I get people are gonna say he was always this bad but I honestly don’t buy it.
While he was always an asshole, everyone has some ratio of bad/good. In the early/mid 2010s he was able to keep enough of a lid on things that he had a positive reputation with among both the public and investors. The limited comments he did make on politics were pretty liberal, and usually specific to the environment. He was liked enough in heavily liberal circles to get multiple positive shoutouts. One of them was from freaking Star Trek, which as a sidenote inadvertently ended up aging like wine.
Modern Elon is absolutely unhinged. He seems to spend more time on Twitter making an ass of himself in ways you’d normally associate with a teenage edge lord. He’s an active and aggressive liability to his companies, both in terms of his persona and business decisions. He’s huge on politics to the point where he tried to interfere with the Russo-Ukraine war for a bit. A lot of times it feels like it’s a matter of time before he gets on stage with Kanye and starts trying to rap.
I think a combination of social media and covid broke him. I know Lemmy doesn’t think rich people are human, but I think it’s more nuanced than that. While they often have quirks, at the end of the day we’re all human. There are millions of people whose brains became fried due to culture war shit on social media post 2014. There’s no reason Elon would be immune to the same mechanisms that radicalize an average person.
While he was always an asshole, everyone has some ratio of bad/good. In the early/mid 2010s he was able to keep enough of a lid on things that he had a positive reputation with among both the public and investors.
Back then he still had his handler/business mommy Mary Beth Brown. She had basic control over his scheduling and publicity outreach since he started Tesla. In 2014 he canned her after she asked for a raise, he’s been handling his own pr and schedule ever since.
The problem with assuming that this is a recent change in personality is that it requires ignoring all his prior reported behaviour. It ignores how much media marketing actually changes our perceptions of powerful people.
No Elon did not become an asinine child overnight, he’s been that way the whole time. He just believes he’s now rich enough that he doesn’t have to pretend to be a different person. No JFK Jr did not become an insane person because he watched too much fox news, he’s literally been eating roadkill since he was a child.
All of these wealthy and powerful people have an entire system working for them dedicated to protecting their public image.
I’m not saying he wasn’t always an asshole. I’m saying the level of asshole political extremist he is now is a huge departure from how he was previously.
2017 Elon isn’t a good person, but is a lot better and sane than 2021 Elon, who is in turn a lot better and sane than 2024 Elon. His first huge Twitter spat was the submarine pedophile fiasco, and now he says something more deranged than that on a weekly basis.
My point was that he’s always been an extremist right winged nut job, he’s just letting people see it now.
If you look at his work history, the people he hung out with, and how he’s run his businesses, it’s all very consistent with far right libertarian ideology. He’s always been against regulation, he’s always been anti union, and he started a business with Peter Thiel.
Not much has changed, except he now believes his cult of personality is strong enough to withstand media criticisms.
It ignores how much media marketing actually changes our perceptions of powerful people.
I similarly didn’t know how much of an asshole Steve Jobs was until listening to a podcast about his behavior. I had the same vague understanding of him everyone did (he’s regarded as a visionary, but was a micromanager and a perfectionist, etc).
PR firms and handlers do the devil’s work of making these monsters presentable to the public.
Some of the shit his daughter has said about him is fucking incredible- like weird sexual shit with her (I don’t think he was grooming her, he was just creepy as fuck) and just being cruel to her for no reason.
Yeah that’s why it ended up aging like wine. I think the writing crew meant it to be legit given the other people mentioned and the overall writing quality of season 1, but it ends up being a great moment of foreshadowing.
You’re trying to blame his shift on social media and the pandemic, and you’re also claiming that the same thing happened to millions of other people for the same reasons, and I just haven’t seen any evidence to support that.
We can point to people acting like lunatics during the pandemic, of course, but if you want to claim that to pandemic caused them to become lunatics then you would have to look at how they behaved prior to it. And you can try to blame social media for how people see politics, but there again I don’t think the facts are on your side. Most people know that things your friend posts on Facebook may or may not be true. But many people, especially middle-aged and older people, believe that there’s a great deal of truth in the 24-hour news cycle that they see on television, when in reality that’s been highly tailored by the major news networks to make it seem like the sky is falling.
