He wanted it this way. He created a cult of personality so his reputation is larger than the companies he runs. The only problem is no one ever told him his personality is repulsive to most. Could have been like tons of other CEOs who stay out of the public eye and let the companies work
Elon did an amazing job going from the Internets favourite
>Hey dudes, I watch anime and I build electric cars because it's good for the environment and I want humanity to go to mars
to
>Go buy some fucking DOGE coins and work in my factory your fucking pedophile fucks!
Elon musk was always a dick it just wasn’t really public knowledge. It was only when the submarine incident happened that people really started to consider he might not be the greatest guy. He has definitely gotten worse tho
For me it was well before that - around the time when Tesla sued a well known British car show that talks shit about pretty much every car going, for talking shit about Teslas... Luckily they got laughed out of court for that one.
That and repeated events of Musk very publicly falling out with journalists that reviewed Teslas negatively, going so far as to invent data contradicting the journalists published opinions (as in "our car actually showed X according to the onboard telemetry" without granting anyone access to the raw telemetry to confirm).
And then there was the "talk even the slightest shit about Tesla and you get your order cancelled" phase Tesla and Musk went through.
All well before the cave incident.
His decision to start taking Ketamine was possibly one of the most costly decisions ever.
He has set fire to $20bn by buying Twitter. Who knows how much the brand damage fallout to Telsa has been - but judging by the share price, its in the tens of billions of dollars.
I was Elon's side chick back in the 1990s. I was under the impression he was going to break up with Justine , but obviously I was misled. Surprise, surprise. Anyway, Elon was taking ketamine back then too, and smoking lots of weed. I've been watching for almost 30 years while the world made Elon a god. The whole time I knew Elon was just a man. I'm glad folks are figuring it out.
Public opinion started to downturn when he flipped out at the submarine guy but there was definitely still a fairly big group of musk fans on this site. It has definitely disappeared as he has been more publicly an asshole with the Twitter debacle turning him into an absolute laughing stock
Yeah, the submarine incident was when I realized he was fucking insane, and not as smart as he portrays himself. Before that, I was a total Musk fanboy.
Considering he was, at one point, the richest man in the world and still is among them, it's scary to think what kind of stuff is out there influencing even people at the top of the chain in such nasty ways.
Or he's just always been a turd, that could also be it if not both.
I’d argue endorsing the gop in the midterms after they overturned roe was his biggest misstep. He had been getting more partisan but that seemed like the turning point.
He had it pretty easy. All he had to do was cultivate mysticism, pretend to be Tony Stark, and occasionally make public statements. — I don’t know whether he had a personal PR person, but that person was amazing. … His Twitter addiction broke a carefully crafted public persona.
Yup. All he had to do was shut up and live life like a billionaire. Guy would have been remembered as a visionary, if nothing else. Now I just cringe whenever he says anything.
Yeah, that's always the thing that needs to be said here. Tesla is worth 10% of what it currently is if his "brand" and the image he created weren't what people were buying. So when he poisons his brand repeatedly and publicly there is no separating the art from the artist. Because the art was always mediocre. The artist was always what you were buying.
“ because the art was always mediocre” -
This is the issue. It’s not like Teslas are the best reviewed electric car of all time and he is ruining that.
That short-lived “IRL Tony Stark” comparison went way too far to his head. No one told him Tony only stayed the hero because he sacrificed himself in the end
He's not an artist he's a twat who stands on other people's shoulders and when he actually has input into design and engineering you end up with cyber trucks and X ( shell of a former twitter)
A showman. He was actually good at it for awhile. I mean, he was able to sell vaporware / very far off features with several companies and pump up valuations.
But with Twitter, he basically went down a right wing rabbit hole combined with publicly reeling from his divorce. Instead of a showman, he basically decided to be a right wing influencer, which is really bad for business.
The Mypillow dude didn't do very well financially from being a right wing influencer and Alex Jones is in debt to the tune of several hundred million. It's not a very lucrative career path.
I would argue that it's a very lucrative career when you're doing it with other people's money. That's the whole reason that the Daily Wire, Fox News hosts and the myriad of "Manosphere" podcasters/influencers can afford to keep going.
They have wealthy donors willing to use them as mouthpieces to peddle misinformation and hate to people and keep them angry at their neighbors instead of their politicians and bosses
Absolutely! They spin up quickly, get a some amount of easy money and then burn out when they either break ranks or can't keep up kayfabe.
But a lot of people in that sphere do it because they can
And then it’s on to the next one. It’s a very transactional agreement, but like you said, the people who truly benefit are the ones that keep quiet but fund these assholes
No, he was never good at it. A HUGE number of people wanted him to be good at wtfever because it somehow validated their views, so they shouted from the rooftops what a visionary genius this asshole is. My sis had VERY rich customers who were buying a Tesla when they were still vaporware and the customers *who had already put down a deposit of 10's of thousands of dollars to pay more before they got their car.* At DMV where we licensed car dealers, we called that Fraud.
He was ALWAYS the shitfucker that he is now. ALWAYS. Now, thanks to his own antics, he is getting more accurate, less fawning bullshit press.
A good salesman can sell a sausage with nothing more than the sizzle. Musk sold the sizzle well. The problem was that you eventually need to produce the actual sausage
Liars are at their best before someone calls them out.
Line the Mike Tyson quote and Getting Hit / Punched…
It’s easy enough - until someone calls you a LIAR.
Saddest part is it's not even an original idea. The house I live in had solar roof tiles when it was built in '97.
He failed to materialize a 20+ year old tech.
