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I'd say dramatically ? He is so unlikable, foolish and actually rude to people that I wouldn't want to be driving around a car that's associated with him. It'
by bamboozled 4y ago
I'd say dramatically ?
He is so unlikable, foolish and actually rude to people that I wouldn't want to be driving around a car that's associated with him. It' a massive shame because I really think at some point he was a force for good and he really wanted to see progress in the world. Sadly and I mean this in the nicest way possible, he now just seems like a fraud.
I actually think Tesla already had a bit of stigma associated with it, kind of a "show offs" car...but now, it's just a liability.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y agoI wonder why he couldn't just play the "brilliant engineer innovator titan of industry" part without the "teenage edgelord stick-it-to-the-libs Twitter troll" piece. Or was the latter always a prerequisite for his success, his ability to get eyeballs at all costs? It feels like all of that toxicity was unnecessary and he could have been impactful and transformational without it, but maybe I'm wrong.
- faefox 4y agoHis overall arc feels very reminiscent of Notch (of Minecraft fame). Man attains unfathomable levels of wealth and fame and decides to use their bully pulpit to explain to the world how they're the victims, actually.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y agoYeah. I wonder if there's something to attaining that level of success that leads people to isolation, extreme opinions, and falling out of touch with reality.
- glaslong 4y agoPerhaps an inward effect of the Rougon-Macquart coefficient — corollary to the outward the light-bending phenomenon. https://twitter.com/cpriestman/status/1230821595222028288 https://twitter.com/cpriestman/status/1230821595222028288
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y agoLove the reference.
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoYears of being surrounded by yes men with no one to rein in his worst impulses has consequences. https://slate.com/technology/2022/09/elon-musk-text-messages-twitter-yes-men.html https://slate.com/technology/2022/09/elon-musk-text-messages...
- TylerE 4y agoIt’s well documented that CEOs exhibit psychopathic traits at a rate far higher than the general population https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccullough/2019/12/09/the-psychopathic-ceo/?sh=715339f0791e https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackmccullough/2019/12/09/the-p...
- pauljurczak 4y agoI wouldn't call his behavior psychopathic. Narcissistic, perhaps.
- TylerE 4y ago“ Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits.” Quacks like a duck for me.
- lostmsu 4y agoAntisocial behavior in that definition, which is the core of it, is continual criminal activity. At this point I don't believe it is present. Calling people names doesn't fit.
- blaser-waffle 4y ago> At this point I don't believe it is present. Why rob banks for $10k when you can whip up fervor on social media for millions? Criminal activity is there, basically, cuz people want to get what they want, norms, morals, and the well-being of others be damned. Musk doesn't have to rob banks to get what he wants, and probably never would have since his family owned gemstone mines in S Africa. If you want to judge the man, see how he treated his ex's, his children, etc. That paints a far less flattering picture.
- jacquesm 4y agoIf a criminal did that kind of damage to other people we'd be happy to commit them to a long stay behind bars. The fact that it is all bought and paid for makes it legal, but that's a flaw in capitalism: legal and ethical are very much disjoint concepts and you can do a lot of damage in a purposeful way that you'd never get away with otherwise if you have money and an army of lawyers.
- ulfw 4y agoBecause you can play a role only for so long. Eventually that toxic real side comes out.
- EFreethought 4y agoI think he was always a jerk and now it's just coming out. I think what gave him some cover is that for a long time nobody else was able to do what his companies could do at the same scale, or even close to it. Maybe Blue Origin is not equal to SpaceX yet, but putting Captain Kirk into orbit was a good PR coup. And the legacy car companies are not as experienced as Tesla as making electric cars, but they have been manufacturing cars for a century. US automakers were hurt by Asian carmakers a few decades ago, but survived. It might take a few more years, but I think they will figure out how to survive this transition. His companies were close to monopolies in their niches for a long time, so he kind of walked on water. Now other companies are catching up, and he is not as special.
- midasuni 4y agoThey never put Captain Kirk into orbit. That you believe it, or believe BO can even be compared to spacex, shows how flashy the PR was.
