So his ‘genius’ anyways eluded me

His genius is entirely about being very good at picking the right companies to invest in, and having an ego big enough to pretend that he's behind their creations himself. Except maybe the cybertruck, that one feels very Elon.

I think the first time people (like me) started realising how he truly was when he called one of those Thailand rescue divers a pedophile. He went fully mask off in barely any time after that.

Because how quickly he switched I still wonder if he is someone like Kanye who needs to be on meds otherwise he just can't help himself saying absolutely insane stuff.

It seemed more sudden and severe than just "oh some people didn't not like him and then things changed".

I didn't know much about him really but he seemed to be investing in tech that could really shape the future, which I thought was "progressive". Like when the first Tesla hit the market "big oil" had been suppressing the EV industry forever and putting your money behind something like that was bold and progressive.

Now he's a Nazi supporting conservative nutty governments all over the world.

He probably thought, "I could do their job!" and fired them to save money.

I wonder what this timeline would be like if he had accepted that his submarine idea was naive despite the good intentions and just paid to have a nice setup with comfortable tents and catered food for the divers and kids as they got out of the cave (plus their families). Instead of attacking the guy and showing the world who he was, kicking off a cycle of him lashing out at his falling popularity, resulting in it falling even more, then more lashing out, etc.

Even if he was like that the whole time, he might have kept his mask on instead of leaning into it, probably would have never made that offer for Twitter, might have tried to appear neutral instead of joining Trump's campaign.

Though hard to say because the self-driving bs and cybertruck would have still happened and might have kicked off that cycle anyways.

it's incredible how many people just need to hold onto the ball and run out the clock and they still can't fucking do it. I guess on the bright side it shines a light on that no one should be a billionaire. But from their perspective the thing to do once hitting a billion is to sit on your fucking hands, avoid interacting with normal people so they can't realize how fuckin' weird you are, and await death

I think he destroyed his mind with drugs, TBH. I think he was different to some degree back then. Still was an asshole, but not this asshole.

.

Tony Stark is 100% the genius Elon wishes he was. He entered MIT at about 14, and graduated with multiple degrees at 17. While he didn't invent the arc reactor, he both miniaturized (As part of his origin story, when he created the first suit in a cave with a box of scraps.) and perfected it. If we go by MCU, he wasn't in charge of Stark Industries for a large chunk of the weapon development days, and after his kidnapping and Iron Man origin story, he had his company stop developing weapons, so now they're a tech conglomerate that does generic tech conglomerate things I guess.

He's also not real, so huge grain of salt.

It's fine. He had potential, and he really did move fast and break things to make Tesla what it was. I don't think EVs would be where they are today without him.

The pedophile thing really was the turning point. It was possible to see before then, but it wasn't even the event itself that did it. He just changed fast around that time period. Whether his views changed or he just started revealing and acting on them much more is debatable.

every time I remember it I cringe and hope nobody else does.

Haha you wish!

A lot of peole are thinking back to that enthusiastic spiel as the first time they heard of Musk. Then they say something like "man, I had no idea at the time that u/arctanthrope was an alt-right lunatic, seemed so normal".

(Just kidding)

I really appreciated him around that same era, as he seemed to be the only rich person actually showing any real care or action to try to do something about climate change. Up until him every rich person and every politician seemed to be actively dismissing climate change as a concern. It feels like around 10 years ago was when political discourse finally stopped trying to argue whether or not climate change is real and instead shifted to trying to argue that any actions to prevent climate change were unrealistic or futile

Remember, Musk was building up an electric car company, a home battery company and a solar roofing company through the 2010s. Plus he was pushing for cool space stuff. We were going to have a colony on mars by 2020! Incredible!

It was the whole hyperloop thing that killed it for me. It quickly became apparent as his Las Vegas "hyperloop" was just Teslas in a tunnel that he was full of shit and it put his other lies and half-truths into perspective. Honestly his antics over the last couple of years have killed my interest in space flight. I fucking loved watching rocket launch live streams. I stayed up until 2am to watch the Artemis launch. And now I just can't bring myself to get excited.

I appreciate that he brought Tesla to profitability and Tesla proved to other automakers and consumers that electric cars are viable and cool. I appreciate that SpaceX has completely changed the rocket industry for the better and now every rocket program worth it's salt in the world is trying to replicate the Falcon 9 rocket boosters. But that's all I'll give him. He didn't do the work, he just funded it, and I appreciate that he did fund it when nobody else would but that's it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but McAfee must have been at least somewhat skilled in the past, no? That doesn't sound much like Musk.

On 23 June 2021, he was found dead due to an apparent suicide by hanging in his prison cell near Barcelona shortly after the Spanish National Court authorized his extradition to the U.S.[16][17][18]

I guess there is one way he could become the next McAfee...