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Twitter is the worst thing to happen to Musk. The social media addiction knows no class/age/wealth/religious/creed boundary. It’s like social cancer that slowly
by chasd00 4y ago
Twitter is the worst thing to happen to Musk. The social media addiction knows no class/age/wealth/religious/creed boundary. It’s like social cancer that slowly destroys your relationship to society.
Musk has done great things but these days I think he’s at his lowest point.
/I’ve said this about three times now in threads like these.
- onelovetwo 4y agoHe's at his lowest point in the eyes of the media (which is how most of us see the world) but hes actually at the highest point in his career and achievements. Tesla is about to explode in production with their "biggest building in the world factory" in texas, berlin and china. SpaceX is about to achieve the holy grail of the space industry (an affordable and reusable rocket) not to mention Starlink.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoTesla has always been "about to explode" in one way or another. When will people realize that manufacturing businesses, when they are limited by property and equipment, are slow-burning? Also, "reusable" doesn't matter as much as "affordable" for rockets. I am waiting for one of the smaller companies with a dirt cheap rocket to eat SpaceX's lunch.
- joenathanone 4y agoBeing reusable is the only way to make an affordable rocket.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThat's actually not true. For example, the Russian Soyuz is expected to still have lower cost per kg to LEO than the Falcon rockets from SpaceX. Fuel is the vast majority of the cost of a rocket launch.
- asadotzler 4y agoThat's completely wrong. Fuel is a tiny fraction of a rocket launch. At best, SpaceX's Falcon 9 costs $15 million to refurbish and re-launch (according to Musk). About $200,000 of that is fuel. That works out to 1.3% of costs which is far from "the vast majority."
- pclmulqdq 4y ago$200,000 is the cost of the atoms in the fuel. Most of the rest of the $15 million is the cost to get those atoms to the right temperature and pressure when they are stored at a different temperature and pressure, transport those atoms, and put them in the shell. Not to mention the cost of cleaning and coating the fuel tanks to make sure that they are inert and won't react to the fuel (this has to be done on non-reusable rockets too). This is the typical sleight-of-hand that comes at Musk companies. The atoms in the fuel are cheap, but the process of turning those atoms into usable fuel is very expensive. This is the case for almost all rockets. The Soyuz is partly cheap to launch because it doesn't need a lot of special fuel handling.
- saberience 4y agoerr, are you forgetting the cost to literally build a rocket? Or are you arguing somehow that fuel costs more than building the first stage of a rocket? The idea somehow that Soyuz is cheaper than Falcon-9 is laughable.
- thraway11 4y agoLooks like SpaceX should've kept those employees after all. Apparently they work for free!
- joenathanone 4y ago> is the cost of the atoms in the fuel. Are you being obtuse on purpose? The atoms of the fuel, really? Where can I buy fuel by the atom?
- adolph 4y agoThe significant component of affordability for rockets is the cost of mass to orbit. Think airline model not private aviation.
- misiti3780 4y agothey are growing 50% y/o/y. that is explosive growth.
- Juicyy 4y agoTheir stock is down 40% YTD that is not explosive growth.
- misiti3780 4y agostock price and growth are not the same thing. you're an idiot.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThat is very good, but roughly in line with other comparable companies. It's not "worth more than the rest of the car industry" explosive
- kortilla 4y agoWhat other comparable company is growing 50% annually?
- enumjorge 4y ago> in the eyes of the media Everyone can see his tweets, public statements and interviews. Musk is doing a great job embarrassing himself without the help of “the media”.
- onelovetwo 4y agoand a lot think hes the only person with common sense in the tech/business world. I'd like to know though, what statement do you think is "embarrassing"?
- scollet 4y agoI love the irony here.
- onelovetwo 4y agoThere's no irony, I was referring to his image in the media.
- huhwat 4y agoTesla cars are garbage, speaking as a Tesla owner. They demo nicely, but they are put together poorly. The minute there's any meaningful competition they'll crumble. Combined with the risks from their autopilot system and their mistreatment of workers and their CEO being a right wing edgelord? There's plenty of reasons to think Tesla might not be on a good path.
- dntrkv 4y agoTesla has been topping the list in terms of buyer satisfaction for many years now. They have their issues, but people love them.