It has been remarked for a long time that many arrogant ultra rich people end up surrounding themselves by yes men, that insulation is created by their money and power, and over time their views grow unhinged because they don’t have contact with the real world or the general public. We know this happens often enough, and if I were speculating, I’d say the same thing happened here.
Look if you don’t think there’s any evidence to support social media and the pandemic leading to both a decline in mental health and radicalization, I don’t know what to tell you. Not only have there been like a million different articles on it, but this is patently obvious to the vast majority of people who lived through the entire thing.
This isn’t exclusively a middle aged man thing, a conservative thing, or even a political thing. A ton of people struggled enormously during the pandemic, sought solace in social media, and left with an extremely weird set of beliefs.
I’m sure I could find some of these sources, but I feel like I’d be trying to convince someone that the sky is blue. This is so abundantly obvious that you’ve either been living under an extremely large rock or are dead set on believing what you want to believe.
I really wouldn’t discount social media, which he has shown an addiction to.
I’ve personally watched a very close friend go from a huge Obama / liberal supporter to supporting Trump, Canada’s trump mini, full on climate change denial, anti vaccine stuff by going down the right wing conspiracy theory rabbit hole. All on twitter/youtube/facebook etc stuff. He doesn’t watch MSM.
There’s definitely a rich/yes man aspect as well, but social media echo chambers can have a huge influence.
edit: and for what it’s worth, it’s not worth trying to reason with him anymore, and the relationship has pretty much died during covid.
Do you remember the whole debacle in 2018 where he defamed the guy who actually rescued the kids by calling him a pedophile after his stupid sub idea was shot down?
The difference between now and the late 00s/early 10s, is that he actually listened to his RP people. Before he took over SpaceX and Tesla there wasn’t much reason for people to pay attention to him so the narrative that he was using his wealth to improve humanity was taken at face value and pushed in the media.
The more spotlight he got and the more he interacted with other public figures, the more it was apparent that he wasn’t liberal minded as he had been made out to be and the more of his history in South Africa and early days of what we’d call the modern internet started to reveal him to what he always was, a nepo baby using his money to plaster his name over other people’s accomplishments. He never was a modern day Nikolai Tesla, he’s a modern day Thomas Edison, pushing his own bad ideas and ensuring no one who works for him gets proper credit or compensation for the work making him money.
I think there are some people who just exist in our communities and lives that can shed some light here.
The father who’s generally progressive in public, because he never really cared about it when it doesn’t affect him. But he was cruel to his “son” for displaying failure of masculinity growing up, and later when that “son” came out as a trans woman he became a vocal transphobe.
The business owner who always tried to focus on businesses that addressed new and futuristic ideas. Always tried to keep things as cool as possible, especially in presenting the business to the public. But while he was willing to put in irresponsible amounts of work, he expected the same of his employees. When they started discussing collective bargaining, his facade of being different and socially responsible fell to the wayside as he began fighting tooth and nail against unions, and employees increasingly felt comfortable talking about his bad behavior in all manner of topics as well as the public began listening about it.
The man who in college falls for a woman, and has a family with her. But he strikes it rich and becomes famous and files for divorce leaving her with the kids and screwed by a prenup.
The individual who consistently alienates those around themselves, who refuses to build community, instead believing themselves different, better. They may be chasing fame, wealth, and power, but they may not be. Getting it is irrelevant. But regardless in their alienation they find Internet communities. Them develop a sense of communal identity without connection, friendship, camaraderie, or comfortable belonging. A crude facsimile of community that fails to provide for interpersonal needs. And while they’re in these places they begin flowing down the pipeline to radicalization.
An individual with a strained relationship with a parent understands their parents flaws and swears they’re not going to be like that. They succeed somewhat but not completely.
Each of these things we can see Elon fall into. He’s all of them in the extreme. He is human, deeply so. Each of these involved him making choices that got him here
I get people are gonna say he was always this bad but I honestly don’t buy it.
