Pretty much fell for the 4chan/8chan memes like the rest of the alt-right.
I really wish twitter would die already, so it can fertilize whatever grows in it's place.
I keep linking to this Adam Conover interview with Elle Reeve because it's so amazing. She talks all about how the modern crop of Republicans are all living in this bubble created by 4Chan where they think trolling and bigotry and misogyny and such are hilarious and believe everyone else agrees. It's a long interview but absolutely worth the time, even if you just watch in chunks.
Saw that not too long ago, also there's a Netflix documentary (the antisocial network) that details a good bit of it too. As someone who was pretty familiar with it in the late 2000s, I was kinda shocked that so much of the bullshit that's invaded politics in the past decade has stemmed from there. I remember the first time someone was trying to show me all the q-anon crap, they eat up that garbage.
The only reason I know Calgary exists, is because I was a wrestling fan in the 90s. And Bret Hart has been complaining since 1997 that he gets screwed harder than Jenna Jameson.
His mother was American and his father was, I believe, Cuban. Neither had Canadian citizenship. They happened to hatch him in the territory of Canada while his mom was working in Alberta, so he technically was Canadian until this all came out in 2014 or 2015 when he was running in the Republican primary and he renounced his citizenship. Unfortunately for you, he was a dual citizen thanks to his mother so you can't deport him back to us. Feel free to deport him into the Gulf of Mexico if you want, though.
I would feel conflicted about dumping Pollivere over the fence. It's like when you have a neighbour whose yard is already filled with trash and you are like "well, more can't make much more of a difference..."
But then again I am trans and I really don't want him here to fuck up one of the few places in the world where being trans is actually protected.
I don't know if it's true or not, but I did find out through searching that he went from "showering is the most important thing ever" to "I don't have time to shower" over the course of three years:
The level of irony of his spreading easily disproven bullshit that talks specifically about (presumably his prowess in) assessing the truth of statements is immeasurable.
He reposted this account before as I remember users discussing it's name. I feel like they baited him intentionally this time. Post sounds as if it's been written by Elon and for Elon.
Wait until his constant hostility to business partners, the devaluing of Teslas as a luxury status symbol, and defaulting loans tanks his net worth as well.
Sounds like he could run for president. Just needs the Supreme Court to rule that born citizen thing unconstitutional. Then him and Shkrelli as vp can run in 2028.
How about I'M in charge? Everybody gets all the rights. Nobody has to work anymore. And we make sure this bacon shortage that I keep hearing is approaching, where pigs are going to go extinct, never happens. We're gonnna make those pigs fuck, and make more pigs, and when they die, we get bacon, and we'll make their offspring fuck other pigs, and make their own offspring, and eventually THEY become bacon.
Basically, bacon regeneration is my number one goal here. Fuck money. Fuck power. Eat bacon. Shut up.
I mean this may be my 'tism spiking but Plato has an actual quote about "the weakness of democracy" and its exactly what you would expect; just advocating for the rich and affluent to rule.
The biggest problem, at least from my perspective, is not his claim of autism. Maybe he has it, maybe he doesn't. As far as I know, he's never been evaluated.
The biggest problem is that he uses the claim of autism as a shield for his awful behavior.
Autism is not an 'get out of being an asshole for free' card because autism and being an asshole are totally unrelated.
Even I, who is relatively less affected by it can realize it's a disability, even if things well align for me, I feel it just like a personality type.
One can harness autism as a de-facto super power, but channeling your special interests to more usefult things might not be available for everyone, and could be limited in some way of form. Autistic people can be somewhat better at pattern recognition, which could be useful at times.
He specifically means Engineers and "High IQ" men, and it's because of his grandfather - who was a hardline Technocrat and part of a kind of Ayn Randesque cult called "Technology Incorporated".
...but his grandfather didn't think the cult went far enough:
You can’t be an engineer without recognizing many way things could be done better, if the people were out of the way.
This election in the US is partly about this exact question.
US executive branch is mostly a meritocracy: people are hired to be able to do their job. Only a few at the top of each agency are political appointees whose role is to guide the agency along the political policies
however both project 2025 and Trump vow to replace many of those people with those whose only skills are political and loyalty
If you think government works poorly now, just wait until they start replacing people who get the job done with people who worship dear leader, but don’t know what they’re doing. We see it at small scale, such as Supreme Court, but imagine hundreds of thousands.
As an engineer I would never want that Technocracy dystopia, but I sure as heck want government agencies and businesses filled with people hired for their ability to get the job done
"He specifically means Engineers and “High IQ” men" No, no he doesn't. The OP was not talking about intelligence, he was talking about physical strength. You could at least put an argument forward that intelligent people should be running things, but no, this is specifically saying that you have to be physically tough and strong. This is government by MMA fighters.
Ok so has he ever met engineers? Firstly our men come in a testosterone range from “full coat of fur except the top of the head” to “I think he might be intersex actually”. Secondly some of us are women. And thirdly, while I wish I could run for city council, the vast majority of us make for terrible leaders. We’re prone to tunnel vision and thinking we know everything. We’re also largely arrogant.
Oh, and fourthly, Elon isn’t one of us. Like dude, you’re a billionaire, you can afford the tutors to get an engineering degree, but you choose not to while clearly insecure about it.
I get people are gonna say he was always this bad but I honestly don't buy it.
While he was always an asshole, everyone has some ratio of bad/good. In the early/mid 2010s he was able to keep enough of a lid on things that he had a positive reputation with among both the public and investors. The limited comments he did make on politics were pretty liberal, and usually specific to the environment. He was liked enough in heavily liberal circles to get multiple positive shoutouts. One of them was from freaking Star Trek, which as a sidenote inadvertently ended up aging like wine.
