vgaSix years ago
According to his trans daughter, he was treating her like shit long before this, so he’s always been an asshole.
Yeah it looks like anyone close to him (including his business partners) says he was an asshole.
It looks like he had a great PR firm until then, which he stopped using, because he thought he can do better on his own.
Started to believe the bullshit himself basically… a spectacular fall from public grace.
More like he realized there were a lot more fascists running around than previously suspected and he could get away with it.
“You’re all assholes too? Psh, then why am I pretending not to be?!”
DiplomjodlerHe’s definitely always been an asshole but he only went crazy a few years ago.
He only went crazy publicly a few years ago.
Well, everything else is rumour and hearsay. I’ll stick with what is on the record for my judgement.
He used to care enough about money to not say these things publicly. Now he’s got so much money that it really doesn’t matter if it costs him a billion dollars to tweet something stupid.
Either that or all the ketamine over the long term fucked up his brain somehow.
I think the drugs definitely are playing a part here. He used to be quite lucid.
His daughter was 14 at the time of this tweet. I don’t know when she came out to Musk, but it’s possible this tweet was before he started treating her like shit.
He’s always been a troll. He says and does whatever he thinks it takes for people to pay attention to him. I doubt it goes any deeper than that.
if you think he’s the only rich dude to say whatever he needs to get what he wants, i’ve got a bridge to sell ya
what am i supposed to do with a bridge
It’s a reference to someone “selling” the Brooklyn bridge to someone else for scrap long ago. I think so anyway.
Woosh goes the joke
i thought it was something something “that’s a bridge too far”, and so they need exactly one bridge
I thought it was about selling the bridge as a toll bridge.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker
You are correct
Which wouldn’t be a bad investment if they could prove your buying the right to toll the bridge.
It’s a saying that he’ll sell you a bridge that he doesn’t own because you’re gullible.
ooh that makes a lot more sense than what i was thinking
BlackmistThis was a few weeks before the mask fell off with the pedo guy tweet.
In all honesty he probably doesn’t believe any of what he publicly says. Trump probably offered him less government scrutiny for his inherently dangerous projects (tesla self driving, SpaceX experimental rockets etc) as well as the billionaire tax breaks and he’s just trying to get him elected for his own personal profit.
I’ve never seen a billionaire’s life be affected by a government decision, they all do as they please anyway (unless they’re in China or Russia)
FuglyDuckSince at the time, he still had his rather spectacular or team… it’s probably not even him writing that.
100/100 and then tweets like this lol.
Whatever’s trendy at the time, I guess, fuck whatever that is.
QuentinCallaghanThis was also around the time when the public perception about Musk was different. Reddit thought of him as a “real-life Tony Stark”, who put a car in space and is a little eccentric. That perception about him peaked on August 2018 when he appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Around 2020 he started to go deeper into QAnon-esque rabbit-hole, turning into the despised far-right wacko he is today. Of course he has been always an opportunistic hack.
He genuinely did not ever appear (publicly) to be a shit bag narcissist, though. I say this as someone who kept an eye on musk from around 2000, and invested early (as well as exiting early due to his narcissism). In every interview he just came across as neurodivergent, but never as though he didn’t care about the planet, the environment, or the climate crisis. He was one of the only wealthy leaders promoting electric cars 20 years ago. He was also the only wealthy person advocating for risk mitigation (a mars colony).
Regardless of recent events, I’m not dumb enough to believe he was simply acting flawlessly for well over a decade. I have come to the conclusion — like many people before me — that absolute power corrupts, absolutely. It’s no different to Bezos. In this interview from 27 years ago he’s just a regular nerd; not the corporate sociopath he’s been the last decade. The evidence is clear. Billionaires should not exist.
Jeff Bezos 60-Minutes Interview | 1997
Thanks for posting the Besos interview!
Super interesting that they were already hoovering up user data as fast as they could in '97 - half a gigabyte per day.
stebopretty sure still thinks about him that way
Match!!if Trump loses the election, expect musk to suddenly attempt to reconcile with his trans daughter and embrace indigenous cultures or whatever the hell he thinks liberals like
MouseKeyboardNah he’ll declare that the United States has become a fascist dictatorship and probably spout some lies about election rigging.
The gay people weren’t the problem the fact it’s nearly impossible to get them repaired is.
SternHe got rid of his PR team at some point, his trans daughter disowned him, and Grimes left him and started going out with Chelsea Manning. I think he got broken. Add wanting to be cool on top of that and you’ve got a recipe for a billionaire “pick me”
Wasn’t there also the thing where he offered a horse to a masseuse if they’d give him a happy ending? A couple days before the story broke he made some statements supporting Republicans then said “watch the left come up with a story to take me down now that I’m a Republican,” or something like that. All his political shit has been downhill and ever more unhinged since.
He was always saying side-eye worthy shit, but in a generic rich guy way. His political stuff, before the horse thing, was always progressive-ish. Whether that was what he ready thought, or as the biggest shareholder of an electric car company he knew which side his bread was buttered on, I’m sure I don’t know. But it seems like that was the turning point for his public persona.
One does have to wonder how the horse came up. I can only come up with raunchy pythonesque logic based bartering.
Wait what’s that about Chelsea Manning‽
edgarde
Flying SquidI originally thought that, but when I read the interview with his daughter- nope. He’s always been a queerphobe bigot. Long before she transitioned, when Elon thought she was a gay boy, he constantly berated her for not being masculine enough and just for being queer in general.
I like to imagine he was “hiding his power level” before.
recklessengagementGenuinely, this was back when he still had PR people managing his reputation.
Iirc, he got rid of them sometime around the submarine incident.
thannHe was pandering them, and hes pandering now, its just to different people
Bingo. Elon has a pathological need to be fawned over and will say whatever he needs to to make that happen.
Initially, he found that warm mouth in the left wing for championing products to address climate change, but he was still being held accountable for his failures and obnoxiousness.
When Trump showed him that reactionaries will love you just being a narcissistic asshole and they could be bought for a pittance, he jumped ship. If a bigger, more easily swayed group of people became available to him, he’d rewrite his personality to pander to them instead.
JohnmannescaWhy can’t he pander to his children then?
he doesn’t see them as people, plus he can’t make money off of them so they’re of no value
When a billionaire cishet guy talks about LGBT rights in order to sell cars, how can anyone think that’s not pinkwashing?
Avicennahe just realized which crowd responds better to sucking up
I think he desperately wants to be liked. He used to say liberal things, because that’s more popular. Now he’s got enough money that a bunch of people will like him no matter what (or pretend to), so he can say what he really thinks while being insulated from the repercussions.
Six years ago, conservatives would vandalize Teslas in parking lots. Then, when Elon became an open bigot, conservatives started buying Teslas and worshipping Elon. I wonder why that is.
Guys, I’m starting to think conservatives might be bigots.
That’s called voting with your wallet, which is different from cancel culture, because woke.
His daughter came out and he lost his shit over it and blames Biden.
I’m guessing he realized within those six years that the political party which lets him run his companies as though USA is a third world country have a very different set of values which he has to follow to influence the elections.
Don’t let this fool you, not from him and not from anyone representing a corporation. Corporations time and time again will say and do whatever it takes to profit, including pretending to care about human rights.
He changes his opinions based on what benefits him, but he genuinely believes them at the time. He’s an idiot.
There is no truth to him, only what he says in each instant. Textbook strong narcissism.
He was lying back then, just like he is lying now.