- huhwat 4y agoThey did top the lists, but they've dropped off as owners deal with the reality of owning them. An electric car, competently built, will wow most folks. Remember that the satisfaction numbers are comparing apples to oranges, given the limited competition Tesla has at the moment.
- dntrkv 4y agohttps://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/most-and-least-liked-car-brands-a1291429338/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf... https://zutobi.com/us/driver-guides/global-happy-motorist-index https://zutobi.com/us/driver-guides/global-happy-motorist-in... They're still at the top.
- tzs 4y agoThey've also been topping the lists of unreliability. Many people like the things Tesla does well enough to not be bothered by the things it does poorly so are satisfied. Tesla seems to have the best EV drivetrain in the business (I'm counting the battery as part of the drivetrain) and the best charging network, but seem to be worse in most other aspects. My guess is that the other car companies will catch up on EV drivetrains faster than Tesla can catch up on the rest of a car.
- 4y ago
- bigbillheck 4y agoTeslas have been exploding for several years now.
- yokoprime 4y agoAnd this is what i fail to understand. He has kept his nose clean, apart from some minor incidents ("pedo" tweet comes to mind). How does he have the time and why does he bother to spend his time making noise on Twitter. He should focus on the final push to get both of his major companies to the next level. It's almost as if he's gotten bored and wants to move on, but has to keep up the appearance of being involved in day-to-day managment of these companies
- juve1996 4y agoMusk has many achievements, that's why it's so frustrating to see him act this way. There are plenty of billionaires with unpopular politics. Only a few are in the news. That is by choice.
- riazrizvi 4y agoWorst thing? His influencing is central to his success. Unfortunately for civil discourse, it’s more effective to create controversial messaging that resonates with your followers, than sanitized messaging that is generally inoffensive. Controversial messaging makes your supporters increasingly loyal and attentive, as the noise from vocal ‘haters’ just keeps feeding your base. It’s perverse, it’s toxic, it’s exhausting but it works. Look at the price earnings ratio of Tesla. What else is it but the world’s largest meme stock? His messaging vibes very strongly with Wall Street Journal readers and the Reddit trading community.
- panick21_ 4y agoTesla and SpaceX are not successful because of Twitter.
- comrh 4y agoThis is such an astute and concise description of one of the reasons we're currently living in this bizarro world. It can be applied across American culture, to both sides of the political divide, and even brands are beginning to do this.
- davesque 4y agoThat's a false dichotomy. In reality, there are more options than just "be boring" or "be sensational." Those other options just aren't in fashion right now.
- qsdf38100 4y agoSo in practice those aren’t really options if you have to compete with what is in fashion currently.
- mullingitover 4y ago> Worst thing? His influencing is central to his success. Musk has been more unhinged in his online activities than ever in the past six months or so, coinciding with a 45% slide in TSLA share price. Hypothesizing that his social media addiction is central to his 'success' would be pretty easy to test by simply comparing TSLA's performance to another auto manufacturer, e.g. Ford or GM. Doing that, TSLA is not showing any advantage - all three have suffered about the same amount of share price decrease. So just looking at the numbers, it's clear Musk could just focus entirely on productive work, skip the 'influencing' and wanton reputational damage to the businesses he manages, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. TSLA and the others would arguably be in the same place if the average person had no idea who Elon Musk was.
- unboxingelf 4y agoWell put. His accomplishments are long and impressive but it seems social media has distracted, if not corrupted his line of sight.
- whymauri 4y agoLiterally digital opium. I say as I type into a seperate social network. It's hard to escape, honestly...
- dont__panic 4y agoLots of civilizations have struggled with drug problems in the past. The Americas, China, India all had lots of problems with opium addictions during colonial times, IIRC. And of course the USA post-WWII has dealt with a slew of drug problems, from cocaine heroin to meth. How have past civilizations broken free from the yoke of drug addiction? Maybe we can take some cues from the past.
- iamcurious 4y agoSeeing how smoking cigarettes went from being popular to being rare in a lots of places I would say: 1 - make it uncool (no more james bond smoking in cinemas, packaging that reminds of diseases) 2 - make it expensive (tax the hell out of it) 3 - make it a hassle (no smoking in closed spaces, airplanes, universities etc) The thing is, both weed and social networks became popular right about when smoking stopped being popular. So maybe there is an extra step, a perverse one: 4 - provide a substitute addiction.