Modern Elon is absolutely unhinged. He seems to spend more time on Twitter making an ass of himself in ways you'd normally associate with a teenage edge lord. He's an active and aggressive liability to his companies, both in terms of his persona and business decisions. He's huge on politics to the point where he tried to interfere with the Russo-Ukraine war for a bit. A lot of times it feels like it's a matter of time before he gets on stage with Kanye and starts trying to rap.
I think a combination of social media and covid broke him. I know Lemmy doesn't think rich people are human, but I think it's more nuanced than that. While they often have quirks, at the end of the day we're all human. There are millions of people whose brains became fried due to culture war shit on social media post 2014. There's no reason Elon would be immune to the same mechanisms that radicalize an average person.
While he was always an asshole, everyone has some ratio of bad/good. In the early/mid 2010s he was able to keep enough of a lid on things that he had a positive reputation with among both the public and investors.
Back then he still had his handler/business mommy Mary Beth Brown. She had basic control over his scheduling and publicity outreach since he started Tesla. In 2014 he canned her after she asked for a raise, he's been handling his own pr and schedule ever since.
The problem with assuming that this is a recent change in personality is that it requires ignoring all his prior reported behaviour. It ignores how much media marketing actually changes our perceptions of powerful people.
No Elon did not become an asinine child overnight, he's been that way the whole time. He just believes he's now rich enough that he doesn't have to pretend to be a different person. No JFK Jr did not become an insane person because he watched too much fox news, he's literally been eating roadkill since he was a child.
All of these wealthy and powerful people have an entire system working for them dedicated to protecting their public image.
I'm not saying he wasn't always an asshole. I'm saying the level of asshole political extremist he is now is a huge departure from how he was previously.
2017 Elon isn't a good person, but is a lot better and sane than 2021 Elon, who is in turn a lot better and sane than 2024 Elon. His first huge Twitter spat was the submarine pedophile fiasco, and now he says something more deranged than that on a weekly basis.
My point was that he's always been an extremist right winged nut job, he's just letting people see it now.
If you look at his work history, the people he hung out with, and how he's run his businesses, it's all very consistent with far right libertarian ideology. He's always been against regulation, he's always been anti union, and he started a business with Peter Thiel.
Not much has changed, except he now believes his cult of personality is strong enough to withstand media criticisms.
It ignores how much media marketing actually changes our perceptions of powerful people.
I similarly didn't know how much of an asshole Steve Jobs was until listening to a podcast about his behavior. I had the same vague understanding of him everyone did (he's regarded as a visionary, but was a micromanager and a perfectionist, etc).
PR firms and handlers do the devil's work of making these monsters presentable to the public.
Some of the shit his daughter has said about him is fucking incredible- like weird sexual shit with her (I don't think he was grooming her, he was just creepy as fuck) and just being cruel to her for no reason.
Yeah that's why it ended up aging like wine. I think the writing crew meant it to be legit given the other people mentioned and the overall writing quality of season 1, but it ends up being a great moment of foreshadowing.
Look if you don't think there's any evidence to support social media and the pandemic leading to both a decline in mental health and radicalization, I don't know what to tell you. Not only have there been like a million different articles on it, but this is patently obvious to the vast majority of people who lived through the entire thing.
This isn't exclusively a middle aged man thing, a conservative thing, or even a political thing. A ton of people struggled enormously during the pandemic, sought solace in social media, and left with an extremely weird set of beliefs.
I'm sure I could find some of these sources, but I feel like I'd be trying to convince someone that the sky is blue. This is so abundantly obvious that you've either been living under an extremely large rock or are dead set on believing what you want to believe.
I really wouldn't discount social media, which he has shown an addiction to.
I've personally watched a very close friend go from a huge Obama / liberal supporter to supporting Trump, Canada's trump mini, full on climate change denial, anti vaccine stuff by going down the right wing conspiracy theory rabbit hole. All on twitter/youtube/facebook etc stuff. He doesn't watch MSM.
There's definitely a rich/yes man aspect as well, but social media echo chambers can have a huge influence.
edit: and for what it's worth, it's not worth trying to reason with him anymore, and the relationship has pretty much died during covid.
Do you remember the whole debacle in 2018 where he defamed the guy who actually rescued the kids by calling him a pedophile after his stupid sub idea was shot down?
The difference between now and the late 00s/early 10s, is that he actually listened to his RP people. Before he took over SpaceX and Tesla there wasn't much reason for people to pay attention to him so the narrative that he was using his wealth to improve humanity was taken at face value and pushed in the media.
The more spotlight he got and the more he interacted with other public figures, the more it was apparent that he wasn't liberal minded as he had been made out to be and the more of his history in South Africa and early days of what we'd call the modern internet started to reveal him to what he always was, a nepo baby using his money to plaster his name over other people's accomplishments. He never was a modern day Nikolai Tesla, he's a modern day Thomas Edison, pushing his own bad ideas and ensuring no one who works for him gets proper credit or compensation for the work making him money.
I think there are some people who just exist in our communities and lives that can shed some light here.
The father who’s generally progressive in public, because he never really cared about it when it doesn’t affect him. But he was cruel to his “son” for displaying failure of masculinity growing up, and later when that “son” came out as a trans woman he became a vocal transphobe.
The business owner who always tried to focus on businesses that addressed new and futuristic ideas. Always tried to keep things as cool as possible, especially in presenting the business to the public. But while he was willing to put in irresponsible amounts of work, he expected the same of his employees. When they started discussing collective bargaining, his facade of being different and socially responsible fell to the wayside as he began fighting tooth and nail against unions, and employees increasingly felt comfortable talking about his bad behavior in all manner of topics as well as the public began listening about it.
The man who in college falls for a woman, and has a family with her. But he strikes it rich and becomes famous and files for divorce leaving her with the kids and screwed by a prenup.
The individual who consistently alienates those around themselves, who refuses to build community, instead believing themselves different, better. They may be chasing fame, wealth, and power, but they may not be. Getting it is irrelevant. But regardless in their alienation they find Internet communities. Them develop a sense of communal identity without connection, friendship, camaraderie, or comfortable belonging. A crude facsimile of community that fails to provide for interpersonal needs. And while they’re in these places they begin flowing down the pipeline to radicalization.
