The reality is that he has been acting exactly the same way for the past 20 years. Nothing has changed except the observers.
His clear shift towards messiness was at least four years ago, with his unnecessary statements and actions during the Thai soccer team cave crisis.
I have always made this same comment about movies, where script writers can make something that I don't know about believable but when it came time to talk about networking or hacking or computers, it always seemed so lame. I realized that "sounding accurate" and "being accurate" were actually orthogonal characteristics of discourse.
It has always been the case where I adjust my 'believability index' by what is accomplished rather than by what is said.
I suspect there are very smart capable people at Tesla and SpaceX who are pulling off miracles but not getting credit for it. If that is true, I wish I knew who they were because I have mad respect for what they have done.
I have been in the game long enough to understand the use but eventually you have to make good.
It is stunning that there haven’t been lawsuits about ‘Full Self Driving’ and that it has taken the Feds this long to raise eyebrows about it
The internet culture surrounding him is pretty detached from reality. I can't imagine not wanting to hire a former SpaceX engineer into my current company because we think Elon did everything himself.
I remember hanging out with friends who worked for ULA around the time when Falcon IX was pulling off its first landings. We were at a party drinking beer, and they were repeating their company's propaganda as if the ideas were their own. It's possible for even the best engineers to become irrationally biased if they're worried about their jobs.
I don't keep a list of usernames but a few folks talk with authority across a range of topics - both tech and adjacent interests - and when they happen to step into some niche where they obviously don't have the same depth, and yet project the same level of authority while being not entirely correct, it really does recalibrate that "believability index".
If it makes the situation more risky for Twitter and more likely to be sued.
If Twitter did something wrong or illegal in the past, couldn't it be held accountable today and have to pay a fine or compensation?
Sounds like stepping on your own foot.
The fact that it has turned into such an obvious nothingburger just highlights how out of touch with reality Elon has become, and how badly he needs to feel like people like him.
But that’s not the dirty laundry I meant. I just mean all of the replies to the Twitter peanut gallery and reposting lame memes and looking generally boorish, rude, and unhip. He doesn’t have to do any of that, yet he chooses to.