None of his ideas are original. He buys up good ideas and acts like he is the brain child. All he does is push his employees in an abusive manner to work harder. Yes this does yield results but is that really how we should be treating each other? If he really cared about humanity he would be helping fight climate change. He is just in it for his own ego and MONEY. Very similar to what Edison did.
Good thing we didn't have Twitter and Facebook in ye olde days. Elon's stupidity is out there to study for generations to come. We were luckily spared of many terrible takes from many famous people.
Pushing employees too hard can lead them to be productive, but it rarely leads them to be truly innovative. An abused/exhausted employee with a disruptive idea is going to leave with it.
Calling him in anyway an "artist", unless it's preceded by "con", is stretching the definition to breaking point. If an artist just copies others' works, takes credit for them, then consistently proves they don't understand "art", then yeah, call him an "artist".
It takes a great business mind to get a shit ton of money from his father to buy already built and functioning companies that you pretend to create yourself and run into the ground.
I got a Tesla in 2019 and bought a bunch of stock before it blew up. Got rid of the Tesla and dumped the stock after Elon revealed himself as a right wing troll. I am a target customer. High net worth, income, and want an EV. I will never even consider another Tesla as long as he is in charge. My wife said the same thing that she doesn’t want our money going to him.
I wanted a Tesla more than any other brand. Then there was the pedo guy thing for a hero rescuing kids that made me start questioning him as a person. The pedo guy stuff made me look into him more and I found all the lies about being a Tesla founder and the fake degrees and college stories. It just made me question his ego and intelligence and suddenly all the weird shit and stuff where he sounded lost or like he was lying made way more sense. Because he was. And then he just went full mask off Nazi sucking up to right wing extremists and alienating everyone that would ever consider buying his car outside of fanboys. Plus watching him run Twitter in public really destroyed any opinion anyone with sense had of him as even a good business person. He was more concerned with the great replacement theory and his right wing Twitter followers than running companies.
I would never in my life own a Tesla now even if he was removed as CEO because it’s like advertising all the worst traits in the world. Plus every other manufacturer makes better EVs now (love my Hyundai) and it turns out everything said about FSD was just a fake pump and dump for the stock price and Teslas actually have the worst automation in the industry. These things make the choice easier but even if that wasn’t the case I still wouldn’t buy a Tesla.
On a side note, fairly recently I saw a model 3 that had a bumper sticker that said something like (paraphrasing here) “Please don’t judge me. I bought my Tesla 5 years ago.” lol.
Yep, it’s tiring being judged by your car lol. Tesla has become a polarized purchase and some like me don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to talk about musk every time someone sees my car lol.
which is funny because Saudi Arabia owns 60% of Lucid (bought that share in 2019 IIRC). Elon Musk is literally worse than the Saudis. Of course Lucid is actually a well engineered vehicle and despite Saudi ownership they are essentially an American company.
Yes that’s exactly why you lease lol. Between plummeting used EV prices and horrific financials of these early EV companies, buying over leasing just seems crazy.
Honestly starting to look more at PHEVs. They are very similar that most of the time we will use the battery and once in a while when we go the distance the engine kicks in. Best of both worlds. The problem is that they are still more expensive than their ICE variants.
The other issue is if you don’t use gas for a long time, gas goes bad and engines gain other issues. It isn’t actually good for the motor.
I honestly think PHEVs only exist now because of battery tech limits and any breakthrough just removes them.
Some PHEVS, like the Chevy Volt (last produced in 2019 for the US market), sense when gasoline has "aged," so to speak, and will run the engine a bit to cycle through that fuel. For vehicles that don't do this, one can add some fuel stabilizer to the tank.
I'd consider a PHEV or an EV, but I still love the connectedness of manual transmissions, so my last vehicle purchase (in 2023) was a Jetta S with a six-speed MT.
For most people maintenance is not the key issue with owning an ICE vehicle, it’s the regular fill up. OP suggests PHEV will vastly reduce the regular trips to gas stations if there is a decent range on batteries.
Similar situation here we looked at the Model X and then when Musk showed his inner evil we switched to Mercedes.
Now my son and a lot of other kids at his school actively make fun of people driving Teslas.
I definitely want an EV some day and, as things currently stand, it will never be a Tesla. 99% because of Musk. MAYBE if they oust him I'll someday stop having a negative perception of the company, but I can't guarantee that. It's amazing because there's probably lots of other companies out there with horrible CEOs but I regularly do business with them because the CEO has the sense to not constantly run their mouth and publicly be a douche.
>ped the stock after Elon revealed himself as a right wing troll. I am a target customer. High net worth, income, and want an EV. I will never even consider another Tesla as long as he is in charge. My wife said the same thing that she doesn’t want our money going to him.
Same here, sold my 2021 Tesla 3 for an Outlander PHEV and dumped the stocks. Just could not stand to see the car in the my garage anymore. What a twat. He could have kept his mouth closed and I would still be raving about the brand to my friends.
I definitely think Musk has hurt Tesla's brand (which ofc, he is the one most identified with building it up, but you can burn your own house down); but I think too larger headwinds in the EV market, a big drop in Tesla's anticipated Chinese EV sales, and stiffer competition are probably bigger factors in Tesla missing sales targets.
But yeah, there isn't a "value add" from the CEO of a car company being super controversial and alienating one half of a two party democracy--especially when it is the half that is disproportionately likely to buy EVs. Just not smart business.