An individual with a strained relationship with a parent understands their parents flaws and swears they’re not going to be like that. They succeed somewhat but not completely.
Each of these things we can see Elon fall into. He’s all of them in the extreme. He is human, deeply so. Each of these involved him making choices that got him here
The OP was the definition of "I'm 12 and this is deep."
The original post that Elon upvoted was the biggest pile of steaming shit. It was in stupid, ignorant, and shows a total lack of healthy social interactions. Here's what the original post said that Elon responded with "Interesting observation":
"People who can't defend themselves physically (women and low T men) parse information though a consensus filter as a safety mechanism. They literally do not ask 'is this true', they ask 'will others be ok with me thinking this is true'. This makes them very malleable to brute force manufactured consensus; if every screen they look at says teh same thing they will adopt that position because their brain tinterprets it as everyone in a tribe believing it. Only high T alpha males and aneurotypical poeple are actually free to parse new informaiton with an objective 'is this true?' filter. This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making. Democratic, but a democraxcy only for those who are free to think."
This is a load of horse shit without an iota of real life insight.
Yeah, that line of thinking can easily be mirrored to show how people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder can think they are correct when everyone thinks they are wrong. I'm sure you'd see serial killers exhibit thinking like that.
It's important to realize when you're falling into an echo chamber situation, and it's also important to realize when you're disconnecting from reality.
This sounds so much like the "would not fuck her, her knees are too pointy" comment. It's always some sad little.loser who says such shit. Somehow losers like Andrew Tate saw people like that and actually believed that it's a good way to behave. They're aas, really.
Plenty of examples where money didn’t make it so, I mean Bloomberg tried to spend his way into being elected and didn’t work. Money is a necessary but not sufficient ingredient for a campaign.
"Wouldn't it be much nicer and easier if we lived in an oligarchy?" Said the man who would benefit the most from an oligarchy.
It's such a crazy stance to have when you consider the fact that America is basically already a corporatocracy and this guy literally owns parts of the corporations that have huge influence on American law and policy. Like, I guess already being able to lobby and fuck over the people just isn't enough for these people and they need to have full authoritarian control?
I guess it's true what they say, "Give them a inch..."
Nah, that's just one of those silly modern insults that just sounds bad but really isn't.
If we go by the original meaning, he's just someone whose wife cheated. Which is just an insult for the wife. If we go by the second meaning of someone that lets their wife sleep with other people, that's just kinkshaming.
But Musk can only be part of the leadership if he wins cage matches with 10 other randomly chosen billionaires, and beats 20 random women (each best of 3) in chess, 20 random women in poker, and 20 random women in billiards (8-ball, snooker, and carom: best of the 3).
In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante—the previous political state of society—which the person believes possessed positive characteristics that are absent from contemporary society.
Reactionaries hate democracy because it gives power to those they seek to exploit.
Well that gives me a thought - could I sell off single square inches of my backyard to people for like fifty cents so they'd be land owners and eligible to vote?
I dont understand the logic of this. Even if everything in that post was true and ignoring personal experience, how are neurodivergent people immune to propaganda? Why would people with dyslexia not be scared if they dont have the popular opinion if people without dyslexia would be scared? Do they think that "anxiety disorder" means that people with it are fearless?
Also, a large part of humans are aneurotypical so its not elon musks worst idea of how a country should be ran
Oh, no, it's not about being sensitive to propaganda, it's about having a small group, in which they would belong and vet other members, deciding what's true or not for the rest of us.
I would imagine there are whole teams of Sociologists tracking his and JKR's tweets at the moment to plot the Brownian motion movement from rich idiot to full fascist.
Man who had his hairline surgically repaired and shows clear signs of taking human growth hormone to not look like flabby nerd he is thinks he's both high status and would be a leader in a hypothetical alpha male society.
Nevermind how the Senate is already there to balance "unfettered democracy" and is awful at it.
Like seriously, if we wanted the senate to be the voice of the small to hold up public worst instinct, we'd add seats from territories, indigenous nations, and labor unions, and give it a veto on what the house passes instead of making it pass stuff itself.
Also upping the number of senators per delegation to a multiple of three because FUCKING SERIOUSLY WHY ONLY TWO‽
We’ve done that. What about a republic led by women instead? Clearly if the problem is with democracy instead of just Mr. Musk’s misogyny that should be fine.
In general I don’t take anyone’s suggestions seriously when they propose taking away other people’s agency
Oh shit, I had no idea there was a democracy/republic nation without male sufferage. In fact I was under the impression that in every country except 6 the majority or entirety of legislators are male. In fact I was fully under the impression that in the vast majority of the world men are disproportionately represented in government. Thanks for enlightening me
I'm not American, but doesn't the Constitution say "we the people", not "we the high status males"?
This is very on-brand for Musk honestly, he had a bit of value back when PayPal was decent and Tesla was the only EV company...
Since he started launching trash into orbit, he's progressively gotten more and more insane in his ideas.
And yes, I consider starlink to basically be orbiting trash.... In case anyone didn't get it.
He has no business acumen, spending millions of dollars to put a wireless mesh in low earth orbit, and having to regularly replace the debris in orbit, costing millions more per year, then charging people out the ass for service, or putting so many users on it that you might as well be on dialup.... Good plan. I'm a network/wireless tech as my day job, and putting enough users onto the system at an appropriate/affordable cost, to justify the expense of doing it, and maintaining it, is really dumb. You'll overload your frequency allocation, exhausting any bandwidth that was available, and the service will suck. Reducing user load just increases costs to the end user month over month because each LEO satellite is worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and will only be in orbit for a few years, maybe 5 years at the high end.
