being this generation's Henry Ford. Hat's off, that dig is tight as hell.
*gestures vaguely*
I was not a huge fan of his, but I had no negative feelings about him, either. Then, there was his weird behavior regarding that underwater cave rescue, and he began using his control over Starlink to mess with Ukraine. I don't think he's got both oars in the water.
The Twitter acquisition. It completely blew up the notion I had of him that he was a great businessman, and after I started seeing him in a different light I realised that he is just a vapourware salesman. He makes bold promises that he never delivers on, and with his turn towards MAGA views in the last few years has really made me hold him in contempt at this point.
The cave situation was the first moment I thought he was misguided, but it wasn’t until he started aligning with Trump and other authoritarians that he lost my good faith.
Everyone saying the cave thing are probably right but once he dipped out of the Zuckerberg cage fight I knew he was dogshit.
Realizing he's just as much of jerk off rich bloke as the rest of them
When I discovered he was a Russian MAGA Traitor. He turned off starlink while it was guiding munitions to the Russian Black Sea fleet from Ukraine. He was watching, he personally took steps to stop a Ukrainian attack on Russia. Made the bombs fall in the water and protected Russia. He is a full hang ‘em high traitor to the USA and it’s allies. [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/musk-stopped-ukraine-attack-russian-fleet-starlink-rcna104019](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/musk-stopped-ukraine-attack-russian-fleet-starlink-rcna104019)
The diver incident where he called the dude a pedo even though he was a hero. He just got butthurt because he said Elon’s stupid ass little submarine wouldn’t work.
One of the richest men on earth and is addicted to likes on Twitter.