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as an amateur Musk-mythologist, I would guess something we can't see is going on behind the scenes. Since around the time he started dating Grimes, Elon's gener
by SuoDuanDao 8y ago
as an amateur Musk-mythologist, I would guess something we can't see is going on behind the scenes. Since around the time he started dating Grimes, Elon's general tone has gotten more combative. Whether he's deliberately courting bad press or it's a byproduct of something else isn't clear to me, but I would hazard a guess that it's part of something larger.
Part of why I find the Elon Musk story so fascinating is because we're seeing in real time how the 'great man' and 'great forces' narratives of history can both be applied as filters to understand what's going on. I would think the flood of bad press is better explained by the 'great forces' filter, but I don't understand that filter intuitively enough to usefully speculate what's changed.
- telchar 8y agoThis is an interesting take. Would you care to speculate about what may be going on under the surface?
- SuoDuanDao 8y agoI have thee theories, any of which could be true independently of each other. From a long-term perspective it seems obvious to me that Musk is aligned with some kind of progress-friendly coalition, and that this is part of a greater pattern of sabre - rattling between Elon's faction and a more conservative rival which many of the legacy media outlets belong to. On a smaller scale, it could be that the labour and automation issues are pretty well sorted and he's baiting shorts. Finally, it could be that since he's entered a new romantic relationship recently, he's simply undergoing a personality change and more easily combative.
- slededit 8y agoHis earlier company PayPal was also pretty customer hostile locking up money for indeterminate amounts of time. They also played the "were not a bank even though we look a lot like one" card. I think this is just how he operates.