I'm not a business person, but if each satellite costs $200k to build and put in orbit (it's probably a lot more) and lasts 4 years, you need to make $50k/yr from that satellite to break even, of you're charging about $100/mo for access to the service, that means every satellite requires 500 users to be subscribed in order to break even.... Then ask yourself, can each satellite handle servicing 500 users?
No. The answer is no. They can't. You'll never break even at that price. And IMO, that's a pretty generous estimate on costs.
It's a bad plan from the beginning. Unless you can subsidize everything by launching the satellites along side orbital launches that other people have paid for, so you basically get to orbit for free, and/or somehow subsidize the cost of building the satellites, then you're pretty much always going to lose money.
What I guess he means is there's a leader (dictator), and there are other people in power besides him, so it's not a dictatorship. Or the Hungarian-style "fake democracy" where the opposition only exists to try to convince the EU we're not a de-facto dictatorship, Viktor Orbán is just so beloved by everyone.
Child of apartheid emerald baron doesn't like democracy.
Shocker.
Frankly he’s more child of 4chan than anything else mate.
Pretty much fell for the 4chan/8chan memes like the rest of the alt-right. I really wish twitter would die already, so it can fertilize whatever grows in it's place.
I keep linking to this Adam Conover interview with Elle Reeve because it's so amazing. She talks all about how the modern crop of Republicans are all living in this bubble created by 4Chan where they think trolling and bigotry and misogyny and such are hilarious and believe everyone else agrees. It's a long interview but absolutely worth the time, even if you just watch in chunks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cpwJ7o0o6c
Saw that not too long ago, also there's a Netflix documentary (the antisocial network) that details a good bit of it too. As someone who was pretty familiar with it in the late 2000s, I was kinda shocked that so much of the bullshit that's invaded politics in the past decade has stemmed from there. I remember the first time someone was trying to show me all the q-anon crap, they eat up that garbage.
And no, the headline isn’t exaggerating. It’s literally that cringe.
It's a fucking 4chan screenshot
That's what they said...
No but that's even cringier than I think some people would imagine.
Elon, if you don’t like the USA system, why the flying fuck did you move here?
Go back to South Africa you ladder pulling, entitled piece of shit.
Take Canadian wannabe secessionist Ted Cruz with you.
Ted Cruz is Canadian???
So, let me get this straight.....a Canadian moves to Texas, and then when it snows and gets cold, he flees to Mexico???
Welp. Nobody can say that Ted Cruz is a stereotype. We CAN say he's an asshole though. Which I will. Ted Cruz is an asshole. There, I said it.
Yep. Asshole and secessionist Rafael “Ted” Cruz was born in the taint of Canada 🇨🇦Calgary, Alberta.
The only reason I know Calgary exists, is because I was a wrestling fan in the 90s. And Bret Hart has been complaining since 1997 that he gets screwed harder than Jenna Jameson.
The Hitman!
He was a terrific wrestler
Not just terrific; the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.
I also loooovvvved Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka👍👍👍👍👍
His mother was American and his father was, I believe, Cuban. Neither had Canadian citizenship. They happened to hatch him in the territory of Canada while his mom was working in Alberta, so he technically was Canadian until this all came out in 2014 or 2015 when he was running in the Republican primary and he renounced his citizenship. Unfortunately for you, he was a dual citizen thanks to his mother so you can't deport him back to us. Feel free to deport him into the Gulf of Mexico if you want, though.
Which is one of the dumbest parts since only people born in the US can be president lol.
Can we deport him to the homeland of his father? I'm guessing Cuba would have a few ideas about what should be done with Ted Cruz.
It's not that we're downplaying it. It's just that we wouldn't want the USA to deport him back here...
Yeah but we're not taking him back. Sorry.
But do you want to take Pierre Poilievre off our hands? He sounds exactly like Ron DeSantis, do you need another one of those down there?
I would feel conflicted about dumping Pollivere over the fence. It's like when you have a neighbour whose yard is already filled with trash and you are like "well, more can't make much more of a difference..."
But then again I am trans and I really don't want him here to fuck up one of the few places in the world where being trans is actually protected.
Predicament...
Can't we just send them all to Antartica?
Russia is looking for conscripts. Since all these Republicans are so pro Russia, the obvious thing for them to do is move there.
Tucker Carlson is simply enamored with their supermarkets I hear
What have the penguins ever done to us?
Can we toss him to the gators?
Canada's biggest embarrassment
That's Jordan Peterson. Cruz was a dual citizen until he renounced his Canadian citizenship so it's a shared shame, Peterson is strictly on us.
omg I forgot 😞
He is a Canadian by virtue of being born here, but also American because of his parents. Thus he is eligible to become President. Please keep him!
No, U.
Born in Canada ( to an American ) and not Canadian ( not a citizen ).
The only thing good about all this is that he cannot be President.
He basically moved from Canada's wannabe Texas to actual Texas and we're not sorry he's gone... Just kind of sorry he's your problem now.
I heard Ted Cruz pisses his pants on purpose because he likes the warm wet feeling
Stereotypical asshole
lol. Dude is retweeting a chan board.
Yup, that’s where all the greatest minds congregate.
"high-T alpha males" This is something a 12 year old would post on r/redpill in 2014.
If only they didn't keep saying it as a 22 year old in 2024.
He has people that shower him. That’s pretty fucking pathetic if you ask me.
That can't be true.
Which probably means it is true. What the fuck?
I don't know if it's true or not, but I did find out through searching that he went from "showering is the most important thing ever" to "I don't have time to shower" over the course of three years:
https://www.sj-r.com/story/business/2015/01/06/elon-musk-reveals-his-most/35590257007/
https://www.thewrap.com/elon-musk-isnt-bathing-these-days-heres-why/
Never heard of "ketamine chest" before but apparently it's a thing.
Holy shit, that is the whitest white man in existence. Isn't South Africa hot? How did he survive down there?
