this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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It astounds and amazes me that there was a time Elon could have feasibly been considered a smart, level-headed entrepreneur. The whole submarine thing with the trapped kids really was the beginning of his unraveling. I for one thank Elon Musk for proving once and for all to even the most shameless corpo-apologists that having a ton of money doesn't magically make you smart or cool. The dude's an idiot, and I love watching him self-destruct.
At one point they even had him cameo in iron man, and had him name dropped on star trek as a pioneer of human discovery. People used to jerk off to this dude's PR image like he was a real life Tony Stark.
If he stayed off Twitter he'd have a pretty impressive CV. Mainstream electric cars, actually usable Satellite Internet, Major Solar Panels etc. Even weird shit like Hyperloop would just be random neat things.
Same with JK Rowling, Kanye West, Notch, etc. It's literally so fucking easy for people like this to remain loved by everyone. Just keep your fucking mouth shut. Give nice polite interviews about your job, stay out of politics, let a boring publicity agent manage your social media for you, and enjoy your billions of dollars in peace.
Why is it so hard?
Ego.
I'm paraphrasing here (see https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/08/28/elon-musks-shadow-rule) but Musk 'desperately wants to save the Earth, but thinks only he can do it".
I would have a think tank. I would pay a hundred or so smart people obscene amounts of money to tell me my ideas are daft and come up with really great ideas for me.
The mind boggles as to why someone like musk doesn't do this. It would be like achieving global eternal financial domination on easy mode. A world hack if you will. It would cost a mere fraction of his wealth.
Imagine if every descision you made was well informed and well reasoned instead of just shit.
The problem is that they don't want money any more. They want attention.
He admitted hyperloop was complete bullshit he pushed just to try to sideline California's high speed rail.
Wonderful. The bar keeps going lower doesn’t it?
They put him on Rick and Morty in the most cringe inducing fashions and it was like watching a cartoon suck off a guy.
Which is weird because it's usually the guys sucking off Rick and Morty
He's mentioned in star trek discovery as if he took us to mars. Those lines aged so poorly
Putting aside that that whole show is pretty rough and I've mentally decanonized it, the guy who said it is technically a mega space nazi from the space nazi dimension so I choose to believe he just thought that Musk being an aspiring space nazi was as cool in our universe as it was in his.
Truth.
I prefer to pretend that they're talking about another person named Musk, one of his many kids perhaps...
Or the story is happening in the other better timeline.
When he called the submarine expert a pedo was when I started to go, "Is this guy being for real?"
Same. I actually looked up to him before that.
I guarantee he'd rather be in his position than yours.
Yeah, can lose all this wealth and still be fucking wealthy in a way that literally dozens of people only know.