it literally took the US tech press the better part of fifteen years to realize musk was an unremarkable rich brat cosplaying as a supergenius engineer, which says more about our press than it does musk
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/22/elon-musk-the-barking-mad-publicity-hound-00093293
Elon Musk Figured Out the Media’s Biggest Weakness
Here's why the press falls for his stunts every time.
I'm still really enjoying the seamless pivot of countless big name tech journalists who enabled his bullshit mythology for more than a decade, and now, only when he's descended into full caricature, casually pretend to be hard nosed skeptics who saw him for what he was the entire time
golly shucks gee maybe there are lessons here
there were like four or five US tech journalists who adequately called out musk's bullshit from the start, and most of them were rewarded with ridicule, marginalization, and if they were female, death threats
I repeat this often because it's true, but three or four years ago if you dared suggest that musk was a rich, unremarkable bullshit artist you'd get a look somewhere between confusion and constipation from 90% of the tech press punditry elite
but if you were actually paying attention to the details instead of the hype or marketing, the evidence was there long before he fully embraced all the red-pilled memes and dipshittery
You can tell from the starship explosion the press isn't really incentivized to learn from a decade+ of mistakes, either. Musk's bulbous ego and a rush to launch on a dumb weed joke date resulted in him nixing flame diverters, which severely damaged the launch pad and engines, all portrayed by the press as a smashing success:
https://twitter.com/Tazerface16/status/1649443447164776450?t=UBBuDSLAOI8yCh0YTvpWLw&s=19
Christopher David on Twitter
“This is what happens to your launchpad when you think it would be funny to launch to the world's largest rocket on 4/20, instead of when it's ready.
It will probably be at least a year before the FAA will approve another Starship launch.”
Karl Bode
Nik