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Comment by burnished | Hacker News Reader

I'm not getting the impression that his actions are the result of a highly polished corporate public personna, I think his actions make way more sense if you imagine that he's just some regular, kinda bright, really eccentric asshole with more money than god.

Like, you can probably imagine at least one person you know acting this way if they discovered a genie.

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> I'm not getting the impression that his actions are the result of a highly polished corporate public persona.

This has been my thought for a while. Dudes is a character, playing a part.

You missed the "not" part of the sentence.

"asshole"

What has he done to deserve that label?

You should do a google search before posting on HN. Dude's done tons of really mean, rude, or questionable things. At many levels. It's not on the OP to prove it to you with exhaustive sources or whatever when you can just look around you and get examples.

But since you want an actual link, here: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=elon+musk+douchebag&ia=web

I'd grant the "pedo" thing. But I'm not sure what else. Link didn't provide anything of merit.

There are very few things you can do that are a bigger asshole move than calling the person who bravely rescued a bunch of children a pedophile because you didn't get to be the hero.

Not to defend childish Twitter name-calling, but the reason he did it was that the dude picked a pointless fight with him first. Let he who has not escalated an insult battle throw the first stone.

Your sentence is a a classic example where everything after the "but" pretty much contradicts what came before it.

No, they are addressing two different things. The second half addresses the parent assertion that he did it simply out of spite over whose cave rescue solution worked out first.

You may not be personally deafening him, but you are certainly offering a possible defense. So while you say "Not to defend childish Twitter name-calling" , you are also offering a possible defense for someone calling another person a pedophile without cause.

I might be misremembering the sequence of events, but I thought he called him names because the said hero publicly told Elon to shove the microsubmarine he was trying to build into his ass. Which kinda changes the picture entirely, at least for me.

Not really when the "microsubmarine" solution was never going to work and every minute was vital to get the kids out alive. So more of a "piss off and let people who actually know what they're doing focus on the job"

And regardless of that, it is still a massive asshole move to call someone a pedophile because they told you to shut up. Those two insults couldn't be more different in severity and social implications.

The pedo thing makes you an asshole. You can still have virtues while also being an asshole. I'm not really sure what there is to discuss on that point.

Every billionaire is supposedly an "asshole" and the only reason is because they have the money to do all of the things that regular people would also do but pretend they don't because they don't have the power to do anything.

The fact that nature places constraints on ordinary humans’ worst instincts is probably a good thing. We’re all fundamentally egomaniacal idiots who would do stupid things if granted absolute power. The fact that our society has granted a few PayPal co-founders something akin to such power is not a strong argument that such power is a good idea.

I find it pretty ironic that the Hacker News user calling someone a douchebag goes on to provide what amounts to a "Let Me Google That For You" (lmgtfy) link.

If I came off as calling someone a douchebag, that's my bad - I've reread my comment and don't see that there, but if it happened I'm sorry. Could I re-word it somehow?

My main point was that saying "nuh uh" isn't a substantive rebuttal to a claim, especially when there's a pretty solid wealth of evidence in both directions (Musk has been a real turd to some people, specifically unionizers or laborers in his domain as well as that one anti-submarine guy who he leveraged his wealth to slander as a paedophile, but has helmed pioneering work in battery tech, propulsion, and non-government viable (!) approaches to lots of technological hurdles).

So, given the context of him being a known polarizing figure, "what has he done to deserve 'asshole':(" is not a substantive comment. LMGTFY is appropriate here, if anywhere?

I mean, you don't have to believe it makes him one, but it's not like people can't find examples of things that they might consider worth the label:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50695593

his defense being....

> Mr Musk told the court this week the phrase "pedo guy" was common in South Africa, where he grew up.

Holy moly - reading that article I never knew the British caver's lawyer was the same completely delusional Lin Wood from the idiotic "kraken" lawsuits. No wonder he lost the case.

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