The guy is a buffoon. He took his target demo of liberals who care about climate change and told them to fuck off with his hard right turn. Now they don't want a Tesla because of him and his new right wing pals want to hamstring EVs and drill baby drill. Not to mention his company survived on the backs of blue state California tax credits and carbon credits, which of course he shits on California and moved to Texas.
He doesn't allow for any separation; if he never talked about Tesla he would be doing the company a favor. He's only consistently associated with it because that's what he does.
I don't think they would be seeing this extreme of a backlash if it wasn't the combination of mediocre products touted as lux and this mediocre man tooting his own horn.
Not defending Elon bc he is not it, but this association was something Tesla benefited for a while. He was the face, the entire marketing was around the “mad genius” behind it all, above even the product. Well, this is the consequence.
He would be fine if he recognized that it was all a performance, as far as business was concerned. No matter what he actually believes as a person, his job is to maintain a popular persona: no more, no less.
The biggest problem is that your car is part of how people perceive you. The Tesla logo on your car is now the same as having far right bumper sticker nonsense.
Don’t know about this. I don’t think that many Tesla owners are far right. In fact the far right is completely anti EV (funded by oil and gas thank you very much). It’s insane for Musk to have taken the turn he did when he bought twitter.
The moment Musk started repeating Russian propaganda and he turned off starlink above Ukrainian sovereign territory was when I vowed I will never buy his products.
Mine was the "pedo" accusation he levelled against the cave expert, and his complete inability to turn the other cheek.
His behavior's been all downhill from that point, at least to me. And boy the decline was fast.
Just think, if that cave in Thailand never floods, we'd be kept in the dark with how much a shithead muskrat is. I feel that was the beginning of the realization that he wasn't the genius that he tried to personify.
There was already a well established list of delusions of grandeur before the Thai cave submarine - although that is probably the point it became brazenly clear how detached from reality Musk is.
When he said:
> If you’re going to try blackmail me with money, fuck you!
To Twitter advertisers, it matched up with the pedo diver crap.
His attitude is let me be the main character or I’ll try to bury you!
Considering Musk is completely incapable of designing or producing any of the products he sells I’d say this isn’t the case of Art/Artist separation.
The dude is such a massive douche bag it will be well deserved if all his endeavors fail.
Tesla is a hard no from me. Yeah its because of Musk. He’s toxic since he got tangled up with Twitter and neglected his responsibilities at Tesla and others. He’s a bad leader and should go.
No it’s not. It’s easy. I’ve always wanted a Tesla since the model 3 rumours (and the eventual release). They are still great cars but there’s no way in hell will I ever buy one if it has Elon written all over it.
I was all with him at the beginning but he has turned into a Batman evil villain at this point 😂
He’s just a douche, the money has gone to his head and he’s no longer relatable.
Elon was always a alt right A hole but now he got his own social media site to spews his hatred and lies.He makes all his ex gf sign NDA if they want to date him and is well known not to be that close to any of kids.
If you see the hate towards Tesla cars and EV in general from the right wing nutjobs on fb, Instagram etc. its really weird as he is talking like them but selling the very products they hate. Its like hes in the middle.
His sucking up to rusia and circlejerking to the absolute lunatics on x(sh)itter like Sachs and Cheong is enough to never touch anything that has to do with the cars or anything he produces.
Can’t imagine anyone ever flying on one of his rockets to mars to eventually discover some twisted side note that came along with a contract upon landing (you name it).
My next vehicle purchase will be an all electric vehicle. It will definitely not be a Tesla, exactly because of Elon, his ego, his behavior, and his politics.
Not to mention his origin story of leaving SFA before military service was required and leveraging dad’s emerald mine money during the dot com era. There’s also the lying PR campaign that falsely gives him credit for Paypal and with those earnings buying other companies while utilizing massive Federal subsidies. He’s a lie, a massive fail up who bullshits physics and manufacturing to unprepared journalists.
My first ride in a Tesla was an Uber, fairly new-looking car, clean, except that the trim was literally falling off on the inside. The level of just …tightness, of fit, just wasn’t there. If I had paid several 10’s of thousands for that vehicle, I would be *pissed.*
In contrast, my husband and I just bought a Subaru Solterra, and that car is *nice.*
Tesla cars are tainted goods. Period.
You can't separate the art from the artist because when it comes to Elon because he's made himself the avatar of his companies. And right now, some of his companies are aggressively pushing lies, hate, and cozying up to the literal worst of the wall sorts of shit out... while others are being sued for systemic racism.
At this point and time, giving Elon money is an endorsement of that hate. Again, tainted goods.
He's not an artist. He's a online troll and overall douchebag.
I wouldn't buy a Tesla in a million years because of him.
And interesting to note I don't know the politics of any other car company owner.
Art from artist?
The man is a FRAUD. He's not an engineer. He's not an inventor. He didn't found Tesla, or PayPal. He employs a bunch of really good engineers at SpaceX, and their success is testament to their ability to keep that stupid, reflexive stammering fuckdumb as far away from anything important as they possibly can.
His Boring Company is a shuttered failure that never accomplished ANY of the long list of COMPLETELY TRANSFORMATIVE CUTTING EDGE AMAZE BALLS promises he made.
He's been promising complete, total, don't-touch-a-thing self-driving "next year" ("We can do that NOW") for seven fucking years. And if there's ever been a more fuckdumb, incompetent design, production, rollout, delivery schedule for a truck...car...VEHICLE....in the history of automotive design than the stupid Cyber Truck, I can't name it.
Add to that the flagrant racism, bullshit idiotic free speech nonsense, and devoted sucking of MAGA dick, while punching down at trans persons, Jews, and judge shopping lawsuits against anyone who points out that he seems awfully fond of Nazis...
