Was he lying back then and is truthful now, or did the pandemic just break him?
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.
There is no truth to him, only what he says in each instant. Textbook strong narcissism.
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 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.
Why 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
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.
When a billionaire cishet guy talks about LGBT rights in order to sell cars, how can anyone think that’s not pinkwashing?
His daughter came out and he lost his shit over it and blames Biden.
he 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 Tesla 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.
According to his trans daughter, he was treating her like shit long before this, so he’s always been an asshole.
He’s definitely always been an asshole but he only went crazy a few years ago.
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.
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.
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.
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?!”
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
edit: oh i think i get it now. very clever
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
It’s a reference to someone “selling” the Brooklyn bridge to someone else for scrap long ago. I think so anyway.
I thought it was about selling the bridge as a toll bridge.
Which wouldn’t be a bad investment if they could prove your buying the right to toll the bridge.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Parker
You are correct
This 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)
Since at the time, he still had his rather spectacular or team… it’s probably not even him writing that.
This 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 people promoting electric cars 20 years ago, well before it was considered profitable. He was also the only wealthy person advocating for risk mitigation as a species (a mars colony).
Regardless of recent events, I’m not dumb enough to believe he was simply acting flawlessly for well over a decade. If he were always the narcissist he is today, the cracks would have been apparent long ago. Instead I came to the conclusion — like many people before me — that absolute power corrupts, absolutely. Narcissists are not born; they are created. It’s no different to Bezos. In this interview from 27 years ago he’s just a regular nerd; not the corporate “let them piss in jars” sociopath he is today. The evidence is clear. Extreme wealth and power create narcissism. Billionaires should not exist.
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.
pretty sure still thinks about him that way