While he was always an asshole, everyone has some ratio of bad/good. In the early/mid 2010s he was able to keep enough of a lid on things that he had a positive reputation with among both the public and investors. The limited comments he did make on politics were pretty liberal, and usually specific to the environment. He was liked enough in heavily liberal circles to get multiple positive shoutouts. One of them was from freaking Star Trek, which as a sidenote inadvertently ended up aging like wine.
Modern Elon is absolutely unhinged. He seems to spend more time on Twitter making an ass of himself in ways you’d normally associate with a teenage edge lord. He’s an active and aggressive liability to his companies, both in terms of his persona and business decisions. He’s huge on politics to the point where he tried to interfere with the Russo-Ukraine war for a bit. A lot of times it feels like it’s a matter of time before he gets on stage with Kanye and starts trying to rap.
I think a combination of social media and covid broke him. I know Lemmy doesn’t think rich people are human, but I think it’s more nuanced than that. While they often have quirks, at the end of the day we’re all human. There are millions of people whose brains became fried due to culture war shit on social media post 2014. There’s no reason Elon would be immune to the same mechanisms that radicalize an average person.
Back then he still had his handler/business mommy Mary Beth Brown. She had basic control over his scheduling and publicity outreach since he started Tesla. In 2014 he canned her after she asked for a raise, he’s been handling his own pr and schedule ever since.
The problem with assuming that this is a recent change in personality is that it requires ignoring all his prior reported behaviour. It ignores how much media marketing actually changes our perceptions of powerful people.
No Elon did not become an asinine child overnight, he’s been that way the whole time. He just believes he’s now rich enough that he doesn’t have to pretend to be a different person. No JFK Jr did not become an insane person because he watched too much fox news, he’s literally been eating roadkill since he was a child.
All of these wealthy and powerful people have an entire system working for them dedicated to protecting their public image.
I’m not saying he wasn’t always an asshole. I’m saying the level of asshole political extremist he is now is a huge departure from how he was previously.
2017 Elon isn’t a good person, but is a lot better and sane than 2021 Elon, who is in turn a lot better and sane than 2024 Elon. His first huge Twitter spat was the submarine pedophile fiasco, and now he says something more deranged than that on a weekly basis.
My point was that he’s always been an extremist right winged nut job, he’s just letting people see it now.
If you look at his work history, the people he hung out with, and how he’s run his businesses, it’s all very consistent with far right libertarian ideology. He’s always been against regulation, he’s always been anti union, and he started a business with Peter Thiel.
Not much has changed, except he now believes his cult of personality is strong enough to withstand media criticisms.
I similarly didn’t know how much of an asshole Steve Jobs was until listening to a podcast about his behavior. I had the same vague understanding of him everyone did (he’s regarded as a visionary, but was a micromanager and a perfectionist, etc).
PR firms and handlers do the devil’s work of making these monsters presentable to the public.
Some of the shit his daughter has said about him is fucking incredible- like weird sexual shit with her (I don’t think he was grooming her, he was just creepy as fuck) and just being cruel to her for no reason.
Combo of info at these two sites:
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/lisa-brennanjobs-powerful-memoir-sparks-backlash-against-apple-cofounder-father/news-story/a23b93b757ccab850737a1a5fcf98d76
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/memoir-steve-jobs-apos-daughter-133000491.html
Also, and this isn’t anywhere near as bad but it just… ick. He used to wash his feet in the toilet. Seriously.
On the other hand, it was said by evil mirror Lorca, so maybe it works?
…that’s what “aging like wine”, means, no?
Yeah that’s why it ended up aging like wine. I think the writing crew meant it to be legit given the other people mentioned and the overall writing quality of season 1, but it ends up being a great moment of foreshadowing.
Oh I get you now.
What’s the reference? How can I not know it?
Star Trek: Discovery season one.
You’re trying to blame his shift on social media and the pandemic, and you’re also claiming that the same thing happened to millions of other people for the same reasons, and I just haven’t seen any evidence to support that.
