5 ms·

It's incredible to me that this lie keeps getting repeated. It gets proven wrong every time, and yet people just keep saying it. It's like they have a persona

It's incredible to me that this lie keeps getting repeated. It gets proven wrong every time, and yet people just keep saying it. It's like they have a personal investment in Elon not having done the things that Elon has very clearly actually done.

adventured 3y ago
[flagged]
- ethbr0 3y ago
  Or... people like saying things that make them appear witty. No need to ascribe political malice where typical internet popularity-seeking will suffice. "Elon didn't have anything to do with his companies' technical successes" and "Elon had everything to do with his companies' technical successes" are both low-energy, groupthink-supported replies at this point.
  - bag_boy 3y ago
    Those replies do really well when you’re hunting for karma
  - vGPU 3y ago
    Or we could take the middle ground, which is likely the most accurate. I don’t see anyone claiming Steve Jobs personally designed the iPhone PCB by hand while mining cobalt on the weekends to stay in shape, but on the other, I don’t see anyone claiming that he just provided money and the vision and engineers just manifested themselves.
vGPU 3y ago
[flagged]
- DropInIn 3y ago
  Getting a huge head start by being a privileged narcissistic raised by Apartheid emerald mine owners (aka Slave Owners) is not success on your own merits by any reasonable measure.
  - vGPU 3y ago
    The “emerald mine” is a myth. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-min... Try harder.
    - DropInIn 3y ago
      Per your own source: "According to a Facebook post from Errol, the Zambian emerald mine he held a stake in "collapsed in 1989."" Which by definition means he owned an emerald mine during the apartheid Era. Regardless of his political beliefs or leanings, there is no means or manner in which such a mine could have operated _at_all_ without being advantaged by said apartheid norms and thereby being dependent on whar in effect slave labor. How about You try harder.
      - maxlin 3y ago
        Just a FYI your argument is that Elon got a Huge Head Start to his serial entrepreneurism just because someone in relation to him had a business 40+ years ago in South Africa. Far after which he lived almost as a destitute during his college years. Nothing else, carry on ...
        DropInIn 3y ago
        https://www.google.com/search?q=parent+income+correlation+child+out+come https://www.google.com/search?q=parent+income+correlation+ch... Do you really need that or are you just sealioning?
        maxlin 3y ago
        Don't accuse me of such BS. Especially when you're the one not doing research (No, disproven myths and a misleading, generalized LMGTFY don't count when we have specific, up-to-date info). Facts seem at best that Elon had a good childhood, not much reason to believe greatly "better" than a common well-aligned western family could give. After that, he seems to have been in the position of having to make his own way, while only getting help by a partial investment from his family in a further round of his already-succeeding company that he set up living in his office. So in the positions millions have been. There aren't millions of Musks around but there are millions of younger adults that have more than they deserve. But facts don't bend for your weird fantasies to be true. Funny thing is, some time ago I thought Elon came from a background where he got a lot of money to start his successes, and still cheered him for making so much more from that than really anyone else. Then people started trying to show in him bad light, which backfired hilariously and now his origin story puts almost anyone to shame.
- krainboltgreene 3y ago
  Except he didn't succeed life on his own merits. This is an outright provable falsehood. He fell upward every time and started with a sizable fortune. He absolutely didn't work so hard that he "built" a multi-billion dollar empire, no one human can work that hard.
  - vGPU 3y ago
