this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
463 points (96.6% liked)

World News

52934 readers
3234 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] turdburglar@piefed.social 68 points 1 day ago (4 children)

i’ve read that he was always a fuck knob, he just used to have better PR.

[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 57 points 1 day ago (4 children)

He almost got himself and Peter Thiel killed by crashing a $1m car while trying to show off for Thiel. He got kicked out of PayPal for nearly bankrupting the company and insisting that they switch all their servers from Unix to windows for no fucking reason.

So yeah, he’s always been like this.

[–] Tryenjer@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

So Musk could really have been a hero in the end. 🤔

What a shame!

[–] ISOmorph@feddit.org 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And he wanted to rebrand it to... you guessed it... X.

[–] underisk@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 day ago

He had the x.com domain name purchased back then, too. A loser for the entirety of his life.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 day ago

Ah, what could have been...

[–] madde@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

It feels unfair that in our timeline Bush somehow won against Al Gore and Musk didn't take out himself and Thiel before they could bring substantial damage to our societies.

Are we somehow just living in like the worst possible timeline after 2000?

[–] LordMayor@piefed.social 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I think that’s what they mean by “on the surface”. If he had just kept the cringe quiet and stayed out of politics, he could have pushed the envelope on electric cars, rockets, robots, etc. and a majority of people would have been happy to see him do it. He had two things going for him: enormous wealth and a desire for cool tech.

He could have had as many stupidly named babies as he wanted, seethed about trans people and have time to actually get good at video games, all from the luxury of his many homes and jets. All he had to do was let his PayPal money get to work in his chosen tech industries and keep his personality out of it.

The world might have progressed a little, even. His companies would be better off. Many of us would have bought Teslas. The Cybertruck would never have happened. Twitter would… well, Twitter would still suck but it would be someone else’s fault.

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago

This is exactly what I meant.

I dealt with Elon during the PayPal days. He was a cringey fucker back then too, and we essentially laughed him and his stupid idea out of the building. So, I knew the type of guy he was back before 2015.

Ultimately, Forest Gump's momma said it best. Stupid is as stupid does. If Elon's actions pushed forth positive change, it wouldn't matter how big of a cringey fuck he was.

[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’m glad he exposed himself for who he truly is.

[–] MadBits@europe.pub 5 points 1 day ago

Yea, I think its for the best.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think he has always been an asshole, but at least he was working on things that actually helped humans, like popularizing electric vehicles and lowering the cost of getting to space. Nowadays he mostly just brainwashes Grok into spreading propaganda.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

He was never working on things that helped humans. He was a cheerleader for wild greed. Full stop.

Yeah, it was funny how he was in pre-twitter days considered to be a tech industry prodigy who was going guide humanity to a better tomorrow. Then he bought Twitter and started broadcasting what's running in his head to in extend that entire world knows he's a right wing fuck knob.