This is a textbook example of public sentiment going against a guy previously considered unassailable… For me the best example of how the barrage of bad news reflected actual man-on-the-street sentiment was the boos at the Musk appearance at the San Francisco Dave Chappelle show. That had to be a show filled with exactly the demographic Musk used to appeal to, heavily male, willing to laugh at “wokeness”, able to spend upwards of $200 on comedy tickets, probably even a large percentage of Tesla owners...
There is a lot of unpredictable magic in how this sentiment goes… see Trump (from cringe to president), Gore (“I invented the Internet”), Howard Dean (“Dean scream” — how that was able to derail him is really crazy). But some do come back from it (Mike Tyson, Martha Stewart, Nixon?). I’m not saying the catch phrases are real in the case of Dean and Gore, just that it’s amazing how one person can be painted in the press as bad/annoying and another can do no wrong.
I agree. The Musk stans are being drowned out, or converting to the other side. The "genius" facade has a Twitter-sized hole in it, and his rule breaker image now looks a lot more like narcissism and entitlement.
Equally amazing is how public sentiment trails along with whatever the influencers are saying. We trust the influencers to tell us which strangers are the good people and then we trust them again to tell us those same people are now the bad ones. Why are some people still fans of Kanye West, given all that he did, but Howard Dean got run out of town on a rail for being made into a TV meme?
IDK. He's the richest person in the world and holds enormous influence. I really keep hoping it's just bad coverage and missteps and that he'll grow and mature into the tech world leader role that he's positioned to be, but I don't need influencers to tell me that calling employees useless because they're disabled is a dumbfuck move.
I didn't really buy the ultra genius narrative and I don't quite buy the evil villain narrative. I just think he's someone who has amassed so much wealth and power that he doesn't feel the need to listen to any criticism.
As I was saying in another thread, sustained success takes a village, it takes a combo of hype people and sober second opinions, and I've seen enough hugely successful people fail because they started feeling like they no longer needed their sober second opinions, and that's exactly how Musk seems to be behaving.
People in huge power need to make so many decisions and if they start insulating themselves against valid criticism, their entire world views can get warped, and a lot of persecution fantasy sets in, which we are seeing.
Now, his early success was so massive, he may be just too big to fail. So I don't know what happens when the person is an economy unto themselves.
For me, I was personally profoundly disappointed in him when he had this massive opportunity to step up as a world leader during the pandemic and instead he went full-on whiny bitch. That to me signaled that something has gone very wrong with who he is choosing to take advice from, if anyone at this point.
The air at the top gets very thin and people's thinking can get extremely strange when left up there alone for too long.
