• flatbield@beehaw.org
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    8 months ago

    Yes we know who Musk is… and it is a very mixed bag. Some where around the time he became the world’s richest person I feel like something changed and he went over the top or over the edge. Not sure which.

    • hedge@beehaw.orgOP
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      8 months ago

      If he had just kept his mouth shut, I might still think he was a genius (embarrassed about the “still” part 🤦‍♂️).

      • skozzii@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        Me too, I was definetely duped by him. It’s embarassing now that I see how much of a man child he is.

        And a shit father, considering his resources he may just be the worst father in history.

        • Pinklink@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Don’t be too embarrassed y’all. I am in the same boat as you, but reasonable people adjust their views and beliefs as new evidence is presented, which is exactly what we have done

          • Ilandar@aussie.zone
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            8 months ago

            I think the actual takeaway here is to not elevate people to the status of “genius” in the first place. Stop worshipping celebrities, they are only humans like the rest of us.

            • 4dpuzzle@beehaw.org
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              8 months ago

              While your argument is correct, it was none of us that raised Musk to a ‘genius’ idol. It was his own marketing campaign, probably done on his behalf by a professional PR team. When the rest of us heard the amount of praises going around, we just assumed that there was some substance to it. That’s until the ‘pedo guy’ incident started the collapse of that facade.

              • Ilandar@aussie.zone
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                8 months ago

                Marketing relies on the gullibility of the consumer. If you start from the position of “this person is just another human like me and I am better at some things than them” then celebrities suddenly aren’t so magical and special anymore. It becomes a lot easier to see through the PR bullshit.

    • Kalkaline @leminal.space
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      8 months ago

      It was the kids in the flooded cave incident where “his invention” was deemed unusable for the rescue and he called the scuba diver that helped get the kids out a pedo. That was the big turning point for me at least. That and him making a bunch of CPAP/BIPAPS during COVID when what we needed was ventilators at the time. He’s an idiot that is running on the fumes of his fans.

      • Pechente@feddit.de
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        8 months ago

        Man that scuba diver incident was also the turning point for me. Before that I actually thought he was involved in a lot of cool stuff and probably a positive influence but I also didn’t pay all that much attention to him.

    • Kichae@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      The only thing that seems to have changed is that he stopped pretending in public. Fired his PR people or something. Interviews with people who have… experienced him first hand point to his behaviour being consistent and repugnant since he was in his early 20s.

      There is no mixed bag. Just the desire in people who once believed in him to pretend that they didn’t enable a toxic narcissist.

      • Sonori@beehaw.org
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        8 months ago

        I mean the first time he really did something in public was getting mad at a bunch of journalists for just tacking a little blurb about a key Tesla investor when discussing the actual ceo’s presentation at a Tesla press event, so i’m not sure that he fired his PR team so much as the less you know about him the easier it is to like him.

        If all you know is that he’s a techbro that used his pile of free money to buy an EV and a rocket company it’s easier to file him under the James Cameron folder of generally inoffensive rich dude with neat hobbies.

    • kia@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      It’s mostly a result of him believing he’s self-made and therefore must have some sort of superior knowledge to the rest of the world. Classic case of being born on third base and thinking you hit a home run.

    • The Bard in Green@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz
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      8 months ago

      The rich go insane because the people around them enable them to believe their own bullshit and set no boundaries with them. This is SUPER bad for humans psychologically and causes us to lose touch with reality. Something in our brains depends on that group consensus to affirm our concepts of self and beliefs and decisions and it loses calibration when it gets crappy feedback.

    • athos77@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      I feel like something changed

      He grew up a rich white boy in full-Apartheid South Africa. He’s never grown up (Tesla models S,3,X,Y! Tesla fart noises! 42069 amirite!).

      Nothing changed, he just got bored and started interacting with the poor’s and people noticed the person he really was.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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      8 months ago

      Yeah, I agree with this. According to the only person I know that works at Tesla, he’s always been an asshole and was best avoided generally speaking. But I do feel like he used to be a lot more normal-techbro-socially-inept asshole guy than today’s darkly deliberate evil.

      That little clip of him running outside to watch one of the early SpaceX rockets take off, all excited, I really was on his side. IDK what went wrong. I feel like maybe inside him there’s still a wide-eyed nerd that just wants to make really good electric cars and go to Mars, and something went wrong and that guy got buried deep down, and maybe now he’ll never get free.

      • 4dpuzzle@beehaw.org
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        8 months ago

        Anyone involved with a rocket would want to run outside and watch it climb. That isn’t uncommon. But Musk had a vile character even before that. The hopeful nerd was just a facade propped up by PR pros. You can check out the history of Tesla. Despite him being hailed as its founder, it was neither his idea, nor his creation. The real founders were pushed out rather unfairly in his signature power play. That power play is still visible in Musk vs OpenAI.

    • Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      He’s a guy who wants to save the world, and in a lot of ways has the tools to save it. But only if it is him saving it