- blaser-waffle 4y agoaka "the online marketing bots are only picked up by the algorithm so often"
- yowlingcat 4y agoJust speculation, but I think his separation from his last romantic partner isn't necessarily a coincidence. I think I can no more discern what happened between him and Grimes than I could between Kanye and Kim, or any other similar power couple where kids came out of the coupling; but with that said, the timeline of the the beginning and end of the relationship does seem to line up with when the shark was jumped per sé.
- watwut 4y agoThe close ones are usually treated the worst and are treated badly sooner then the rest. It might just be that - them bailing out as situation worsenes. Musk was divorced like 5 times already.
- birken 4y agoI was chatting with my neighbor, who owns a Tesla + Tesla Powerwall, about the Twitter situation and he was not shy to say how he was quite upset by the direction that Twitter is going and how he had just deleted his account and moved to Mastodon (and he is somebody who has a few thousand followers). I doubt he is going to rip the Powerwall off his house or sell the Tesla, but I'm quite sure based on the conversation that if he didn't own either of these Tesla products right now he would seriously consider other options if he were buying today. This is just one example obviously, but there is no doubt that Elon is upsetting some key demographics who want to purchase Tesla products, and while I have no idea if it will have a major negative impact on the bottom line, it certainly can't be good.
- Server6 4y agoI own a Tesla. I'll never buy another as long as Elon is involved. Just reserved a Rivian and won't look back.
- hermitcrab 4y agoI was considering buying a Tesla for my next car. Now I'm not.
- eclipxe 4y agoI've had four Teslas and Tesla solar on a previous house. I don't plan to purchase any further Tesla products with Elon at the helm and have moved to BMW's electric line which has far superior build quality.
- arcticbull 4y agoIt’s fundamentally just a car company and was wildly overvalued as a car company in large part due to the Musk cult of personality. He popped his own bubble by making everyone hate him with the twitter acquisition. Now Tesla is being revalued as a car company. I mentioned a few times at peak it was valued as much as the entire auto industry combined plus a utility company plus a battery company plus a software company or two plus a solar company - and then some - all while manufacturing about 10% as many cars as Toyota and showing no success in anything other than cars. It was always a question of when, and he forgot that JPow giveth and JPow taketh away. Like Trump he could have just sailed off into the distance a rich and largely beloved man but he flew just a little too close to the sun. I’ve joked before that Trump is a poor person’s idea of a rich person (“I bet rich people have solid gold toilets”) in the same way Elon is a 'left-curve' idea of a genius (“I bet geniuses just spend all day inventing crazy ideas and going to Mars and digging holes and stuff”). They’re both, in real life, caricatures of what they’re projecting to be. More showmen than anything. That’s not a criticism; they’re both excellent showmen. More Barnum than Rockefeller or Nikola.
- jddj 4y agoIn a lot of ways it feels like this finale was already written. This bubble birthed and featured Cathie and Saylor (again) to a large degree, but the real star was Elon. There's always too much poetry in these cycles for him not to fall apart on the way back down.
- badestrand 4y agoI think a large part of the valuation was also the promise of full self driving. Musk repeatedly stated that it would coming "very soon" and Tesla would have been the first worldwide with that. Now we know that Tesla will probably not be the first with level 5 autonomy and that their no-lidar approach may not even be sufficient at all. But the belief in their FSD was priced into Tesla's valuation as well and by now it's clear that this part was overvalued.
- arcticbull 4y agoThe man did promise FSD was one year away for each of the last 9 years. At some point it becomes a 'fool me 9 times shame on... fool me can't get fooled again' kinda deal. [1] It's just too bad the video montage got struck down. It takes a genuine showman to string people along for an entire decade. [edit1] All while getting them to pay up to $12,000 for software that didn't exist and had no path to existing within the promised timeframe. Textbooks will be written about this bezzle. [edit2] > Bezzle: Alone among the various forms of larceny [embezzlement] has a time parameter. Weeks, months or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. (This is a period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.) At any given time there exists an inventory of undiscovered embezzlement in—or more precisely not in—the country’s business and banks. [2] Not suggesting a crime occurred here, to be clear - just the broad shape of what transpired re: FSD rhymes real good. [1] https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-next-year-for-th-1848432496 https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-ne... [2] https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/85179 https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/85179
- drexlspivey 4y agoDo you even know who the CEO of VW or Mercedes is?