- achenet 4y agoI like to think that for step 4, you can provide a healthy substitute. Personally, the thing that got me to quit smoking weed was getting really into brazilian jiu-jitsu. It may be possible to generalize this. Besides that, I really like your post, the 1st 3 points are solid. ^_^
- meatsauce 4y ago
- mint2 4y agoHe’s teetering on the edge of being Howard Hughes 2.0
- misiti3780 4y agolol - no he is not. Howard Hughes was mentally ill, didnt leave his house or shower (was a germaphobe), was super secretive (didnt meet people in person for years), never built anything important (although had a shitload of failures, like the wooden airplane) and inherited a lot of his initial money and revenue streams. Musk is none of those things.
- mint2 4y agoMusk tweets accuses random people of being pedophiles on Twitter and is legally not supposed to tweet anymore about certain topics without getting prior approval. He also exhibits paranoia and often a lack of being grounded in reality. I didn’t say he is Howard 2.0 Hugh’s, I said he’s teetering on the edge of it. If in a few years he goes full Hughes would anyone actually be surprised?
- fwip 4y ago> inherited a lot of his initial money Elon Musk is literally the child of an apartheid emerald mine owner.
- saberience 4y ago
- smaryjerry 4y agoOn the contrary, I think Musks use of interviews and twitter has only helped him and his companies every step of the way. If you have been following him you have seen that he recently announced that he would be voting republican for the first time ever due to the change in the party stances of democrats and to expect backlash from announcing so. It funny that we are seeing exactly that backlash. Not two weeks ago people were also complaining that Musk wanted to reduce the work force by 10 % and have people work from the office, although those may have been separate things, I believe the 10% reduction was a leaked e-mail. The backlash there also seemed unusual, and I only attribute it to his political stance, as his company has lost around 50% of its value on the stock market, along with most of the other tech related stocks and it was almost as if he correctly predicted the further decline of the market in general we have seen lately. His responses to that seemed incredibly reasonable, a reduction in workforce and costs and measure to improve productivity. And yet as I said the response was not well taken in the media or online, it seems in my opinion to have started once people were made aware of his political stance. A stance which he says has always been consistent whether voting democrat or republican, it’s just that the parties have shifted in certain ideologies a I think we can all remember when democrats were the free speech party and now that opposite appears to be true.
- therealdrag0 4y agoBS. There’s a been a long history of criticizing Musk. His political stance is nothing new.
- systemvoltage 4y agoHis political stance is new though. A lot of people feel the same way as Elon, long term Democrats are bewildered at what the party has become. Hell, even CNN is backpeddling with the current Democratic party's agenda: https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1537857079410577409 https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/15378570794105774...
- therealdrag0 4y agoMeh. Any group has their wacky extremist. Their existence is nothing new. I just listened to a Vox Conversation where the guest said fat phobia wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for black people or slavery. It was insane and I felt like I lost IQ listening to it; but it would be naive to think the other ends of the political spectrum isn’t also crazy. That’d be like saying Alex Jones represents the Republican Party. Elon describes himself as a moderate, the closer to the center you are the easier it is to go back and forth over the party line. Don’t read too much into it.
- rednerrus 4y agoFame is the worst drug.
- fullshark 4y agoHe’s the same old Elon, the pedo guy tweet and taking Tesla private at $420 are just as embarrassing if not more so , he’s just on the other side of the culture war divide now (I.e the Republican side) so he’s now considered shameful in many parts.
- evan_ 4y agoweird comment, many many people considered "pedo guy" and everything else to be shameful at the time
- fullshark 4y agoOp and others are claiming he’s at his lowest point now in terms of shameful behavior presumably.
- evan_ 4y agothe phrase "keep digging that hole" comes to mind.
- fullshark 4y agoFair he's always been polarizing, but the size of the naysayers (and fanboys) seems to have grown quite a bit recently and I think it comes down to politics.
- plokiju 4y agoHe’s also become the richest man in the world over the last few years (at least publicly known wealth). That tends to bring you a lot of attention. His politics isn’t the only thing that changed
- evan_ 4y agoDo you think it's out-of-bounds to criticize someone based on their publicly-stated political views?
- scollet 4y ago> Musk has done great things Have you ever been outside?