this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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I can't believe reddit used to love this dude.
I actually used to admire this guy, based on the image he had created for himself (self-educated in rocket science, which I highly doubt) but the Thai cave incident and calling one of the divers pedo, opened my eyes.
Same here, I used to have this image in my head of a eccentric entrepreneur pushing technology to the max with 'fuck you money'.
Sure he said some crazy shit sometimes, but it kind of felt like he didn't have much of a filter.
Around the time of the Thai cave thing this started to change, but I still gave him the benefit of the doubt until that point.
After that, things just went down hill...
I think kinda everyone did. I never loved the guy, I got weird vibes and thought he was majorly overrated, but I thought he was fine, and I respected the work he'd attached his name to.
Hell, I still respect the hell out of starlink, as someone who had dial-up or old style sattelite with 15GB/mo limits until I moved out of my parents house 6 years ago. That shit's cool as hell, I would've killed for it as a kid, and my dad did shell out for it when it became available.
I don't really attribute anything cool that's come out of Elon's companies to him any more though, in my mind all the credit goes to the talented leaders and engineers that are "under" him. There is something to be said about bankrolling these things, I suppose, but I don't think it's as noble a mission as we all once thought. He just wants to be liked by people and make money.
No he didn't. Capitalists don't fool leftists - but nobody ever listens to them, right?
He lied about his education. If you read a Wikipedia article on the Apollo engine you now know as much about rocket surgery as Elon.
It’s the same type of “I’m smart” that Trump has.
Pretty sure most people had some admiration for him. I, for one, admired the whole thing of him selling flamethrowers. Things change when you learn how much of a scumbag someone is.
There was that moment it time when he was the underdog doing cool stuff. It seemed like he couldn't screw up, because his companies were hitting the ball out of the park one after the other.
Then the pedo guy debacle taught us who he really is.
Yes, that cave incident proved who he was to those who did not know his racist apartheid background
To be fair, not that he deserves it, I still don't know if we have enough information to say for certain that he agreed with the apartheid stuff. We know he benefited from it and hasn't said anything against it. We can also safely assume he'd agree with it now, but I can't say at the time that anyone should have assumed any more than him just benefiting from racism, which can be said of almost anyone who isn't a person of color in the west.
There's a saying in Russian "ради красного словца не пожалеет и отца" ("for a nice-looking word won't spare even father"). By that very law "safely assume" is usually used where no, it's not safe to assume something.
All media gave him free uncritical publicity for decades. They inflated his ego, branded him as a genius and built him a legion of fanatics. Now the media see the monster they created, but it is too late to undo :/
PS: I just noticed this is the tech community...why is this posted here?
Space X is a technology company, why wouldn't it be posted here?
The media doesn't give a shit. They're doing trump AGAIN, same exact way they did before.
Profit has killed ethics in so much of journalism.
this is a mere business update about a tech company...nothing about tech that any other company couldn't do.This exact same thing could have happened 100 years ago with some airline magnate who decided to move headquarters for some legal/accounting/marketing reason :D
Tech is about new products, principles, ideas, innovation, patents, methods, engineering, achievements, drawbacks, etc.
PS: !business@lemmy.world
It's almost funny really. Way back when, his goals were commendable. The proliferation of electric cars was an Eco-friendly dream. Tesla battery projects were poised to expand renewable energy source utilization. Basically everything SpaceX was doing with reusable rockets was just really cool to the nerd demographic. All he had to do was shut the fuck up, let the work speak for itself, and people would still like him. Not without black marks on his record, of course, but on balance, people would probably like him.
But no. Elmo couldn't shut the fuck up, a problem he continues to have at every turn, and people learned who he really is. His electric vehicle baby stopped being the scrappy upstart with teething problems, and started being a manufacturing disaster that had loose production tolerances matched only by the loose tolerances on what qualified as acceptable working conditions. SpaceX decided that cluttering orbit with thousands of disposable satellites was cool, and the environment and astronomy could fuck off. The only stories about Tesla Batteries that followed were about how quickly they lost their capacity and how expensive they were to replace. And Elmo himself bought a globally known communications company, immediately obliterated it's value, and turned it into a cesspit of literal Nazis. And this is the abridged list.
