And honestly, that's the part that I've enjoyed the most. Musk's faux "Tony Stark" shtick was always PR. But it was widely believed PR, and it gave him an incre

And honestly, that's the part that I've enjoyed the most. Musk's faux "Tony Stark" shtick was always PR. But it was widely believed PR, and it gave him an incredibly low cost of capital and oceans of free marketing. But basically from the moment he tried to buy Twitter, he's been ruining that reputation. It started with the business press, who have more of an incentive to see through the BS, and who quickly pointed out that it was a clown show of a takeover even before the Delaware courts forced him to buy it. That alone put a major dent in Tesla's stock price. Now everybody has gotten to see how bad he is at running Twitter. Most of us didn't know shit about launching satellites, but a lot more people understood Twitter. By objective measures, things have gone terribly, and there have been waves and waves of stories showing that Musk is not half the genius he was painted as. Which has caused a lot of questions being asked about all of his businesses. So now we're entering an age of electric cars, with global intent to switch. But Tesla, the nominal leader, has a stock price down 40% from its peak, and with widespread questions about how well it can really do. And part of that is definitely brand damage from Musk; I recently saw a Tesla with a bumper sticker that said, "When we bought it, we didn't know he was an asshole." Surely that has something to do with weakening sales despite previously unheard-of discounts. Maybe Musk will get it together, and mainly for the sake of others, I hope so. But if I had to bet, it would bet that his launching a bid for Twitter will be seen as a turning point where he began a long slide into irrelevance.