For a short period I idolised Elon musk because I didn't know better and was indoctrinated by a YouTuber :(
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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Once upon a time Elon came across as a decent person, don't be too hard on yourself for believing it!
The first time my illusion of Elon being a good guy broke was when he called some scuba diver a pedo for wanting to help the kids stuck in the cave in Thailand. From that moment onwards he just went down the hill.
I felt sad that day because I really thought better of him. I thought he really wanted to help make the world a better place for all.
IIRC Elon had some ridiculous plan to save the kids and the scuba diver was like "lol WTF that would never work".
Anyway, he made Elon flip out, at which point I thought "Oh, this is just an adult billionaire with 4chan brain".
Seriously. Any news story about Elon Musk could easily be imagined as a 4chan greentext.
Yup, this is what did it for me as well. I was in high school at the time and Musk had done a decent job until that point of making himself out to be a real-life Tony Stark, so I thought he seemed pretty cool. That incident really exposed how he just wanted to be the most important person in the room and have the world fawn over his shitty ideas.
It amazes me when people claim they bought their car before he 'went crazy'. He has been obviously evil since at least 2018 when that happened, and the average length of car ownership in the US is around 6 years, so it's likely that the vehicle was purchased after he went mask off.
There was a short window where he was less... obviously Elon Musk. For a hot minute the EV and rocket shit seemed like a rich guy doing something useful for a change.
Everyone can be susceptible to indoctrination and propaganda, the important thing is you learned to see through it and reject it.
ngl before i was anti-cap and knew all the bad shit about musk, i also did.
like if all u know about 'em is that they are the big boss of cool futuristic companies like tesla and spacex and that they are like meme-y and selling this cool flame thrower as a joke, then it's easy for a kid to think they are cool
He's a kid at heart. Unfortunately, he also has the reasoning skills and emotional maturity of a kid.
Yeah i was 15 when he launched the flame thrower thing. I thought it was absolutely hilarious. Point being i was fucking stupid and 15, only knew of hin through the flamethrower and the space missions, + no real life experiences to act as counterbalance
Never became an actual icon for me, but i do remember a time long ago when the name held mostly positive associations.
A lot of us were duped by Musk. I heard about this wild new company called Tesla and the guy who wanted to ramp up EV production starting with the Roadster. I decided on the spot to get into engineering in the hopes of one day working there. A few years after graduating though a lot of Musk's crazy shit started to show and I soon lost all interest in going to work for him.
He knew you all were dumb when he shot his partners tesla into space and spun it as some cool “first car in space” (it’s an ad(actually it’s just petty rich guy shit)).
A lot of us were duped by Musk.
Seriously. And I mean this genuinely... How the fuck?
I'm a 40 year old queer dude. How did ANYONE over his own rise to tech power think Musk was a good person? I'm perpetually online and he's been a piece of shit human ever since I ever heard his name. How did he dupe anyone? He's never not been a piece of shit.
I'm sure you can figure it if you really think about it. People hold many strange ideas. And noone is born with them.
30 year old queer dude here. I'm bi so it was comparatively easier for me to bury the queerness and throw away the key, and just focus on the women i also dig. Point being, i was not in a good place as teenager. Much resentment at the world built up from so much misunderstanding, not feeling seen, feeling deeply wrong in many places
And there, in that broken mind space, for a teenager with an underdeveloped brain and misaligned psyche, his whole 'im the man to fix the world while memeing' can become very alluring.
I was never a fan. That has always been reserved for artists, scientists, philosophers or saints (the non religious kind) for me. But there was a time when I believed in the lies he told about colonizing space, of the future of humanity, and in that toxic space i was in, his edgy tendencies just seemed fun and cool, as opposed to the dryness of established beurocracy.
Stressing once again that this was born of a bad head. It's surreal looking back at tbh. But as to how people end up eating bullshit? A million different reasons because people are varied. But they're never nice reasons.
Same. I think the important thing is that we learned and moved on <3
That somehow sounds worse.
Labubu Garfield doesn't exist, he can't hurt you.
Labubu Garfield:
Gabe Newell's net worth is 11B
Debate.
Interesting take.
I don't quite know how to feel about Gabe.
Pro:
-did the whole linux thing
-stands up to MS
-Cares about his product being good
Con:
-Steam forums could use some moderation in some regards
-The games aren't totally free from bloatware/tracking/... (I mean ffs, some games send data to epic...why?!!)
And deep deep sigh
-HL3 mfr. Just fking release catacombs3D and call it HL3 I don't care anymore, just anything.
Afaik he's better than the average moneybag but who knows anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sometimes it feels like there are no good guys up there.
Into the woodchipper.
I'd offer him asset forfeiture to bring him in-line with his employees. If he's the good billionaire we imagine him to be, he'll be okay with that.