this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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I know this will seem sarcastic but I am genuinely shocked. I’m not the most versed in Elon’s biography, although I do know he has treated his employees like shit, acted pompous about subjects and issues he’s not an expert on whatsoever, and just generally seems very egotistical (u/spez, somehow seems even more egotistical to me, as a side note).
The entire Twitter thing does, frankly, blow my mind. I know this community much like Reddit will lean progressive or at least centrist. But I would like to hear from some closeted “Musketeer” or open conservative - why on earth does the “free-speech” promoter seem to love to ban people so much? I thought the whole thing about free-speech was Twitter was banning people too much and he was gonna stop all that.
It really does blow my mind to think people will tout a virtue only for the sake of their own benefit.. is that not the definition of Machiavellian?
Well, I don't think I'm a "musketeer" and I'm certainly not a conservative, but I have been a fan of Tesla for a while now so maybe I'll take a stab at this.
I want to start by saying Elon has always been an asshole. He's incredibly intelligent, and clearly doesn't give a shit about most people. Even among his own kids he only seems to act like a real father to one of them (the one nicknamed X). To me, that wasn't much of a problem when he was just running Tesla and spacex. You don't need to be friendly to run a manufacturing company, and Tesla is doing what every other company has so far failed to do: transition light vehicles away from fossil fuels. So despite Elon's personality I support him running Tesla. Even now that other companies are finally making EV's seriously they are moving far more slowly than Tesla is at ramping production of EV's.
Second, before he bought twitter, almost everything he said there was him trolling or joking. You had to take everything he said there with a grain of salt. If you wanted to hear his actual opinions on things you needed to either listen to shareholder meeting or watch one of the many interviews he does.
Combined, these two things have created a problem now that he's purchased twitter. He's still using the platform for jokes and trolling, but he's also using it for all of his communication, and he's still an asshole. I think being an asshole is a problem when you're running a social media company, I mean that's why I've left reddit. You call him Machiavellian, and I think that's an apt description of Elon. Machiavellian describes him to the point that as a long time fan, I find myself wondering if his sudden shift to the right is him trying to get conservatives on board with actually doing something about climate change. But I think that might be too optimistic of me.
Is he though? He's been successful, sure. But I feel like he hires smart people and then rides on their coattails.
I thought he was smart as well - until he started commenting on a field I know (software). And now he seems to just be confidently ignorant.
Yeah, the moment he talked about shutting down most of Twitter's microservices in prod as if it was a genius idea, that's when the illusion shattered for me.
Made me realize he's really an idiot, it's as if he's trying to emulate the Pointy Haired Boss.