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Every person is a bit of a dick in one way or another. And people who have done high impact things in their lives will have greater opportunity to have made mis

Every person is a bit of a dick in one way or another. And people who have done high impact things in their lives will have greater opportunity to have made mistakes, no matter how good, ethical, or smart they are. Most elite celebrities, politicians, and businesspeople simply put a lot of effort into pretending to be perfect, mostly out of vanity. They lie, hide, avoid all controversy, and employ teams of PR people to craft their public image using publicity stunts, bribery, philanthropy and all kinds of tricks that have been proven to work for thousands of years. If Elon Musk followed the elite PR playbook, a lot more people would like him, probably a lot of the haters in this thread. Which says more about them than him. Elon Musk offers a glimpse of what very powerful/successful, and basically good, people are often really like. I'd argue that: 1. Anyone who completely denigrates and dismisses Elon Musk is a blind hater. 2. Anyone who claims he's without flaws is a fanboy with rose colored glasses on. 3. And only people who agree with his own assessment of himself, that he's a "mixed bag", are assessing him clearly and with intellectual honesty.

spookthesunset 4y ago
Exactly. Nobody is perfect and everybody has some deep dark skeletons in their closet. The mistake I think society makes is expecting celebrities / wealthy to be any different. Do they have a responsibility to set a positive example? Absolutely. Is that always achievable? Turns out probably not. I think society needs to learn to forgive. We got really good at canceling people, but we haven’t got very good at forgiveness. In the internet age where your entire life can be saved on the internet, it is important to realize people change, everybody makes mistakes (sometimes even very stupid ones) and people aren’t perfect. I don’t know… I guess they say you should never meet your heroes. I think now that we can peek behind the curtain and often see the “actual person” we have to come to terms with the fact that under all the fancy dress and act, even the “highest” in society are ultimately the same flawed, imperfect humans as the rest of us. None of us really know what the fuck we are doing… we are all making it up as we go along. Even the most successful amongst us.
- macintux 4y ago
  I’m fine with forgiving most things, but not in the absence of any attempt at apology and recompense. The “pedo guy” accusation was beyond the pale and, so far as I remember, Musk doubled down on it vs making any sincere attempt at an apology.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    Yeah. I guess what I didn’t want to imply is we can’t be upset with their behavior. It’s okay to take serious issues with said behavior. It’s even okay to call out bad behavior And yeah… the pedo guy thing was completely uncalled for.

spookthesunset 4y ago

Exactly. Nobody is perfect and everybody has some deep dark skeletons in their closet. The mistake I think society makes is expecting celebrities / wealthy to be any different. Do they have a responsibility to set a positive example? Absolutely. Is that always achievable? Turns out probably not. I think society needs to learn to forgive. We got really good at canceling people, but we haven’t got very good at forgiveness. In the internet age where your entire life can be saved on the internet, it is important to realize people change, everybody makes mistakes (sometimes even very stupid ones) and people aren’t perfect. I don’t know… I guess they say you should never meet your heroes. I think now that we can peek behind the curtain and often see the “actual person” we have to come to terms with the fact that under all the fancy dress and act, even the “highest” in society are ultimately the same flawed, imperfect humans as the rest of us. None of us really know what the fuck we are doing… we are all making it up as we go along. Even the most successful amongst us.

macintux 4y ago
I’m fine with forgiving most things, but not in the absence of any attempt at apology and recompense. The “pedo guy” accusation was beyond the pale and, so far as I remember, Musk doubled down on it vs making any sincere attempt at an apology.
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  Yeah. I guess what I didn’t want to imply is we can’t be upset with their behavior. It’s okay to take serious issues with said behavior. It’s even okay to call out bad behavior And yeah… the pedo guy thing was completely uncalled for.