They took and kept slaves.
I so pale..
The level of irony of his spreading easily disproven bullshit that talks specifically about (presumably his prowess in) assessing the truth of statements is immeasurable.
Does that include transitioned males on TRT?
He reposted this account before as I remember users discussing it's name. I feel like they baited him intentionally this time. Post sounds as if it's been written by Elon and for Elon.
Wait till he finds out that the consensus is that he is not a high status male despite his net worth.
Wait until his constant hostility to business partners, the devaluing of Teslas as a luxury status symbol, and defaulting loans tanks his net worth as well.
Sounds like he could run for president. Just needs the Supreme Court to rule that born citizen thing unconstitutional. Then him and Shkrelli as vp can run in 2028.
Sigh Knowing that's entirely possible makes the joke less funny.
How about I'M in charge? Everybody gets all the rights. Nobody has to work anymore. And we make sure this bacon shortage that I keep hearing is approaching, where pigs are going to go extinct, never happens. We're gonnna make those pigs fuck, and make more pigs, and when they die, we get bacon, and we'll make their offspring fuck other pigs, and make their own offspring, and eventually THEY become bacon.
Basically, bacon regeneration is my number one goal here. Fuck money. Fuck power. Eat bacon. Shut up.
I agree with 99% of this except everybody getting rights.
Billionaires are guillotined. They deserve no rights.
Well, they're not 'people', so...
Same old story, same old song and dance. Dudes with power and influence been screeching this since Plato's dong dangled beneath his toga.
I mean this may be my 'tism spiking but Plato has an actual quote about "the weakness of democracy" and its exactly what you would expect; just advocating for the rich and affluent to rule.
Marx and Engels were pretty comfortable to philosophize from their cushy socioeconomic status.
As an autist, I'm revoking his diagnosis, he's neurotypical now.
We don't want him, either. Maybe we need a new classification.
'jackass'
Johnny Knoxville is gonna be pissed.
The biggest problem, at least from my perspective, is not his claim of autism. Maybe he has it, maybe he doesn't. As far as I know, he's never been evaluated.
The biggest problem is that he uses the claim of autism as a shield for his awful behavior.
Autism is not an 'get out of being an asshole for free' card because autism and being an asshole are totally unrelated.
He never had a diagnosis. He just claims to have autism.
It’s almost like you’re describing a disability affecting someone and not some sort of super power… too real.
Even I, who is relatively less affected by it can realize it's a disability, even if things well align for me, I feel it just like a personality type.
One can harness autism as a de-facto super power, but channeling your special interests to more usefult things might not be available for everyone, and could be limited in some way of form. Autistic people can be somewhat better at pattern recognition, which could be useful at times.
Is autist a for real term? I keep seeing it and I remember a first saw it years ago somewhere and it was not taken kindly to.
Originates from 4chan, but mostly reclaimed by the community.
He specifically means Engineers and "High IQ" men, and it's because of his grandfather - who was a hardline Technocrat and part of a kind of Ayn Randesque cult called "Technology Incorporated".
...but his grandfather didn't think the cult went far enough:
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/technocracy-incorporated-elon-musk/
So that's where he's getting his ideas/inclinations.
All his engineers must be yes men, because the engineers I know support much more interesting new social structures.
You can’t be an engineer without recognizing many way things could be done better, if the people were out of the way.
This election in the US is partly about this exact question.
If you think government works poorly now, just wait until they start replacing people who get the job done with people who worship dear leader, but don’t know what they’re doing. We see it at small scale, such as Supreme Court, but imagine hundreds of thousands.
As an engineer I would never want that Technocracy dystopia, but I sure as heck want government agencies and businesses filled with people hired for their ability to get the job done
I assume everyone left at Twitter is a yes man. Just biding their time and collecting a paycheck and going along with the program until the collapse.
Well yes, we like building interesting new structures of all sorts
The funny thing is he thinks he's included in that when he most certainly is not. He's a dolt.
"He specifically means Engineers and “High IQ” men" No, no he doesn't. The OP was not talking about intelligence, he was talking about physical strength. You could at least put an argument forward that intelligent people should be running things, but no, this is specifically saying that you have to be physically tough and strong. This is government by MMA fighters.
Holy this shit is so mind-mindbogglingly stupid.
Ok so has he ever met engineers? Firstly our men come in a testosterone range from “full coat of fur except the top of the head” to “I think he might be intersex actually”. Secondly some of us are women. And thirdly, while I wish I could run for city council, the vast majority of us make for terrible leaders. We’re prone to tunnel vision and thinking we know everything. We’re also largely arrogant.
Oh, and fourthly, Elon isn’t one of us. Like dude, you’re a billionaire, you can afford the tutors to get an engineering degree, but you choose not to while clearly insecure about it.
Which explains why engineers are (at least as far as I have seen) far more religious as a group than scientists.
I wonder ispf he read the part where each person gets a set of energy credits instead of cash, and you can’t accumulate.
I get people are gonna say he was always this bad but I honestly don't buy it.
While he was always an asshole, everyone has some ratio of bad/good. In the early/mid 2010s he was able to keep enough of a lid on things that he had a positive reputation with among both the public and investors. The limited comments he did make on politics were pretty liberal, and usually specific to the environment. He was liked enough in heavily liberal circles to get multiple positive shoutouts. One of them was from freaking Star Trek, which as a sidenote inadvertently ended up aging like wine.
Modern Elon is absolutely unhinged. He seems to spend more time on Twitter making an ass of himself in ways you'd normally associate with a teenage edge lord. He's an active and aggressive liability to his companies, both in terms of his persona and business decisions. He's huge on politics to the point where he tried to interfere with the Russo-Ukraine war for a bit. A lot of times it feels like it's a matter of time before he gets on stage with Kanye and starts trying to rap.