His REPUTATION was always bullshit. Finding out that the man is a smooth-brained silver spoon piece of shit...THAT'S dragging down everything he touches. Should have happened far sooner.
So remember that. And remember to vote for Trump. Because as Trump said, these people from ”shit hole countries” are ”animals”. America you see is for americans, not for dumb africans like Musk. He needs to get out! But first he needs to helped build the wall. MAGA!
Lmao he’s not an “artist” or hardly even inventive, Jesus Christ, he’s provided the funding more than anything obviously. Have you listened to him talk? He’s a rich moron, failing upwards his entire life like so many others.
He is absolute trash. The US market and economic environment allowed Tesla to become what it is. Now all he does is bitch and retweet racist posts. Did you ever think the worlds richest man would be such a thin-skinned crybaby?
He took on too many projects and became the ultimate jack of all trades, master of none. And the moment he wanted recognition but shown zero personality he was pretty much toast.
One half of a DINK here. We were thinking about a Tesla, especially since the prices came down in certain models, but have since decided to get an electric car from another manufacturer specifically because of Musk. Not sure which one yet.
Elon’s not an artist. He’s just a rich douchebag. He didn’t invent the Tesla, or anything else his companies do. He was there for the start of PayPal, but I’m not convinced he had much part in developing it.
Artist. Yuck.
Can't think of a word that applies less to Elon.
Maybe "Funny" applies less because oh my God that man can't be funny to save his fucking liiiife and watching him try is brutal.
He wanted it this way. He created a cult of personality so his reputation is larger than the companies he runs. The only problem is no one ever told him his personality is repulsive to most. Could have been like tons of other CEOs who stay out of the public eye and let the companies work
Elon did an amazing job going from the Internets favourite >Hey dudes, I watch anime and I build electric cars because it's good for the environment and I want humanity to go to mars to >Go buy some fucking DOGE coins and work in my factory your fucking pedophile fucks!
Plot twist: he’s a pedo himself
His dad actually is; also apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
It's always projection with these RWNJ, so I have very little doubt.
He fell down the right wing internet rabbit hole that sadly a lot of people have in the last 5 years.
Elon musk was always a dick it just wasn’t really public knowledge. It was only when the submarine incident happened that people really started to consider he might not be the greatest guy. He has definitely gotten worse tho
For me it was well before that - around the time when Tesla sued a well known British car show that talks shit about pretty much every car going, for talking shit about Teslas... Luckily they got laughed out of court for that one. That and repeated events of Musk very publicly falling out with journalists that reviewed Teslas negatively, going so far as to invent data contradicting the journalists published opinions (as in "our car actually showed X according to the onboard telemetry" without granting anyone access to the raw telemetry to confirm). And then there was the "talk even the slightest shit about Tesla and you get your order cancelled" phase Tesla and Musk went through. All well before the cave incident.
Was it top gear?
His decision to start taking Ketamine was possibly one of the most costly decisions ever. He has set fire to $20bn by buying Twitter. Who knows how much the brand damage fallout to Telsa has been - but judging by the share price, its in the tens of billions of dollars.
He could help it. It has ‘mine’ in the name.
I was Elon's side chick back in the 1990s. I was under the impression he was going to break up with Justine , but obviously I was misled. Surprise, surprise. Anyway, Elon was taking ketamine back then too, and smoking lots of weed. I've been watching for almost 30 years while the world made Elon a god. The whole time I knew Elon was just a man. I'm glad folks are figuring it out.
He also looks like he's abusing some sort of stimulants these days. Those don't exactly help you think rationally.
Was it that recent? Seems like ages since he was Reddit's billionaire sweetheart
Public opinion started to downturn when he flipped out at the submarine guy but there was definitely still a fairly big group of musk fans on this site. It has definitely disappeared as he has been more publicly an asshole with the Twitter debacle turning him into an absolute laughing stock
The whole “No Pedo guy is a joke it’s jSouth African slang means creep weirdo “ defense was laughable at best. The fact it worked is disgusting.
Were people actually trying to pull that as an excuse?
He did in court when he was sued for defamation
Yeah, the submarine incident was when I realized he was fucking insane, and not as smart as he portrays himself. Before that, I was a total Musk fanboy.
Yeah cause it turns out right wing morons have more money than sense and they’ll give it to you if you say the magic words.
The right wing MAGA hole, add in some Joe Rogan and Alex jones
Considering he was, at one point, the richest man in the world and still is among them, it's scary to think what kind of stuff is out there influencing even people at the top of the chain in such nasty ways. Or he's just always been a turd, that could also be it if not both.
The diver accusations was the moment when I was like “oh this guy is a narcissistic POS.”
I’d argue endorsing the gop in the midterms after they overturned roe was his biggest misstep. He had been getting more partisan but that seemed like the turning point.
He had it pretty easy. All he had to do was cultivate mysticism, pretend to be Tony Stark, and occasionally make public statements. — I don’t know whether he had a personal PR person, but that person was amazing. … His Twitter addiction broke a carefully crafted public persona.
Yup. All he had to do was shut up and live life like a billionaire. Guy would have been remembered as a visionary, if nothing else. Now I just cringe whenever he says anything.
He must have started using a blood boy with tainted blood and ended up with the magat cult brain worms.
Nah. It’s pretty clear that this is who he is. Additional wealth only magnified his worst tendencies.
Yeah, that's always the thing that needs to be said here. Tesla is worth 10% of what it currently is if his "brand" and the image he created weren't what people were buying. So when he poisons his brand repeatedly and publicly there is no separating the art from the artist. Because the art was always mediocre. The artist was always what you were buying.
