After that he started getting more and more unhinged, leading through to buying twitter, then trying to get out of it, then doubling down.
Take heed, if you have money, power, and poor social skills, hire people to manage it for you.
What was the genre of that film again?
Musk is DESPERATE to be adored and DESPERATE for influence and power outside the scope of his success.
Those are personal failings, not the failings of society.
It's not merely about "likability" but more about carefully controlling the messaging, and avoiding controversies or really bad missteps.
A defendant or plaintiff can choose to remain totally silent in a court of law and speak through their attorney. The attorney filters what their client has to say, recasts it in legal terminology, and everything the attorney says and does should protect the interests of the client and the court, in opposition to the other side.
It's also about a division of labor: for God's sake, what CEO/politician/bishop wants to open all his own mail when a secretary can filter it? What CEO is going to read social media all day and respond to their DMs? Waste of a salary! Does Mr. Musk or President Trump really write all the covfefe on his own, or does he employ ghost writers? How would we know?
A PR firm likewise has a fiduciary and legal duty to protect the interests of an entity, to keep them out of litigous entanglements, and yes, to put on the best public face that they can in order to 'be liked'. Unless the org has some weird reason to play the villain or adversary in some way, and likability is not an ultimate goal, such as a gangsta rapper with a public beef, I suppose. They still use social media to sell music.
If he'd had better social skills, he wouldn't have been fired from x.com and made even more money from PayPal.
If you read the Isaacson biography of him, it seems like he's always been like this.