We can point to people acting like lunatics during the pandemic, of course, but if you want to claim that to pandemic caused them to become lunatics then you would have to look at how they behaved prior to it. And you can try to blame social media for how people see politics, but there again I don’t think the facts are on your side. Most people know that things your friend posts on Facebook may or may not be true. But many people, especially middle-aged and older people, believe that there’s a great deal of truth in the 24-hour news cycle that they see on television, when in reality that’s been highly tailored by the major news networks to make it seem like the sky is falling.
It has been remarked for a long time that many arrogant ultra rich people end up surrounding themselves by yes men, that insulation is created by their money and power, and over time their views grow unhinged because they don’t have contact with the real world or the general public. We know this happens often enough, and if I were speculating, I’d say the same thing happened here.
Look if you don’t think there’s any evidence to support social media and the pandemic leading to both a decline in mental health and radicalization, I don’t know what to tell you. Not only have there been like a million different articles on it, but this is patently obvious to the vast majority of people who lived through the entire thing.
This isn’t exclusively a middle aged man thing, a conservative thing, or even a political thing. A ton of people struggled enormously during the pandemic, sought solace in social media, and left with an extremely weird set of beliefs.
I’m sure I could find some of these sources, but I feel like I’d be trying to convince someone that the sky is blue. This is so abundantly obvious that you’ve either been living under an extremely large rock or are dead set on believing what you want to believe.
I really wouldn’t discount social media, which he has shown an addiction to.
I’ve personally watched a very close friend go from a huge Obama / liberal supporter to supporting Trump, Canada’s trump mini, full on climate change denial, anti vaccine stuff by going down the right wing conspiracy theory rabbit hole. All on twitter/youtube/facebook etc stuff. He doesn’t watch MSM.
There’s definitely a rich/yes man aspect as well, but social media echo chambers can have a huge influence.
edit: and for what it’s worth, it’s not worth trying to reason with him anymore, and the relationship has pretty much died during covid.
Do you remember the whole debacle in 2018 where he defamed the guy who actually rescued the kids by calling him a pedophile after his stupid sub idea was shot down?
The difference between now and the late 00s/early 10s, is that he actually listened to his RP people. Before he took over SpaceX and Tesla there wasn’t much reason for people to pay attention to him so the narrative that he was using his wealth to improve humanity was taken at face value and pushed in the media.
The more spotlight he got and the more he interacted with other public figures, the more it was apparent that he wasn’t liberal minded as he had been made out to be and the more of his history in South Africa and early days of what we’d call the modern internet started to reveal him to what he always was, a nepo baby using his money to plaster his name over other people’s accomplishments. He never was a modern day Nikolai Tesla, he’s a modern day Thomas Edison, pushing his own bad ideas and ensuring no one who works for him gets proper credit or compensation for the work making him money.
I think there are some people who just exist in our communities and lives that can shed some light here.
The father who’s generally progressive in public, because he never really cared about it when it doesn’t affect him. But he was cruel to his “son” for displaying failure of masculinity growing up, and later when that “son” came out as a trans woman he became a vocal transphobe.
The business owner who always tried to focus on businesses that addressed new and futuristic ideas. Always tried to keep things as cool as possible, especially in presenting the business to the public. But while he was willing to put in irresponsible amounts of work, he expected the same of his employees. When they started discussing collective bargaining, his facade of being different and socially responsible fell to the wayside as he began fighting tooth and nail against unions, and employees increasingly felt comfortable talking about his bad behavior in all manner of topics as well as the public began listening about it.
The man who in college falls for a woman, and has a family with her. But he strikes it rich and becomes famous and files for divorce leaving her with the kids and screwed by a prenup.
The individual who consistently alienates those around themselves, who refuses to build community, instead believing themselves different, better. They may be chasing fame, wealth, and power, but they may not be. Getting it is irrelevant. But regardless in their alienation they find Internet communities. Them develop a sense of communal identity without connection, friendship, camaraderie, or comfortable belonging. A crude facsimile of community that fails to provide for interpersonal needs. And while they’re in these places they begin flowing down the pipeline to radicalization.
An individual with a strained relationship with a parent understands their parents flaws and swears they’re not going to be like that. They succeed somewhat but not completely.
Each of these things we can see Elon fall into. He’s all of them in the extreme. He is human, deeply so. Each of these involved him making choices that got him here