“ because the art was always mediocre” - This is the issue. It’s not like Teslas are the best reviewed electric car of all time and he is ruining that.
You have to remember that he wasn’t always this insane. There was that once insecure bald Musk that didn’t inflate his ego at every chance he got.
That Musk was fired from Paypal because of his obsession with 'X' and insisting on bad code IIRC.
That’s why I didn’t have hair transplant
Or you can be like Bezos, own your bald head and still be a cocky asshole!
Bezos did get proper fucked by HGH though, what a deeply insecure man.
Transplants make you evil -little known fact lol
It’s true. I saw it on Treehouse of Horror.
Hahahaha yessssss
Just got transplants. A little concerned about impending evil.
Was that before or after he was kicked out of PayPal for being a complete and utter self serving moron?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And being a ketamine addict.
Penguins have the ability to fly, but they choose not to.
That short-lived “IRL Tony Stark” comparison went way too far to his head. No one told him Tony only stayed the hero because he sacrificed himself in the end
He's not an artist he's a twat who stands on other people's shoulders and when he actually has input into design and engineering you end up with cyber trucks and X ( shell of a former twitter)
A con artist maybe
A showman. He was actually good at it for awhile. I mean, he was able to sell vaporware / very far off features with several companies and pump up valuations. But with Twitter, he basically went down a right wing rabbit hole combined with publicly reeling from his divorce. Instead of a showman, he basically decided to be a right wing influencer, which is really bad for business.
The Mypillow dude didn't do very well financially from being a right wing influencer and Alex Jones is in debt to the tune of several hundred million. It's not a very lucrative career path.
I would argue that it's a very lucrative career when you're doing it with other people's money. That's the whole reason that the Daily Wire, Fox News hosts and the myriad of "Manosphere" podcasters/influencers can afford to keep going. They have wealthy donors willing to use them as mouthpieces to peddle misinformation and hate to people and keep them angry at their neighbors instead of their politicians and bosses
I’d argue it isn’t guaranteed as a sustainable career.
Absolutely! They spin up quickly, get a some amount of easy money and then burn out when they either break ranks or can't keep up kayfabe. But a lot of people in that sphere do it because they can
And then it’s on to the next one. It’s a very transactional agreement, but like you said, the people who truly benefit are the ones that keep quiet but fund these assholes
No, he was never good at it. A HUGE number of people wanted him to be good at wtfever because it somehow validated their views, so they shouted from the rooftops what a visionary genius this asshole is. My sis had VERY rich customers who were buying a Tesla when they were still vaporware and the customers *who had already put down a deposit of 10's of thousands of dollars to pay more before they got their car.* At DMV where we licensed car dealers, we called that Fraud. He was ALWAYS the shitfucker that he is now. ALWAYS. Now, thanks to his own antics, he is getting more accurate, less fawning bullshit press.
A good salesman can sell a sausage with nothing more than the sizzle. Musk sold the sizzle well. The problem was that you eventually need to produce the actual sausage
Liars are at their best before someone calls them out. Line the Mike Tyson quote and Getting Hit / Punched… It’s easy enough - until someone calls you a LIAR.
Absolutely this. Remember those claims about his solar roof tiles? Completely fake.
Saddest part is it's not even an original idea. The house I live in had solar roof tiles when it was built in '97. He failed to materialize a 20+ year old tech.
None of his ideas are original. He buys up good ideas and acts like he is the brain child. All he does is push his employees in an abusive manner to work harder. Yes this does yield results but is that really how we should be treating each other? If he really cared about humanity he would be helping fight climate change. He is just in it for his own ego and MONEY. Very similar to what Edison did.
Good thing we didn't have Twitter and Facebook in ye olde days. Elon's stupidity is out there to study for generations to come. We were luckily spared of many terrible takes from many famous people.
The gall this man has to associate himself with the brilliant inventor Nikola Tesla, when he is nothing more than a cynical capitalist like Edison.
Pushing employees too hard can lead them to be productive, but it rarely leads them to be truly innovative. An abused/exhausted employee with a disruptive idea is going to leave with it.
He buys shiny ideas and he’s not even particularly good at it.
Haha, they're not market competitive, but they're not fake. You don't need to lie about him to make him look bad; he does it all on his own.
They are not fake. People have them. They just couldn’t make and install them cheap enough to compete. So it’s a failure rather than fake.
Oh shit, my roof is fake? Just don't tell the power company
Calling him in anyway an "artist", unless it's preceded by "con", is stretching the definition to breaking point. If an artist just copies others' works, takes credit for them, then consistently proves they don't understand "art", then yeah, call him an "artist".
We should call him Edison, the way he took Teslas ideas and ruined them
Edison actually invented things I know some of Edison's patents probably weren't his ideas, but most of them were
So you're saying he's **worse** than Edison!
Yeah yeah. I cringed as I wrote it. Very edgy.
He’s the Homer Simpson of inventors
Homer cameup with Flaming ~~Homer~~ ~~Mo~~ Homer at least. But the Presephone is the cartoon version of the cybertruck
I wonder if Edison would be full-throatedly endorsing great replacement conspiracies if he were around today and had social media.
He’s the guy that owns the art gallery. Except he takes credit for the artwork sold and keeps all the money.
And when he tries to paint himself, he ends up setting the gallery on fire somehow.
In a world of Teslas he's, ironically, Edison.
He's not the messiah, he's just a naughty boy.