    > Revealing about his father's business, Musk stated "My father created a small electrical/mechanical engineering company that was successful for 20 to 30 years, but it fell on hard times. He has been essentially bankrupt for about 25 years, requiring financial support from my brother and me.". Give it a rest. Besides which, I can absolutely guarantee you that if I gave you a “small loan of one million dollars”, you’d be bankrupt by the end of the decade.
    - krainboltgreene 3y ago
      You actually can't absolutely guarantee anything of the sort, but it makes sense that this is something you'd think because you apparently also believe Elon Musk over this and not Elon Musk (or his dad!): https://futurism.com/elon-musk-denies-emerald-mine https://futurism.com/elon-musk-denies-emerald-mine
      - vGPU 3y ago
        There’s not much proof that it even existed, and absolutely none that musk himself profited from it. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-min...
        krainboltgreene 3y ago
        Absolute proof? No, but it's a reasonable and logical conclusion.
- phs318u 3y ago
  I’ve said this before. The reasons SpaceX and to a lesser extent Tesla are the successes they are, is because of the “true believer” leadership it draws. Those endeavours have a clear social-good aspect to them at the “good for humanity” scale. Those endeavours have continue to succeed because Musk’s genius was in hiring them, and in focusing on the regulatory context that allows them to be even more successful. His personal engineering acumen is largely overstated compared to his actual skill set. It also helps that those industries are heavily regulated and those constraints temper his ability to fuck things up. Social media on the other hand doesn’t attract the same kind of believers at that level and there’s no one who cares enough to make it work in spite of him. Being a far less (or barely at all) regulated industry means he’s free to intervene and meddle in the most egregious ways, and the results are obvious for all to see. As a result of Twitter he’ll likely be in lawsuits (from investors, banks etc) for decades. Meantime SpaceX and Tesla will continue to do well. Not because of Musk but in spite of him.
  - vGPU 3y ago
    So why hasn’t bezos’s phallically reminiscent space endeavor been able to draw similar talent? Why is every other EV startup essentially DOA? Rivian’s current sales numbers rival Ferrari. Fisker is dead. Faraday is dead. Nikola just had a truck catch fire twice. Lordstown is dead. And if any of what you claim is true, then explain the success of: Zip2 PayPal Starlink (we can count this as separate from spaceX) And he was a co-founder of openAI. Though whether he actually did anything useful there is debatable.
    - phs318u 3y ago
      SpaceX's mission is to spread humanity to the planets. Bezo's mission is to offer orbital fun rides to cashed up tourists. Fisker failed due to its major investor (DOE) halting future financing, and then being hit with the loss of a large number of vehicles in Hurrican Katrina. Up until then they were following a similar startup arc (with the same sorts of problems) as Tesla had in their first few years. [0] With PayPal, Musk was insistent that the venture proceed as X.com (despite brand testing showing that people were likely to associate it with porn), but was overruled. He was also opposed to the sale to eBay, which actually catapulted PayPal in terms of growth, and embedded it as a "must have" for e-commerce. [1] [2] [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/fisker-automotive-failure/315946/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/fisker-... [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-elon-musk-fired-from-paypal/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-elon-musk-fired-from-p... [2] https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-millions-in-the-paypal-mafia/ https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-milli...
- JuanPosadas 3y ago
  > everyone who doubts daddy musk's amazingness and geniusness is a loser and a narcissist
  - vGPU 3y ago
    Impress me with your achievements and then we’ll have something to talk about, anklebiter.

