It’s shorthand for “low empathy power hungry industrialist who is willing to destroy anyone who sleights him in the most minimal of ways, while dishing out abuse liberally to anyone who crosses his path” but that’s a mouthful. The dynamics are public in both books and online media covering him; a fresh, recent example is Grimes tweeting at his recent biographer “Tell Elon I want to see my kid.” Partners, workers, anyone really who Elon feels he has power over gets the brunt of his dysfunctional emotional configuration. Could not care less about his politics, it is about how he treats other humans.

https://www.google.com/search?q=elon+abussive

https://www.google.com/search?q=elon+petty

https://fortune.com/2023/09/12/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-boo... ("One of Elon Musk’s favorite video games taught him the ‘life lesson’ that ‘empathy is not an asset.’")

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/15/tesla-asked-cooley-to-fire-l... ("Tesla asked law firm to fire attorney who worked on Elon Musk probe at SEC, report says")

https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/10/04/making-sense-of-grime... ("Grimes sues Elon Musk after she said he wouldn’t let her see their son")

> Indeed, reports and Grimes’ since-deleted social media posts indicate that the situation has become rather ugly, with allegations that Musk is being a controlling bully. In posts last month on Musk’s X platform, Grimes alleged that he wasn’t allowing her to see one of their children and threatened to take him to court unless he let her see her son or responded to her lawyer. She said the situation was “utterly ripping my family apart.”

I’ll ask one of the folks tracking Elon facts publicly to aggregate all of the citations on the topic, so the next time I say “monster” a simple URL citation will do. As a high empathy human, I fully stand behind my characterization based on all available public evidence. Hurt people hurt people I suppose.