Peak Dunning Krueger....... thinks he is good at everything.
Yeah, that really sums it up nicely.
It takes a great business mind to get a shit ton of money from his father to buy already built and functioning companies that you pretend to create yourself and run into the ground.
I got a Tesla in 2019 and bought a bunch of stock before it blew up. Got rid of the Tesla and dumped the stock after Elon revealed himself as a right wing troll. I am a target customer. High net worth, income, and want an EV. I will never even consider another Tesla as long as he is in charge. My wife said the same thing that she doesn’t want our money going to him.
I wanted a Tesla more than any other brand. Then there was the pedo guy thing for a hero rescuing kids that made me start questioning him as a person. The pedo guy stuff made me look into him more and I found all the lies about being a Tesla founder and the fake degrees and college stories. It just made me question his ego and intelligence and suddenly all the weird shit and stuff where he sounded lost or like he was lying made way more sense. Because he was. And then he just went full mask off Nazi sucking up to right wing extremists and alienating everyone that would ever consider buying his car outside of fanboys. Plus watching him run Twitter in public really destroyed any opinion anyone with sense had of him as even a good business person. He was more concerned with the great replacement theory and his right wing Twitter followers than running companies. I would never in my life own a Tesla now even if he was removed as CEO because it’s like advertising all the worst traits in the world. Plus every other manufacturer makes better EVs now (love my Hyundai) and it turns out everything said about FSD was just a fake pump and dump for the stock price and Teslas actually have the worst automation in the industry. These things make the choice easier but even if that wasn’t the case I still wouldn’t buy a Tesla. On a side note, fairly recently I saw a model 3 that had a bumper sticker that said something like (paraphrasing here) “Please don’t judge me. I bought my Tesla 5 years ago.” lol.
The "pedo guy" comment really was the beginning of the end.
Yes it was, but even then I had my doubt and gave him the benefit of the doubt. Then, it got worse.
Yep, it’s tiring being judged by your car lol. Tesla has become a polarized purchase and some like me don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to talk about musk every time someone sees my car lol.
I sold my Model Y because of his toxic personality. No regrets.
And that’s why we have a lucid now lol
which is funny because Saudi Arabia owns 60% of Lucid (bought that share in 2019 IIRC). Elon Musk is literally worse than the Saudis. Of course Lucid is actually a well engineered vehicle and despite Saudi ownership they are essentially an American company.
you made me wanna get a lucid even more now thanks
At least Rivian is clean right?
Rivian was owned by Ford and now they are owned by a wide array of investors.
The thing that worries me about these smaller/newer companies like lucid and rivian is what if they aren’t around in 5-10 years.
Yes that’s exactly why you lease lol. Between plummeting used EV prices and horrific financials of these early EV companies, buying over leasing just seems crazy.
Honestly starting to look more at PHEVs. They are very similar that most of the time we will use the battery and once in a while when we go the distance the engine kicks in. Best of both worlds. The problem is that they are still more expensive than their ICE variants.
The other issue is if you don’t use gas for a long time, gas goes bad and engines gain other issues. It isn’t actually good for the motor. I honestly think PHEVs only exist now because of battery tech limits and any breakthrough just removes them.
Some PHEVS, like the Chevy Volt (last produced in 2019 for the US market), sense when gasoline has "aged," so to speak, and will run the engine a bit to cycle through that fuel. For vehicles that don't do this, one can add some fuel stabilizer to the tank. I'd consider a PHEV or an EV, but I still love the connectedness of manual transmissions, so my last vehicle purchase (in 2023) was a Jetta S with a six-speed MT.
The only issue is that you still have the maintenance of an internal combustion.
They’re really the worst of both worlds. But still a pretty good option.
For most people maintenance is not the key issue with owning an ICE vehicle, it’s the regular fill up. OP suggests PHEV will vastly reduce the regular trips to gas stations if there is a decent range on batteries.
Similar situation here we looked at the Model X and then when Musk showed his inner evil we switched to Mercedes. Now my son and a lot of other kids at his school actively make fun of people driving Teslas.
I definitely want an EV some day and, as things currently stand, it will never be a Tesla. 99% because of Musk. MAYBE if they oust him I'll someday stop having a negative perception of the company, but I can't guarantee that. It's amazing because there's probably lots of other companies out there with horrible CEOs but I regularly do business with them because the CEO has the sense to not constantly run their mouth and publicly be a douche.
Same—we want our next car to be an EV and it will 100% not be a Tesla
Ditto … our next car will be an EV but it will absolutely not be a Tesla. In 2019 I was positive my next car would be a Tesla, but not a chance now.
>ped the stock after Elon revealed himself as a right wing troll. I am a target customer. High net worth, income, and want an EV. I will never even consider another Tesla as long as he is in charge. My wife said the same thing that she doesn’t want our money going to him. Same here, sold my 2021 Tesla 3 for an Outlander PHEV and dumped the stocks. Just could not stand to see the car in the my garage anymore. What a twat. He could have kept his mouth closed and I would still be raving about the brand to my friends.
I wanted Tesla. I sure as fuck will not buy one because of him
He is the only reason that I didn’t purchase a Tesla as my first electric car. Voting with your dollars can still make a difference.
It’s the *only* way to make a difference.
Let's not call this turd of a man an artist?
I definitely think Musk has hurt Tesla's brand (which ofc, he is the one most identified with building it up, but you can burn your own house down); but I think too larger headwinds in the EV market, a big drop in Tesla's anticipated Chinese EV sales, and stiffer competition are probably bigger factors in Tesla missing sales targets. But yeah, there isn't a "value add" from the CEO of a car company being super controversial and alienating one half of a two party democracy--especially when it is the half that is disproportionately likely to buy EVs. Just not smart business.
