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Comment by jredwards | Hacker News Reader

I liked Elon until about 2018. Since then he's gradually degraded from "interesting founder" to "guy who picks fights about weird topics on the internet" to "absurdist oligarch actively working to destroy institutions which support average Americans."

I certainly suspect that there were always elements of what he's become that just weren't as publicly apparent.

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How about:

- hypocrite: free speech only for topics I approve of

- bully: and a school yard style bully at that. Calling people crude names etc. Remember "pedo guy"?

- liar: "full self driving early next year" for how many years in a row?

- reckless: doesn't seem to really care about all the tesla crashes while on auto pilot, giant safety (for others) hazard that is the cybertruck

And this is all before the current political drama.

I stopped liking Musk when his first wife's tell-all "I Was a Starter Wife" came out in Marie Claire in 2010. Yes, penned by a disgruntled former spouse, it felt nonetheless authentic and immediately believable, and all the events since have generally confirmed her characterization of him.

As so often, it's how they treat the women around them that tells you a lot about men.

What did you like about him until 2018? He is not some visionary or genius or even smart. Neither is/was he a decent person to deal with (read up on his PayPal days). He is however, extraordinarily ruthless and thin skinned.

So what is it that you saw in him that you liked him?

Circa 2010 he still had the image of being an outsider and optimist instead of whatever we've got going on today.

(Not OP) I liked his willingness to invest so much in exciting, lofty goals (Tesla, SpaceX).

Twitter wrecked his mind. I'm not talking about buying it, I'm talking about being such a heavy user of it.

Shows how vulnerable anyone is to propoganda, no matter how high your quality of life.

This. He is definitely not a genius and not even smart. He can’t formulate any interesting, original thoughts. He parrots, daily, dumb ideas and state propaganda (for example, russia) without any critical thinking.

The average person on the street is smarter than him.

Yep, hard to respect a guy who spent how many years screaming that full self driving will be out by next quarter!?

The Peter Molyneux of tech. But at least Peter was just an over-ambitious game designer and missed promises were just less video games.

My Tesla drives itself virtually everywhere. All I have to do is look out the window, which I'd do anyway. The only times I control my Tesla are when pulling in and out of my garage and when I need to get it going so FSD can take over (and occasionally when parking).

I'm happy with it.

I really like “absurdist oligarch”. “Rich awkward joker” also comes to mind.

"Trolling Edgelord" comes to mind for me. It's as if all this is one big joke to him, and he gets a kick out of everyone being upset by his antics.

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