Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by bearmode | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

bearmode

He was an arse 6 years ago as well, it just wasn't quite so well documented. Plenty of us knew it.

View on HN

But now he's made the cardinal sin of being a Republican. Thus the internet has turned on him.

That’s playing a bit fast and loose with the facts.

The timing of his announcement was suspicious: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CH55WpJxF1s

And he’s gotten some flak from a high profile Republican as well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7kT_80NaS6A

Sure, that's what it is. Not the multiple missed deadlines around FSD, Cybertruck, Hyperloop, etc. At least that "flamethrower" product placated his fanboys for a bit.

Again, the numbers show that it is just that:

April: -5 Net favorability amongst Democrats

June: -37 Net favorability amongst Democrats

https://morningconsult.com/2022/06/23/elon-musk-favorability...

Or if you look at the percentages.

April to June:

59% more Democrats find Musk unfavorable

61% more Republicans find Musk unfavorable

But we don't do that because percent change is meaningless without talking about the baseline

The baseline is that a number of Democrats already didn't like Musk in April and somehow him becoming a Republican made 60% more of both political parties not like him.

20% of Democrats turned against him, compared to 8% of Republicans.

But why is this even an argument? Is anyone still unaware that a lot of Democrats hate Republicans?

The argument was: "he's made the cardinal sin of being a Republican."

So why would being a Republican cause both parties to dislike him at the same percentage?

> both parties to dislike him at the same percentage

That's not true at all. The percentage of Democrats who dislike him is much higher.

The number of Democrats who started disliking him during the Twitter acquisition is much higher.

And the percentage of Democrats who started disliking him during the Twitter acquisition (as a percentage of the party) is also much higher.

As GP said, percentage growth in the percent who dislike him in each party is not a useful thing to compare. Doubling a side business from $100/month to $200/month is not comparable to doubling from $1M/month to $2M/month.

The percentages are the same. Why would Republicans dislike Musk more now that Musk is identifying as a Republican? And why is it the liberals fault, cause that's what was being asserted.

>But now he's made the cardinal sin of being a Republican.

> Why would Republicans dislike Musk more now

That's easy to answer: hostile media coverage and negativity on social media.

What do you think is driving the change from April to June if not his Twitter acquisition and identifying as a Republican?

He's giving the internet _plenty_ more reasons than that to turn.

And for years the internet didn't turn on him. Then he made some pro Republican noises and his favorability among young Democrats (i.e. most of the internet) dropped by 25 points in a month.

Bullshit, the turn started years ago with the Pedo-calling fiasco.

So Elon expresses support for Republicans while disparaging Democrats and thus loses favorability among Democrats. So what?

"The internet" is not the same thing as Democrats.

You're replying to the wrong comment, I never said it was.

Similar nonsense has been said about Trump (“it’s just the liberal media”), as though we didn’t have direct access to his tweets.

This is backed up by numbers:

https://morningconsult.com/2022/06/23/elon-musk-favorability...

What else happened between April and June to make his unfavorable rating go from 37% to 59% among Democrats?

The behavior described in the chain of comments you're responding to. Or literally the thread you're in. Making a public ass of himself on a consistent basis. Acting like a child.

You can't be seriously arguing that Elon just started making an ass of himself between April and June.

Attempting to buy Twitter because you think it doesn't favor trolls enough was not a popular move.

That's precisely what happened.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com