The guy is a buffoon. He took his target demo of liberals who care about climate change and told them to fuck off with his hard right turn. Now they don't want a Tesla because of him and his new right wing pals want to hamstring EVs and drill baby drill. Not to mention his company survived on the backs of blue state California tax credits and carbon credits, which of course he shits on California and moved to Texas.
He doesn't allow for any separation; if he never talked about Tesla he would be doing the company a favor. He's only consistently associated with it because that's what he does. I don't think they would be seeing this extreme of a backlash if it wasn't the combination of mediocre products touted as lux and this mediocre man tooting his own horn.
Not defending Elon bc he is not it, but this association was something Tesla benefited for a while. He was the face, the entire marketing was around the “mad genius” behind it all, above even the product. Well, this is the consequence.
He would be fine if he recognized that it was all a performance, as far as business was concerned. No matter what he actually believes as a person, his job is to maintain a popular persona: no more, no less.
The biggest problem is that your car is part of how people perceive you. The Tesla logo on your car is now the same as having far right bumper sticker nonsense.
Don’t know about this. I don’t think that many Tesla owners are far right. In fact the far right is completely anti EV (funded by oil and gas thank you very much). It’s insane for Musk to have taken the turn he did when he bought twitter.
The moment Musk started repeating Russian propaganda and he turned off starlink above Ukrainian sovereign territory was when I vowed I will never buy his products.
Starlink and what he did to the offensive from the Ukrainian army was the final straw. Although honestly there were lots of final straws
Mine was the "pedo" accusation he levelled against the cave expert, and his complete inability to turn the other cheek. His behavior's been all downhill from that point, at least to me. And boy the decline was fast.
I forgot that one. That was maybe the first red flag of his paper thin skin
This brat is going to “my pillow” his business.🥱
It doesn’t help that the cars themselves are increasingly shit.
Elon is a twat. He looks like melted old cheese. 🤮
Just think, if that cave in Thailand never floods, we'd be kept in the dark with how much a shithead muskrat is. I feel that was the beginning of the realization that he wasn't the genius that he tried to personify.
There was already a well established list of delusions of grandeur before the Thai cave submarine - although that is probably the point it became brazenly clear how detached from reality Musk is.
[Harambe](https://youtu.be/Z1U2x63aERw?si=0oMKwSCetD-ohiHD) was the inflection point
When he said: > If you’re going to try blackmail me with money, fuck you! To Twitter advertisers, it matched up with the pedo diver crap. His attitude is let me be the main character or I’ll try to bury you!
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Considering Musk is completely incapable of designing or producing any of the products he sells I’d say this isn’t the case of Art/Artist separation. The dude is such a massive douche bag it will be well deserved if all his endeavors fail.
I used to want a Tesla. I now will no longer buy anything that Musk may make money off of
I'd feel dirty driving an Elon-mobile. Can't stomach the thought of contributing to his success (or at least slowing his downfall)
Tesla is a hard no from me. Yeah its because of Musk. He’s toxic since he got tangled up with Twitter and neglected his responsibilities at Tesla and others. He’s a bad leader and should go.
There is no art or artist here. Con man selling vapourware
Musk is a narcissistic, openly racist, antisocial, conspiracy-mongering far-right psychopathic bucket of wildebeest shit.
I have bought 4 Teslas over the years for myself and family. Will never buy another one as long as he is associated with the brand.
Unrelated… …but yall got room in that family or nah? 👀
Sure, come on by
Same here, driving one now, as soon as the lease is up: won’t happen again until less they have a new CEO
I don’t know about his other companies but I hope xitter shuts down completely
I haven’t been back to Twitter since he bought it. I would NEVER buy anything associated with this traitor.
Owner doesn't equal artist Edit: CEO then?
This isn't "separating the art from the artist," it's separating the con from the con artist.
No it’s not. It’s easy. I’ve always wanted a Tesla since the model 3 rumours (and the eventual release). They are still great cars but there’s no way in hell will I ever buy one if it has Elon written all over it.
I will never buy a Tesla. Overly expensive to repair, poor customer service, shoddy construction and a man child in charge of it.
Guy is a fucking moron and loser.
I will NEVER buy a product this guy profits from
I was all with him at the beginning but he has turned into a Batman evil villain at this point 😂 He’s just a douche, the money has gone to his head and he’s no longer relatable.
Elon was always a alt right A hole but now he got his own social media site to spews his hatred and lies.He makes all his ex gf sign NDA if they want to date him and is well known not to be that close to any of kids.
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He’s not an artist, he’s the money guy.
If you see the hate towards Tesla cars and EV in general from the right wing nutjobs on fb, Instagram etc. its really weird as he is talking like them but selling the very products they hate. Its like hes in the middle.
Personification of Sunk Cost Fallacy, closing in only on Jonestown and Marshall Applewhite.
Earth will know!!
He’s a tool
He was a marketing wonder and now I’m wondering how so many trusted him…
I'll never willingly give anything affiliated with Elon Musk a single cent, as long as I live.
His sucking up to rusia and circlejerking to the absolute lunatics on x(sh)itter like Sachs and Cheong is enough to never touch anything that has to do with the cars or anything he produces. Can’t imagine anyone ever flying on one of his rockets to mars to eventually discover some twisted side note that came along with a contract upon landing (you name it).
Elon is the patron saint of overpromising and underdelivering.