All Elon Musk had to do was shut the fuck up and people would have liked him. Just goes to show that "Just be yourself" is really shitty advice for some people.
There were a lot of engineers making noise about Elon being a complete fucking idiot a long time ago. People were dismissing it as jealousy, but it was one of those quiet industry secrets.
Lo and behold, Elon was never accepted into a doctorate program and there is a bunch of shady shit about him even having a B.S. in physics, looks more like he failed out of the program and got the degree after a large donation from his father.
Elon started believing his own bullshit and exploded himself for being a fucking loser rich kid who has done nothing but funded some projects smart people told him to fund.
Also don't forget, he buys companies that are already successful and then rewrites their history to say he founded them, and then he tells engineers to do a thing and takes the credit when those engineers figure out how to do it.
I will, however, readily believe that most of the Cybertruck was actually his idea, probably initially drawn in crayon.
Let's not pretend it was just Reddit. The man literally got a shout-out in Star Trek. He had a lot of people fooled.
Gee... a capitalist world fawning over capitalists?
Who woulda thunk it?
Give me a break. There's a lot of people that people fawn over that turn out to be huge pieces of shit. Just look at Bill Cosby. Not really sure why you're singling out capitalism.
And who did Bill Cosby make money for, again? Who protected Bill Cosby and allowed him all that power?
Is the capitalism in the room with you right now?
Damn dude, capitalism isn't the boogeyman you can't just blame everything bad on it lol
Yes it is.
But your argument, from what I read, is that they fawned over him because he made money. You’re specifically calling out the business/monetary side:
No, they fawned over him because they liked his character and persona in public.
Yeah, let's be clear here, in NuTrek. That's not exactly a mark of quality.
I don’t think he fooled anyone. The guy was literally helping the environment and advancing the space age. Then he started using drugs and went off the rails. He’s like Kanye. His music was good, the creator just went nuts.
No he wasn't. Capitalists don't cure the disasters they create - they just find different ways of profiting off it.
No, he didn't - he just showed his true nature. That is all.
You see all of the electric cars on the road now? Tesla saw an opportunity to make money, and it paved a path to lower carbon emissions (eventually). Even the blind chicken catches a worm. Capitalism isn’t all bad, it’s the greed it breeds that’s bad. The world isn’t black and white.
You mean those things that aren't public transport? Those things?
FTFY.
Capitalism is literally just a set of excuses and pretexts to justify gross economic parasitism - old-style concepts such as "greed" doesn't even hold a candle to that.
My own personal opinion of him is that he's a shrewd businessman in a world that prefers businessmen over creators. The second the public eye shifted to him he clearly had some mental episode that has only been heightened by drug use and being egged-on by the alt-right and social commentators like Rogan. Ironically, he's become a creator, but his content is the actions of a broken billionaire lashing out.
it wasn't just reddit, it felt like half the world saw him as that iron man dude
It didn’t help he had a cameo in the movie.
Everyone would have still loved him had he stayed away from Twitter and worked with a low profile. But he uad to toot his own horn at every chance and let his true self get exposed.
I used to love that dude, too. I also used to go on Reddit though. Thankfully, I've outgrown both.
There was a time when I... well, I didn't really follow him all that much, but I didn't have any reason to dislike him. That changed when he tried to back out of buying Twitter.
At the time I was unhappy with how Twitter was handling its problems. I was hoping things would improve with new ownership. When he backed out, I started to see what kind of person he really was: someone who thought he could do basically whatever he wanted.
By the time he actually did but Twitter, I was glad the government actually stuck it to him and made him go through with the purchase. And I'm glad Twitter is failing because of his own blunders. I'm hoping it eventually dies (I'm already trying to move on to other platforms like Bluesky or Mastodon. Just waiting for people I follow to move to them.) and that he's still left with money he hasn't made back after that purchase.
Only 7 years ago!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU7FuAswPW0