Cybertruck was probably the last gasp for the fumes of Elon's impenetrable (at the time) persona of a wunderkind. This is probably where the memeing was more important than the product, which is almost certainly why the product 1) sucks and 2) is failing.

Pre-Cybertruck, it felt like Tesla cared about a product first, and the memeing was just a cute bit of personality in everything (fart modes, ludicrous speed, etc). After that, it's like _everything_ was about Elon's popularity and whether it was a good product or not was secondary.

Now that the Elon bubble burst (including my own), it's much easier to see the crazy hype bubbles he managed to spin around everything -- a poor self driving system (the hints were there), production quality issues (again, the hints were there), safety problems, etc.

My impression is that SpaceX has mainly kept out of this, but if Tesla starts to really tank I wonder if he'll turn his eyes on using SpaceX for his own ego-massaging needs.