5 ms·

HN seems pretty anti Elon, no?

by qeternity 4y ago

d23 4y ago
I can’t speak for the rest of HN, but his childish narcissistic megalomania certainly rubs me the wrong way.
kevinh 4y ago
Depending on the thread it can go either way. There are large contingents on both sides as Musk is quite divisive.
- qeternity 4y ago
  Yeah fair enough, two sides to everything. Anecdotally I feel like I see a lot of Elon hate, but that could just be my decency bias due to Twitter drama and layoffs.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - theonething 4y ago
    I'm seeing the same thing here on HN. People are frothing at the mouth to hate on him. Wild speculation all over. Case in point, the HN trope that he is an idiot and doesn't know anything about technology and just takes credit for brilliant engineers' work. I laid out solid evidence that is not true, quoting top of the field scientist and engineers' assessment of his technical knowledge and skills. The only response I get is from RavingGoat (username kind of checks out) claiming Elon must have paid these people to say these things with no evidence whatsoever. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33504228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33504228 I know this is cliche here, but in this case, it really seems like Redditors have invaded this space.
allenrb 4y ago
It varies. I’ve been a SpaceX (and thus Elon) fan since they were unsuccessfully launching Falcon 1’s. EM’s willingness to share information with the space fan community won him a lot of admirers. I was certainly willing to overlook many of his other failings as a result. That’s become harder in the last few years and practically impossible in 2022. At this point, I am desperately hoping for SpaceX to get Starship/Superheavy flying before Elon manages to screw that up as well. I’m not a trained psychiatric professional but it looks to me as if his extreme wealth and success has exacerbated some pre-existing tendencies and turned him into a (danger, medical jargon ahead) full-blown mess. It’s a shame to watch.
- InsOp 4y ago
  what are the other things he is screwing up?
  - extra88 4y ago
    He poorly handled his insistence on Tesla (and other?) staff return to working in the office. It seems like he has screwed up being a parent to his many children, most publicly the one that transitioned and cut off ties with him.
  - sidibe 4y ago
    Endless announcements and mispredictions are what aggravates me the most, borderline fraud IMO. I am not so much disliking him for it, I think he's a little neurodivergent and it's not exactly his fault, but it makes me really sad there's never consequences and that so many people believe him again and again, it seems like there is some easily exploitable missing BS detector in a significant amount of the population. He's a lot like Trump in that he jumps into everything declaring it simple and that he gets it unlike everyone else, then says it turns out this is more complicated than anyone thought.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > what are the other things he is screwing up? Not much. His public feuding and conspiracy theory spreading is largely constrained to Twitter. The whole thing going under might be the best outcome for him. Presently, however, he’s acting like an addict given the crack store.
  - cbtacy 4y ago
    "Cybertruck"
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  That's basically where I'm at. I don't dislike or resent Musk, although I can see why others do. I'm just disappointed in him. At a time when positive role models are needed, he's letting his self-destructive freak flag fly. He obviously isn't getting the therapeutic support that he (by his own admission) needs. I'm sure some of us have parents or grandparents who worked for Howard Hughes back in the day, and are now feeling a strong sense of deja vu. Musk seems to be speedrunning Hughes' career and, really, his entire life.
awb 4y ago
There was tons of excitement over the years about his companies transforming the world and his successes there have been spectacular. But over the past few years he’s become much more vocal about current events unrelated to his companies. He has every right to do it, but whether you’re a cable news commentator or Musk, the more you weigh in on social issues the more polarizing you become.
nrmitchi 4y ago
I'm not sure what the "elon support" split on HN is, but in the past it seems to have been rather 50/50. I suspect that HN has recently seemed more anti-elon because the anti-elon crowd has a lot of bullshit to point to recently, and the pro-elon crowd doesn't really have good defenses to most of it.
- kergonath 4y ago
  Most “pro-Elon” people who are not completely brainwashed have had lots of reasons to re-evaluate their opinion of him recently. People are not static and can have changing emotions.
bradhe 4y ago
Reality has an anti-Elon bias.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Musk has an anti-reality bias
thordenmark 4y ago
A man has to be full of great melancholies to accomplish what he has. This clearly has positive and negative sides. Judging from the accomplishments of great people throughout history you cannot have one without the other. In the case of Twitter something had to be done. It was too powerful of a public forum and was mismanaged and run by extremists and exacerbated existing divisions, turning them into real rifts. If half a country feels they are being actively suppressed, demonized, and treated unfairly that is a recipe for disaster. Was Elon the guy to fix it? I dunno who else would be crazy enough to try. And his roots are in web tech so his experience may help.
- rufflez 4y ago
  People are idolized, their accomplishments embellished, and their shortcomings overlooked when they are in positions of power and prestige. Often times the role of sheer luck, cronyism and connections are completely downplayed
- kaba0 4y ago
  What did he accomplish? Like personally he himself? There is a very specific agenda/propaganda to sell this hard-working, aspiring CEO image (well predating Musk) which I could never justify. They are just megalomaniac narcissists with an extraordinary luck (that is way too downplayed) and sometimes some redeeming quality at least (in the form of some charm, or leadership). Well, I couldn’t list any such for Elon here, but even if I could, why are we worshipping these people? They ain’t working 25 hours each day, the secret to their success is not that early morning yoga whatever and sleeping 2 hours in the office. As I mentioned, luck’s role is way downplayed. It is not too hard to make much money from already much money.
  - jlundberg 4y ago
    I guess one way to view successful entrepreneurship is the ability to increase your chance to be lucky.
    - palata 4y ago
kaba0 4y ago
I very much hope most everyone is anti billionaire-(for the time being)-manchilds-who-regularly-throws-tantrums-on-twitter-and-who-is-so-egomaniac-that-he-had-to-buy-the-title-founder-for-a-company-(which otherwise lives on government subsidies)-he-only-pumped-money-into-largely-seeded-by-daddy’s-emerald-mine.
jjgreen 4y ago
No, if anti, then anti Musk. I'm not on first-name terms with narcissists.

