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Comment by rqtwteye | Hacker News Reader

Musk really seems to have lost his mind and any kind of filter. He hears about something and tweets it without any thought. Pretty much the same approach he is using with DOGE. Look at something for five minutes max and if you don’t like it understand it, cancel it.

My theory is that anybody who engages a lot on X for a while gets their perception of reality totally distorted. If US leadership keeps passing off the whole world I think the real winner of “America first” will be China and Russia.

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>I think the real winner of “America first” will be China and Russia.

Indeed.

>An hour later, Slim announced that he would transfer his projects for the next 5 years with Starlink, an investment of 22 billion dollars, to companies in China and Europe.

Brings to mind a meme that's quickly become a favorite of mine since Jan 20th. It's a picture of a "gigachad" Xi Jinping with the caption "Do nothing. Win."

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/352/212/95b...

I find that meme super funny - because China is doing a LOT of things that simply aren't getting noticed by (or being ignored by) the media in the West. Belt & Road, New Silk Road, solar panels everywhere, etc.

They're not doing nothing - they're just not being idiots.

Perhaps you've seen this, or maybe not. It's worth mentioning that you're not the only one to make that connection -- Jaron Lanier called it "Twitter Poisoning":

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-...

That was interesting.

I certainly see similar situations where people I knew seem terrified of trans related topics, one couple I knew are on a sort of anti porn crusade.

I ask them all and they have ZERO personal run ins with what they fear and tweet / post about… but it doesn’t end and when the topics come up they can’t imagine that you’re not deep in the middle of their social media memes and conversations and so on.

It’s a wild situation, there’s nothing in their life that supports their ideas and fears but they’re all in.

Definitely seems like a drug problem to me. He seems strung out of his mind if this article's sourcing is correct: https://www.wired.com/story/katie-stephen-miller-elon-musk-t...

How did you draw the connection between being babysat and drugs?

Yeah I don’t think he was just always like this and hiding it. The drugs have cooked his brain.

The problem is that when someone gets to that level of wealth there's really nobody left to say "no". Likely nobody in his circle has the guts to tell him what he needs to hear. This in addition to the alleged drug issues and his excessive time on X (which is also kind of a drug) is how we got here.

Or maybe, just maybe, someone who obsesses over hardcore work and tries to manage 20 different companies, while also trying to be perpetually online, is probably sleep deprived and/or is on medications to keep up with everything.

That kind of lifestyle would do that to you long term.

That would be a cause but he's been like this for over two years. Wouldn't there be a point where he reflects on the past and analyzes his behavior?

When you’re in it, you can’t reflect unless you’re no longer in it.

Some people postulate his mental decline might be drug related.

I think he's trying to generate engagement on X through controversy. The recent change to search, which now shows posts from people you've blocked (with no options to turn it off) suggests this too.

The problem with this strategy is that you have to keep escalating otherwise it gets boring fast, and it attracts people no one wants to advertise to. My feed is full of racebaiters and anti-woke culture crap despite telling the algorithm I’m not interesting. I’m not sure there's much else left.

> My feed is full of racebaiters and anti-woke culture crap despite telling the algorithm I’m not interesting. I’m not sure there's much else left.

Why even keep using the platform?

I read the timelines of people who only use twitter. Local journalists and people who talk about about specific issues.

If enough people leave Xitter then those people "who only use twitter" will either leave as well, or it indicates that they're just fine being on a "racebaiting" platform. I really don't get why people are staying there other than it means they're just fine with Musk's antics and the rage farming.

There are circles of people that I like still on the platform. Plus, lots of great discussion on AI and entrepreneurship, both of which BlueSky takes a hostile attitude towards.

In addition, I take the general zeitgeist of X to be something like the Freudian id of the MAGA coalition, which is a useful thing to be tuned into, given that they run the country currently.

> My feed is full of racebaiters and anti-woke culture crap despite telling the algorithm I’m not interesting. I’m not sure there's much else left.

I'm sincerely curious, why do you still have a twitter account?

I read the timelines of people who only use twitter. Local journalists and people who talk about about specific issues.

That’s why I stopped: just being there is giving him money and if you interact with anyone else you’re incentivizing them giving him money, too. I signed up in 2006 but that was a sunk cost I couldn’t stomach growing.

There's plenty of evidence now based on his aberrant behavior in public that he has a serious drug problem.

Look at the video of him on the stage at the event where he told all the x advertisers "fine, don't advertise, go fuck yourself".

If you are wealthy enough you can certainly find enough licensed medical professionals to provide you with basically whatever substance you want, and in unlimited quantities. Exact same sort of thing that ended in the death of Michael Jackson.

The onset of some prescription stimulants is extremely euphoric and leads to immediate mania in some.

He's Tweeting >500 times a day. There is almost no hour of the day he does not Tweet now. He is either paying someone to Tweet or he's literally no longer sleeping.

Here's a graph about third of the way down:

https://www.natesilver.net/p/elon-musk-and-spiky-intelligenc...

(Elon Musk's Tweets by time of day)

Anecdotal, but I've noticed some men lose the need for sleep as they get older.

It's typically not that people lose the need for sleep as they older, but that aging negatively impacts the ability to sleep, which leads to individuals suffering from both age-related decline along with the impacts of their sleep's impaired restoration.

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