I think a combination of social media and covid broke him. I know Lemmy doesn't think rich people are human, but I think it's more nuanced than that. While they often have quirks, at the end of the day we're all human. There are millions of people whose brains became fried due to culture war shit on social media post 2014. There's no reason Elon would be immune to the same mechanisms that radicalize an average person.
Back then he still had his handler/business mommy Mary Beth Brown. She had basic control over his scheduling and publicity outreach since he started Tesla. In 2014 he canned her after she asked for a raise, he's been handling his own pr and schedule ever since.
The problem with assuming that this is a recent change in personality is that it requires ignoring all his prior reported behaviour. It ignores how much media marketing actually changes our perceptions of powerful people.
No Elon did not become an asinine child overnight, he's been that way the whole time. He just believes he's now rich enough that he doesn't have to pretend to be a different person. No JFK Jr did not become an insane person because he watched too much fox news, he's literally been eating roadkill since he was a child.
All of these wealthy and powerful people have an entire system working for them dedicated to protecting their public image.
I'm not saying he wasn't always an asshole. I'm saying the level of asshole political extremist he is now is a huge departure from how he was previously.
2017 Elon isn't a good person, but is a lot better and sane than 2021 Elon, who is in turn a lot better and sane than 2024 Elon. His first huge Twitter spat was the submarine pedophile fiasco, and now he says something more deranged than that on a weekly basis.
My point was that he's always been an extremist right winged nut job, he's just letting people see it now.
If you look at his work history, the people he hung out with, and how he's run his businesses, it's all very consistent with far right libertarian ideology. He's always been against regulation, he's always been anti union, and he started a business with Peter Thiel.
Not much has changed, except he now believes his cult of personality is strong enough to withstand media criticisms.
I similarly didn't know how much of an asshole Steve Jobs was until listening to a podcast about his behavior. I had the same vague understanding of him everyone did (he's regarded as a visionary, but was a micromanager and a perfectionist, etc).
PR firms and handlers do the devil's work of making these monsters presentable to the public.
Some of the shit his daughter has said about him is fucking incredible- like weird sexual shit with her (I don't think he was grooming her, he was just creepy as fuck) and just being cruel to her for no reason.
Combo of info at these two sites:
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/lisa-brennanjobs-powerful-memoir-sparks-backlash-against-apple-cofounder-father/news-story/a23b93b757ccab850737a1a5fcf98d76
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/memoir-steve-jobs-apos-daughter-133000491.html
Also, and this isn't anywhere near as bad but it just... ick. He used to wash his feet in the toilet. Seriously.
I don't know if you came up with this but god damn lol.
If they do this then we’ll know for sure the writers are stealing our ideas for content
On the other hand, it was said by evil mirror Lorca, so maybe it works?
...that's what "aging like wine", means, no?
Yeah that's why it ended up aging like wine. I think the writing crew meant it to be legit given the other people mentioned and the overall writing quality of season 1, but it ends up being a great moment of foreshadowing.
Oh I get you now.
What's the reference? How can I not know it?
Star Trek: Discovery season one.
Look if you don't think there's any evidence to support social media and the pandemic leading to both a decline in mental health and radicalization, I don't know what to tell you. Not only have there been like a million different articles on it, but this is patently obvious to the vast majority of people who lived through the entire thing.
This isn't exclusively a middle aged man thing, a conservative thing, or even a political thing. A ton of people struggled enormously during the pandemic, sought solace in social media, and left with an extremely weird set of beliefs.
I'm sure I could find some of these sources, but I feel like I'd be trying to convince someone that the sky is blue. This is so abundantly obvious that you've either been living under an extremely large rock or are dead set on believing what you want to believe.
I really wouldn't discount social media, which he has shown an addiction to.
I've personally watched a very close friend go from a huge Obama / liberal supporter to supporting Trump, Canada's trump mini, full on climate change denial, anti vaccine stuff by going down the right wing conspiracy theory rabbit hole. All on twitter/youtube/facebook etc stuff. He doesn't watch MSM.
There's definitely a rich/yes man aspect as well, but social media echo chambers can have a huge influence.
edit: and for what it's worth, it's not worth trying to reason with him anymore, and the relationship has pretty much died during covid.
Do you remember the whole debacle in 2018 where he defamed the guy who actually rescued the kids by calling him a pedophile after his stupid sub idea was shot down?
The difference between now and the late 00s/early 10s, is that he actually listened to his RP people. Before he took over SpaceX and Tesla there wasn't much reason for people to pay attention to him so the narrative that he was using his wealth to improve humanity was taken at face value and pushed in the media.
The more spotlight he got and the more he interacted with other public figures, the more it was apparent that he wasn't liberal minded as he had been made out to be and the more of his history in South Africa and early days of what we'd call the modern internet started to reveal him to what he always was, a nepo baby using his money to plaster his name over other people's accomplishments. He never was a modern day Nikolai Tesla, he's a modern day Thomas Edison, pushing his own bad ideas and ensuring no one who works for him gets proper credit or compensation for the work making him money.
I think there are some people who just exist in our communities and lives that can shed some light here.
The father who’s generally progressive in public, because he never really cared about it when it doesn’t affect him. But he was cruel to his “son” for displaying failure of masculinity growing up, and later when that “son” came out as a trans woman he became a vocal transphobe.
The business owner who always tried to focus on businesses that addressed new and futuristic ideas. Always tried to keep things as cool as possible, especially in presenting the business to the public. But while he was willing to put in irresponsible amounts of work, he expected the same of his employees. When they started discussing collective bargaining, his facade of being different and socially responsible fell to the wayside as he began fighting tooth and nail against unions, and employees increasingly felt comfortable talking about his bad behavior in all manner of topics as well as the public began listening about it.
The man who in college falls for a woman, and has a family with her. But he strikes it rich and becomes famous and files for divorce leaving her with the kids and screwed by a prenup.
