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Comment by guitarlimeo | Hacker News Reader

I find that apologetic behaviour strange too. You own a Tesla, it's a good car, no need to be sorry for its frontman.

I mean I kinda get it? But everyone's doing it and it's weird. It's almost like writing a review of meat and apologizing for eating meat beforehand.

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It's because the brand is borderline toxic now.

I've seen it firsthand living in a very liberal area. 3 years ago people loved the brand. People would strike up conversation about it. It was all upbeat, happy and hopeful.

Now, people rarely talk about it. And when they do it's apologetically. It often ends with some down statement about politics. Someone saying there were no other choices. Just a crappy time.

I love my Tesla. It's a great car. But it's my last. I want nothing to do with this type of politics or conversation.

I for one am sorry for its frontman. It's a good car that I don't want again... That's just stupid of him.

> very liberal area

This is the problem, people treat their political ideology like a sports team.

Sounds less like they're actually upset about their purchase, and more like they're afraid to be bullied. It's a good strategy. I'm all for making people apologize and pre-emptively justify making decisions I don't like.

I think it's because people don't want to come off as endorsing elon musk/distance themselves from his weirder fans. I'll say though, 3 years ago is well after he called that one rescue diver a pedo so I don't know if the opening statement totally holds. Not that I really care that much.

Distancing is a good point, but maybe still not needed given that this is real critique. I would understand the distancing more if this review was praising FSD.

There is probably a reason why we hear very little about the political opinions of most Megacorp CEOs on a daily basis.

I'm sure I would agree with some of them and disagree with others but they are smart enough to not make that a center piece of their public persona.

Elon Musk decided on his own to

a) be a central marketing and PR channel of Tesla. He has everyone convinced that the company cannot thrive otherwise.

b) involve himself in hot button political discussions all around the globe (usually in a "hot-take-no-need-for-further-reasearch" manner).

c) buy a social media company while publicly lamenting the state of social media. At said social media he (again very publicly) instituted changes to align it with his political philosophy.

Whether one likes or dislikes his opinions, it is very clear that he wants to be seen as some kind of political influencer and that he bases some of his business decisions on this persona.

This is quite unusual and probably the sole reason people even think about the "frontmann" of the company when discussing the product

> Elon Musk decided on his own to

It's funny though because before Elon CEOs were hated just as much. Mostly because they are all bucketed together as too rich, too much control and not being as open in communication on decisions.

Now a new CEO disrupts (part of) that , and everyone hates him even more. Mostly because they just disagree with his comments.

It's very strange tbh. Should we be encouraging the transparency in CEO outspokenness regardless if you agree or not?

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