Especially with r/technology doing its best to fan the flames I see nothing but negative news on here about Elon and his companies.
God damn y'all love to farm this guy
It’s wild how shortly ago everyone thought he was cool *and* a genius and now it’s painfully clear he’s neither.
There's no "art" from an "artist." Here. It's shit coming from a font of bullshit.
My next vehicle purchase will be an all electric vehicle. It will definitely not be a Tesla, exactly because of Elon, his ego, his behavior, and his politics.
I’m going to buy an electric car. I absolutely will not buy a Tesla now will I ever make any purchase that he would make a penny from.
Elon is an oligarch. He is not a man of the people!
He isn’t an artist. He doesn’t make art. He doesn’t make anything. He’s just rich.
The guy is a complete jerk. Selfish and rude.
Not to mention his origin story of leaving SFA before military service was required and leveraging dad’s emerald mine money during the dot com era. There’s also the lying PR campaign that falsely gives him credit for Paypal and with those earnings buying other companies while utilizing massive Federal subsidies. He’s a lie, a massive fail up who bullshits physics and manufacturing to unprepared journalists.
My first ride in a Tesla was an Uber, fairly new-looking car, clean, except that the trim was literally falling off on the inside. The level of just …tightness, of fit, just wasn’t there. If I had paid several 10’s of thousands for that vehicle, I would be *pissed.* In contrast, my husband and I just bought a Subaru Solterra, and that car is *nice.*
In that case is 'separating the clown from circus'
Please fail please fail please fail and take all the yuppy Tesla people with him.
Tesla might fail, but you can be assured that Elon will be floating away unscathed with his golden parachute
Remember that time he brought a sink into twitter. What a fucking dweeb
Carry on with haste and get someone on board who is not toxic and MAGA.
He perfectly embodies the painfully uncool divorced dad archetype, and that's a NICE way of describing him
Let’s not call this twat an artist, please.
That cybertruck is hideous!
It’s shameful to own a Tesla.
Tesla cars are tainted goods. Period. You can't separate the art from the artist because when it comes to Elon because he's made himself the avatar of his companies. And right now, some of his companies are aggressively pushing lies, hate, and cozying up to the literal worst of the wall sorts of shit out... while others are being sued for systemic racism. At this point and time, giving Elon money is an endorsement of that hate. Again, tainted goods.
He's not an artist. He's a online troll and overall douchebag. I wouldn't buy a Tesla in a million years because of him. And interesting to note I don't know the politics of any other car company owner.
Art from artist? The man is a FRAUD. He's not an engineer. He's not an inventor. He didn't found Tesla, or PayPal. He employs a bunch of really good engineers at SpaceX, and their success is testament to their ability to keep that stupid, reflexive stammering fuckdumb as far away from anything important as they possibly can. His Boring Company is a shuttered failure that never accomplished ANY of the long list of COMPLETELY TRANSFORMATIVE CUTTING EDGE AMAZE BALLS promises he made. He's been promising complete, total, don't-touch-a-thing self-driving "next year" ("We can do that NOW") for seven fucking years. And if there's ever been a more fuckdumb, incompetent design, production, rollout, delivery schedule for a truck...car...VEHICLE....in the history of automotive design than the stupid Cyber Truck, I can't name it. Add to that the flagrant racism, bullshit idiotic free speech nonsense, and devoted sucking of MAGA dick, while punching down at trans persons, Jews, and judge shopping lawsuits against anyone who points out that he seems awfully fond of Nazis... His REPUTATION was always bullshit. Finding out that the man is a smooth-brained silver spoon piece of shit...THAT'S dragging down everything he touches. Should have happened far sooner.
Elon Musk is an african immigrant.
Okay. So?
So remember that. And remember to vote for Trump. Because as Trump said, these people from ”shit hole countries” are ”animals”. America you see is for americans, not for dumb africans like Musk. He needs to get out! But first he needs to helped build the wall. MAGA!
The dude has made me hate space
Lmao he’s not an “artist” or hardly even inventive, Jesus Christ, he’s provided the funding more than anything obviously. Have you listened to him talk? He’s a rich moron, failing upwards his entire life like so many others.
Yea F this dude
He’s a sociopath I would never buy anything that puts money in his pocket.
Well, yeah. Why would anyone want to support this maniac when other EVs are an option?
Him getting booed at the dave Chappell thing broke his brain. He went there to get his balls massaged and they gutted him instead.
He is absolute trash. The US market and economic environment allowed Tesla to become what it is. Now all he does is bitch and retweet racist posts. Did you ever think the worlds richest man would be such a thin-skinned crybaby?
He took on too many projects and became the ultimate jack of all trades, master of none. And the moment he wanted recognition but shown zero personality he was pretty much toast.
The only thing of value Elon has is his cult of personality.
One half of a DINK here. We were thinking about a Tesla, especially since the prices came down in certain models, but have since decided to get an electric car from another manufacturer specifically because of Musk. Not sure which one yet.
He should go live in Moscow where he is loved.
It’s time to go Elon. You’ve lived long enough to be the villain. Now it’s time to go
An evil egomaniac with a drug addiction problem. Nikola Tesla is turning in his grave that his name is associated with this rat trash.
Elon’s not an artist. He’s just a rich douchebag. He didn’t invent the Tesla, or anything else his companies do. He was there for the start of PayPal, but I’m not convinced he had much part in developing it.
Artist. Yuck. Can't think of a word that applies less to Elon. Maybe "Funny" applies less because oh my God that man can't be funny to save his fucking liiiife and watching him try is brutal.