The individual who consistently alienates those around themselves, who refuses to build community, instead believing themselves different, better. They may be chasing fame, wealth, and power, but they may not be. Getting it is irrelevant. But regardless in their alienation they find Internet communities. Them develop a sense of communal identity without connection, friendship, camaraderie, or comfortable belonging. A crude facsimile of community that fails to provide for interpersonal needs. And while they’re in these places they begin flowing down the pipeline to radicalization.
An individual with a strained relationship with a parent understands their parents flaws and swears they’re not going to be like that. They succeed somewhat but not completely.
Each of these things we can see Elon fall into. He’s all of them in the extreme. He is human, deeply so. Each of these involved him making choices that got him here
White land owning males, like the republic of old.
"Guy who did nothing to earn any of his power thinks he should have more power."
Muskrat is the DJ Khaled of technology.
The OP was the definition of "I'm 12 and this is deep."
The original post that Elon upvoted was the biggest pile of steaming shit. It was in stupid, ignorant, and shows a total lack of healthy social interactions. Here's what the original post said that Elon responded with "Interesting observation":
"People who can't defend themselves physically (women and low T men) parse information though a consensus filter as a safety mechanism. They literally do not ask 'is this true', they ask 'will others be ok with me thinking this is true'. This makes them very malleable to brute force manufactured consensus; if every screen they look at says teh same thing they will adopt that position because their brain tinterprets it as everyone in a tribe believing it. Only high T alpha males and aneurotypical poeple are actually free to parse new informaiton with an objective 'is this true?' filter. This is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making. Democratic, but a democraxcy only for those who are free to think."
This is a load of horse shit without an iota of real life insight.
Yeah, that line of thinking can easily be mirrored to show how people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder can think they are correct when everyone thinks they are wrong. I'm sure you'd see serial killers exhibit thinking like that.
It's important to realize when you're falling into an echo chamber situation, and it's also important to realize when you're disconnecting from reality.
This sounds so much like the "would not fuck her, her knees are too pointy" comment. It's always some sad little.loser who says such shit. Somehow losers like Andrew Tate saw people like that and actually believed that it's a good way to behave. They're aas, really.
I mean, that's pretty much what we've always had...
Yep, originally only wealthy white land owning men could vote or run for office.
In theory we have a democracy, but in practice money still decides elections and most of our politicians are wealthy high status white men.
Plenty of examples where money didn’t make it so, I mean Bloomberg tried to spend his way into being elected and didn’t work. Money is a necessary but not sufficient ingredient for a campaign.
It's not enough on its own, but it's a necessary piece of the puzzle. Being the best candidate is also not enough without money
At least they have to spend a fuck load to win now as opposed to just sitting on heaps of cash.
"Wouldn't it be much nicer and easier if we lived in an oligarchy?" Said the man who would benefit the most from an oligarchy.
It's such a crazy stance to have when you consider the fact that America is basically already a corporatocracy and this guy literally owns parts of the corporations that have huge influence on American law and policy. Like, I guess already being able to lobby and fuck over the people just isn't enough for these people and they need to have full authoritarian control?
I guess it's true what they say, "Give them a inch..."
This guy is laughabley brain dead, as was the post he promoted.
What will he be doing while they run things?
Cry more on twitter
Post screen shots shared by other low-T males (am i saying this right?) and agree with what they tell him.
This is the same argument that pro-slavers here in the United States were making before the Civil War that said no to that idea.
Behold the master race, all 5 genes worth.
I am a 4chan autist and I reluctantly accept the heavy burden of ruling you all with an iron fist.
(I hope it's
autist || high_Trather thanautist && high_T.)Not if my ADHD ass with excess T rules you first.
he's so scared of diversity he had to make up a word to avoid saying "neurodiverse"
That's a made up word, too. And people say neuro-atypical all the time. So maybe that's not a great criticism.
DIVORCE.
Musk should have his photo in the dictionary under C for ‘creep’, ‘cunt’, etc
Cuck
Nah, that's just one of those silly modern insults that just sounds bad but really isn't.
If we go by the original meaning, he's just someone whose wife cheated. Which is just an insult for the wife. If we go by the second meaning of someone that lets their wife sleep with other people, that's just kinkshaming.
But Musk can only be part of the leadership if he wins cage matches with 10 other randomly chosen billionaires, and beats 20 random women (each best of 3) in chess, 20 random women in poker, and 20 random women in billiards (8-ball, snooker, and carom: best of the 3).
Cage match with electrified fences.
Reactionaries hate democracy because it gives power to those they seek to exploit.
Can I be an economic reactionnary for the 60s? While keeping the better (but still terrible) social rights of today.
That's not looking backwards though; that's looking to make a more equitable future for everyone.
In other words, the opposite of reactionary politics.
Tbf, isn’t the US already a republic?
It is, he just wants to take the women and "low testosterone" men out of having a say. Women really scare them
Probably also he really overvalues himself and wants to convince himself he matters more.
The good ole days when you had to be a white, land owning man to vote!
Well that gives me a thought - could I sell off single square inches of my backyard to people for like fifty cents so they'd be land owners and eligible to vote?
No, typically they refer to the land of having some productive capacity.
So maybe you could plant a field of poppies and give away square inches.
And if not... opium for the masses!
Elon: "Oligarchy ftw"
You like that, Americans?
Most people just conform to groupthink. But not people in my group. We all think the same way because we're right!
Your T must be sky fucking high!!
With full understanding that this is not a particularly relevant measurement...ok, Elon. Do a squeeze grip test. Lemme at dat T let's see whatchu got.
Only manly rich man be rule! No woman, bleed attract bear. Manly and rich man rule! Woman and weak man dumb and weak and not man.
Oh shit, also autistic people like me. Manly men, rich men, and also me. I want to rule too. Is that cool? Or?
He'll be bankrupt within 5 years, but honestly it's getting to the point where I see him jailed before that.
I don't like Musk but I highly doubt he'll be bankrupt anytime soon.