HN seems pretty anti Elon, no?

d23 4y ago

I can’t speak for the rest of HN, but his childish narcissistic megalomania certainly rubs me the wrong way.

kevinh 4y ago

Depending on the thread it can go either way. There are large contingents on both sides as Musk is quite divisive.

qeternity 4y ago
Yeah fair enough, two sides to everything. Anecdotally I feel like I see a lot of Elon hate, but that could just be my decency bias due to Twitter drama and layoffs.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- theonething 4y ago
  I'm seeing the same thing here on HN. People are frothing at the mouth to hate on him. Wild speculation all over. Case in point, the HN trope that he is an idiot and doesn't know anything about technology and just takes credit for brilliant engineers' work. I laid out solid evidence that is not true, quoting top of the field scientist and engineers' assessment of his technical knowledge and skills. The only response I get is from RavingGoat (username kind of checks out) claiming Elon must have paid these people to say these things with no evidence whatsoever. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33504228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33504228 I know this is cliche here, but in this case, it really seems like Redditors have invaded this space.

allenrb 4y ago

It varies. I’ve been a SpaceX (and thus Elon) fan since they were unsuccessfully launching Falcon 1’s. EM’s willingness to share information with the space fan community won him a lot of admirers. I was certainly willing to overlook many of his other failings as a result. That’s become harder in the last few years and practically impossible in 2022. At this point, I am desperately hoping for SpaceX to get Starship/Superheavy flying before Elon manages to screw that up as well. I’m not a trained psychiatric professional but it looks to me as if his extreme wealth and success has exacerbated some pre-existing tendencies and turned him into a (danger, medical jargon ahead) full-blown mess. It’s a shame to watch.