- trentgreene 4y agoI mean, I’m a Mercedes fanboy, and I don’t. I don’t need to. I don’t care who’s running the show — the cars deliver on the brands reputation and that’s all I care about.
- terhechte 4y agoThat's the whole point. You shouldn't have to know. They're not out there calling harmless divers pedos, or retweeting far right material. They might have very conservative viewpoints - who knows - but they're not trumpeting them around and trying to influence other people in their political decisionmaking.
- eecc 4y agoThey’re probably significantly influencing other people, politicians with massive, unmatchable donations and behind the doors conversations. You just don’t know
- logifail 4y agoCould it be that some parts of the mainstream media sees Musk as a partial replacement for Trump, a great source of over-done outrage stories, clicks and ads?
- eecc 4y agoPretty much. He’s been that kind of “magnate does strange things” since long, but since he publicly joined the political conversation, he hasn’t done anything to undo that framing. Look, some of his points have some standing but the points have to be more nuanced. I’m also annoyed by PoCo and the power-grab by US identity-identitarian Calvinists, painting anyone that does not defer to their moral authority as fascist monsters. I’m also irritated by the “present your pronouns” because you’re “either an ally or part of the problem.” But indeed, for every time you snap back, there’s a real trans person who’s suffering an identity crisis, victimized and exploited by all sides of the polarized flame-fest that’s smashing any chance for a reasonable debate. I don’t know if Musk is a true reactionary bumpkin of just burnt out, and out of touch. He should really get a public relations specialist to fix his public persona and teach him how to stay out of rhetorical minefields.
- systemvoltage 4y ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> literally upending all the bullshit from progressives on Twitter Until those cheering him on start buying Teslas, this looks like a stupid move. Elon was bipartisan. Hell, he was so Teflon he could navigate between America and China. He threw that all away for what?
- systemvoltage 4y ago[flagged]
- stouset 4y agoI’ve read this post several times and to be completely honest with you absolutely none of it makes a lick of sense. The words are in correct grammatical order and there’s a coherent central thesis, but it seemingly lacks any actual connection to reality. If you told me it was written by ChatGPT I would 100% believe you.
- systemvoltage 4y agoThis is the strangest reply I've gotten, I've been on HN for quite a while.
- stouset 4y agoThat doesn’t make the position that “Elon’s Twitter is saving freedom of speech from the totalitarian left” any less baffling.
- ModernMech 4y agoYou have to be steeped in American culture wars to decode stuff. Many people supporting Musk at present do so because they believe him to be a champion of free speech. At the same time, they view the left as totalitarian as trying to control speech. Twitter is viewed as a bastion of left-leaning supporters of Democrats who stole the last election from Trump by banning conservative speech from the platform. They believe Democrats are now in the process of implementing a totalitarian state in which Joe Biden, who is corrupt and the head of a crime family, is the dictator. They also believed that Joe Biden is using the FBI, which is aligned with leftists (?!) to silence critics and persecute his enemies. In this framing, by unbanning nazis, qanon, insurrectionists, and anti-trans accounts, Elon is restoring balance to Twitter and saving free speech for the world. It’s basically an exercise in projection to try to whitewash the Trump years through incessant whataboutism.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoThe company is wildly undervalued. Their products have abysmal initial quality, durability, and reliability. Their parts/service/bodywork repair/support network sucks. The cars are ludicrously expensive to repair because Musk is using insurance company payouts to subsidize his company. They've lost almost every advantage they had. Their cars aren't the fastest in acceleration, don't have the most range, don't have the best efficiency, aren't the fastest charging, etc. GM, Ford, and Volkswagen are gunning for Tesla and Tesla doesn't stand a chance.
- hermitcrab 4y agoI think Brian Klass nailed it with his essay about 'The myth of the secret genius': https://brianklaas.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-the-secret-genius https://brianklaas.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-the-secret-gen...