Well, he's not male enough to be secure in his masculinity to represent them.
Didn't he go bald at like 20 years?
I bet it was high status male pattern baldness.
Hair plugs.
Ironically, the person who wrote the 4chan post didn't stop to think "is this true?".
Lets give it a try. Once a year, the people will vote who continues in the ruling elite and who of them goes to the guilliotine.
So what he's saying is, he should have no political power?
I dont understand the logic of this. Even if everything in that post was true and ignoring personal experience, how are neurodivergent people immune to propaganda? Why would people with dyslexia not be scared if they dont have the popular opinion if people without dyslexia would be scared? Do they think that "anxiety disorder" means that people with it are fearless?
Also, a large part of humans are aneurotypical so its not elon musks worst idea of how a country should be ran
Oh, no, it's not about being sensitive to propaganda, it's about having a small group, in which they would belong and vet other members, deciding what's true or not for the rest of us.
This is the Curtis Yarvin ideology, which Musk picked up second-hand from Peter Thiel.
These guys are would be-autocrats. They don’t care that we think they’d be terrible leaders.
Of course he does. He'd then proceed to try to buy his way in as Supreme Leader For Life. Everyday this guy finds a way to become a shittier jackass.
what an insecure dumb little shit-stain on a worn out shoe with holes in it
philosopher kings when
We gotta start issuing senators with knives.
I would imagine there are whole teams of Sociologists tracking his and JKR's tweets at the moment to plot the Brownian motion movement from rich idiot to full fascist.
Man who had his hairline surgically repaired and shows clear signs of taking human growth hormone to not look like flabby nerd he is thinks he's both high status and would be a leader in a hypothetical alpha male society.
Nevermind how the Senate is already there to balance "unfettered democracy" and is awful at it.
Like seriously, if we wanted the senate to be the voice of the small to hold up public worst instinct, we'd add seats from territories, indigenous nations, and labor unions, and give it a veto on what the house passes instead of making it pass stuff itself.
Also upping the number of senators per delegation to a multiple of three because FUCKING SERIOUSLY WHY ONLY TWO‽
We’ve done that. What about a republic led by women instead? Clearly if the problem is with democracy instead of just Mr. Musk’s misogyny that should be fine.
In general I don’t take anyone’s suggestions seriously when they propose taking away other people’s agency
We've done that.that's the system we have right now
Oh shit, I had no idea there was a democracy/republic nation without male sufferage. In fact I was under the impression that in every country except 6 the majority or entirety of legislators are male. In fact I was fully under the impression that in the vast majority of the world men are disproportionately represented in government. Thanks for enlightening me
My point is that even though most can vote, the actual decision makers and power brokers are overwhelmingly "high status males".
Ah sorry, really misinterpreted you there.
But yeah it never is some retail worker making their way to congress
That is fascism!
I'm not American, but doesn't the Constitution say "we the people", not "we the high status males"?
This is very on-brand for Musk honestly, he had a bit of value back when PayPal was decent and Tesla was the only EV company...
Since he started launching trash into orbit, he's progressively gotten more and more insane in his ideas.
And yes, I consider starlink to basically be orbiting trash.... In case anyone didn't get it.
He has no business acumen, spending millions of dollars to put a wireless mesh in low earth orbit, and having to regularly replace the debris in orbit, costing millions more per year, then charging people out the ass for service, or putting so many users on it that you might as well be on dialup.... Good plan. I'm a network/wireless tech as my day job, and putting enough users onto the system at an appropriate/affordable cost, to justify the expense of doing it, and maintaining it, is really dumb. You'll overload your frequency allocation, exhausting any bandwidth that was available, and the service will suck. Reducing user load just increases costs to the end user month over month because each LEO satellite is worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and will only be in orbit for a few years, maybe 5 years at the high end.
I'm not a business person, but if each satellite costs $200k to build and put in orbit (it's probably a lot more) and lasts 4 years, you need to make $50k/yr from that satellite to break even, of you're charging about $100/mo for access to the service, that means every satellite requires 500 users to be subscribed in order to break even.... Then ask yourself, can each satellite handle servicing 500 users?
No. The answer is no. They can't. You'll never break even at that price. And IMO, that's a pretty generous estimate on costs.
It's a bad plan from the beginning. Unless you can subsidize everything by launching the satellites along side orbital launches that other people have paid for, so you basically get to orbit for free, and/or somehow subsidize the cost of building the satellites, then you're pretty much always going to lose money.
It's worse than just putting trash into orbit.
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/state/2024/06/28/spacex-is-destroying-earths-ozone-layer-elon-musk-new-study/74171065007/
Oh good. More man made horrors.
Is he illiterate? Did he ever open dictionary? If he did, he would have found that republic means representative democracy.
He needs his illiteracy liquidated. Sadly, likbez ended about 100 years ago.
What I guess he means is there's a leader (dictator), and there are other people in power besides him, so it's not a dictatorship. Or the Hungarian-style "fake democracy" where the opposition only exists to try to convince the EU we're not a de-facto dictatorship, Viktor Orbán is just so beloved by everyone.
Many countrues have this.
Pretty much like Russia. Does he claim 80/80 support? 80% of votes with 80% turnover.
~
Representative yes, but it doesn't say WHO can be the representatives. You can entirely design a system where only rich men could be representatives.
In fact, the wikipedia article says:
Indeed. Not even who can vote.
Most if not all historical democracies, whether direct or representative ones, allowed at most only half of population to vote.
Republic can also just mean not ruled by a monarch. The Dutch Republic wasn’t a democracy.
Dictionary. Read it.
History book. Read it.
It will say names not always correlate with actual thing. Thanks, cap.
Or if you use history for defining words, then federation would mean "with strong leader and rigid power vertical".
https://www.usconstitution.net/republic-vs-democracy/
We are a republic been that way from the start
Why would he cuck for a system he wouldn't be a part of?