InsOp 4y ago
what are the other things he is screwing up?
- extra88 4y ago
  He poorly handled his insistence on Tesla (and other?) staff return to working in the office. It seems like he has screwed up being a parent to his many children, most publicly the one that transitioned and cut off ties with him.
- sidibe 4y ago
  Endless announcements and mispredictions are what aggravates me the most, borderline fraud IMO. I am not so much disliking him for it, I think he's a little neurodivergent and it's not exactly his fault, but it makes me really sad there's never consequences and that so many people believe him again and again, it seems like there is some easily exploitable missing BS detector in a significant amount of the population. He's a lot like Trump in that he jumps into everything declaring it simple and that he gets it unlike everyone else, then says it turns out this is more complicated than anyone thought.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > what are the other things he is screwing up? Not much. His public feuding and conspiracy theory spreading is largely constrained to Twitter. The whole thing going under might be the best outcome for him. Presently, however, he’s acting like an addict given the crack store.
- cbtacy 4y ago
  "Cybertruck"
CamperBob2 4y ago
That's basically where I'm at. I don't dislike or resent Musk, although I can see why others do. I'm just disappointed in him. At a time when positive role models are needed, he's letting his self-destructive freak flag fly. He obviously isn't getting the therapeutic support that he (by his own admission) needs. I'm sure some of us have parents or grandparents who worked for Howard Hughes back in the day, and are now feeling a strong sense of deja vu. Musk seems to be speedrunning Hughes' career and, really, his entire life.

awb 4y ago

There was tons of excitement over the years about his companies transforming the world and his successes there have been spectacular. But over the past few years he’s become much more vocal about current events unrelated to his companies. He has every right to do it, but whether you’re a cable news commentator or Musk, the more you weigh in on social issues the more polarizing you become.

nrmitchi 4y ago

I'm not sure what the "elon support" split on HN is, but in the past it seems to have been rather 50/50. I suspect that HN has recently seemed more anti-elon because the anti-elon crowd has a lot of bullshit to point to recently, and the pro-elon crowd doesn't really have good defenses to most of it.

kergonath 4y ago
Most “pro-Elon” people who are not completely brainwashed have had lots of reasons to re-evaluate their opinion of him recently. People are not static and can have changing emotions.

bradhe 4y ago

Reality has an anti-Elon bias.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Musk has an anti-reality bias

thordenmark 4y ago

A man has to be full of great melancholies to accomplish what he has. This clearly has positive and negative sides. Judging from the accomplishments of great people throughout history you cannot have one without the other. In the case of Twitter something had to be done. It was too powerful of a public forum and was mismanaged and run by extremists and exacerbated existing divisions, turning them into real rifts. If half a country feels they are being actively suppressed, demonized, and treated unfairly that is a recipe for disaster. Was Elon the guy to fix it? I dunno who else would be crazy enough to try. And his roots are in web tech so his experience may help.

rufflez 4y ago
People are idolized, their accomplishments embellished, and their shortcomings overlooked when they are in positions of power and prestige. Often times the role of sheer luck, cronyism and connections are completely downplayed
kaba0 4y ago
What did he accomplish? Like personally he himself? There is a very specific agenda/propaganda to sell this hard-working, aspiring CEO image (well predating Musk) which I could never justify. They are just megalomaniac narcissists with an extraordinary luck (that is way too downplayed) and sometimes some redeeming quality at least (in the form of some charm, or leadership). Well, I couldn’t list any such for Elon here, but even if I could, why are we worshipping these people? They ain’t working 25 hours each day, the secret to their success is not that early morning yoga whatever and sleeping 2 hours in the office. As I mentioned, luck’s role is way downplayed. It is not too hard to make much money from already much money.
- jlundberg 4y ago
  I guess one way to view successful entrepreneurship is the ability to increase your chance to be lucky.
  - palata 4y ago

kaba0 4y ago

I very much hope most everyone is anti billionaire-(for the time being)-manchilds-who-regularly-throws-tantrums-on-twitter-and-who-is-so-egomaniac-that-he-had-to-buy-the-title-founder-for-a-company-(which otherwise lives on government subsidies)-he-only-pumped-money-into-largely-seeded-by-daddy’s-emerald-mine.

jjgreen 4y ago

No, if anti, then anti Musk. I'm not on first-name terms with narcissists.