adventured 3y ago

[flagged]

ethbr0 3y ago
Or... people like saying things that make them appear witty. No need to ascribe political malice where typical internet popularity-seeking will suffice. "Elon didn't have anything to do with his companies' technical successes" and "Elon had everything to do with his companies' technical successes" are both low-energy, groupthink-supported replies at this point.
- bag_boy 3y ago
  Those replies do really well when you’re hunting for karma
- vGPU 3y ago
  Or we could take the middle ground, which is likely the most accurate. I don’t see anyone claiming Steve Jobs personally designed the iPhone PCB by hand while mining cobalt on the weekends to stay in shape, but on the other, I don’t see anyone claiming that he just provided money and the vision and engineers just manifested themselves.

vGPU 3y ago

[flagged]

DropInIn 3y ago
Getting a huge head start by being a privileged narcissistic raised by Apartheid emerald mine owners (aka Slave Owners) is not success on your own merits by any reasonable measure.
- vGPU 3y ago
  The “emerald mine” is a myth. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-min... Try harder.
  - DropInIn 3y ago
    Per your own source: "According to a Facebook post from Errol, the Zambian emerald mine he held a stake in "collapsed in 1989."" Which by definition means he owned an emerald mine during the apartheid Era. Regardless of his political beliefs or leanings, there is no means or manner in which such a mine could have operated _at_all_ without being advantaged by said apartheid norms and thereby being dependent on whar in effect slave labor. How about You try harder.
    - maxlin 3y ago
      Just a FYI your argument is that Elon got a Huge Head Start to his serial entrepreneurism just because someone in relation to him had a business 40+ years ago in South Africa. Far after which he lived almost as a destitute during his college years. Nothing else, carry on ...
      - DropInIn 3y ago
        https://www.google.com/search?q=parent+income+correlation+child+out+come https://www.google.com/search?q=parent+income+correlation+ch... Do you really need that or are you just sealioning?
        maxlin 3y ago
        Don't accuse me of such BS. Especially when you're the one not doing research (No, disproven myths and a misleading, generalized LMGTFY don't count when we have specific, up-to-date info). Facts seem at best that Elon had a good childhood, not much reason to believe greatly "better" than a common well-aligned western family could give. After that, he seems to have been in the position of having to make his own way, while only getting help by a partial investment from his family in a further round of his already-succeeding company that he set up living in his office. So in the positions millions have been. There aren't millions of Musks around but there are millions of younger adults that have more than they deserve. But facts don't bend for your weird fantasies to be true. Funny thing is, some time ago I thought Elon came from a background where he got a lot of money to start his successes, and still cheered him for making so much more from that than really anyone else. Then people started trying to show in him bad light, which backfired hilariously and now his origin story puts almost anyone to shame.
krainboltgreene 3y ago
Except he didn't succeed life on his own merits. This is an outright provable falsehood. He fell upward every time and started with a sizable fortune. He absolutely didn't work so hard that he "built" a multi-billion dollar empire, no one human can work that hard.
- vGPU 3y ago
  > Revealing about his father's business, Musk stated "My father created a small electrical/mechanical engineering company that was successful for 20 to 30 years, but it fell on hard times. He has been essentially bankrupt for about 25 years, requiring financial support from my brother and me.". Give it a rest. Besides which, I can absolutely guarantee you that if I gave you a “small loan of one million dollars”, you’d be bankrupt by the end of the decade.
  - krainboltgreene 3y ago
    You actually can't absolutely guarantee anything of the sort, but it makes sense that this is something you'd think because you apparently also believe Elon Musk over this and not Elon Musk (or his dad!): https://futurism.com/elon-musk-denies-emerald-mine https://futurism.com/elon-musk-denies-emerald-mine
    - vGPU 3y ago
      There’s not much proof that it even existed, and absolutely none that musk himself profited from it. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-min...
      - krainboltgreene 3y ago
        Absolute proof? No, but it's a reasonable and logical conclusion.
phs318u 3y ago
I’ve said this before. The reasons SpaceX and to a lesser extent Tesla are the successes they are, is because of the “true believer” leadership it draws. Those endeavours have a clear social-good aspect to them at the “good for humanity” scale. Those endeavours have continue to succeed because Musk’s genius was in hiring them, and in focusing on the regulatory context that allows them to be even more successful. His personal engineering acumen is largely overstated compared to his actual skill set. It also helps that those industries are heavily regulated and those constraints temper his ability to fuck things up. Social media on the other hand doesn’t attract the same kind of believers at that level and there’s no one who cares enough to make it work in spite of him. Being a far less (or barely at all) regulated industry means he’s free to intervene and meddle in the most egregious ways, and the results are obvious for all to see. As a result of Twitter he’ll likely be in lawsuits (from investors, banks etc) for decades. Meantime SpaceX and Tesla will continue to do well. Not because of Musk but in spite of him.
- vGPU 3y ago
  So why hasn’t bezos’s phallically reminiscent space endeavor been able to draw similar talent? Why is every other EV startup essentially DOA? Rivian’s current sales numbers rival Ferrari. Fisker is dead. Faraday is dead. Nikola just had a truck catch fire twice. Lordstown is dead. And if any of what you claim is true, then explain the success of: Zip2 PayPal Starlink (we can count this as separate from spaceX) And he was a co-founder of openAI. Though whether he actually did anything useful there is debatable.
  - phs318u 3y ago
    SpaceX's mission is to spread humanity to the planets. Bezo's mission is to offer orbital fun rides to cashed up tourists. Fisker failed due to its major investor (DOE) halting future financing, and then being hit with the loss of a large number of vehicles in Hurrican Katrina. Up until then they were following a similar startup arc (with the same sorts of problems) as Tesla had in their first few years. [0] With PayPal, Musk was insistent that the venture proceed as X.com (despite brand testing showing that people were likely to associate it with porn), but was overruled. He was also opposed to the sale to eBay, which actually catapulted PayPal in terms of growth, and embedded it as a "must have" for e-commerce. [1] [2] [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/fisker-automotive-failure/315946/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/fisker-... [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-elon-musk-fired-from-paypal/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-elon-musk-fired-from-p... [2] https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-millions-in-the-paypal-mafia/ https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-milli...
JuanPosadas 3y ago
> everyone who doubts daddy musk's amazingness and geniusness is a loser and a narcissist
- vGPU 3y ago
  Impress me with your achievements and then we’ll have something to talk about, anklebiter.