4725

So I was mostly blissfully unaware of Elon Musk other than vaguely hearing about him as the SpaceX and Tesla guy. I imagined him as a Steve Jobs type – a charismatic tech leader persona. But what I’ve seen of him these past few weeks reveals a stammering, awkward, zero-charisma dolt. I guess he must have a talent for failing upwards via daddy’s emerald money?

4726

If you are trolling, that was masterful work. If you aren’t, good luck getting any sort of consensus answer to that since it’s a VERY polarizing topic.

Everyone agrees at this point that he’s an asshole and an attention seeker, but there’s very different views on whether he’s actually smart or a good CEO. One camp holds the view that he’s a privileged rich kid who has just been lucky to date in his other ventures. The other camp holds the view that SpaceX/Tesla are great companies doing groundbreaking things and Musk’s leadership contributed significantly to that so the Twitter fiasco is just an aberration. Most Musk fans these days are arguing that he’s a good manufacturing CEO but got out over his skis trying to run a software company.

4727

Not trolling. Just surprised at what I’ve seen of the person behind the name. IMHO, your mileage may vary, etc. It does make me feel better about my own imposter syndrome and my occasional bumbling in client meetings.

Of course, even if he was the most articulate, charismatic person on earth, he’d still be objectively awful for doing things like retweeting dangerous, alt-right nonsense.

In short, I wish I could go back to a world in which I was blissfully unaware of him and his shenanigans.

4728

A third point of view tries to circle the square with the idea that he may have been effective before, but he seems increasingly to be turning in to a Howard Hughes type. Howard Hughes did ground breaking aviation work, dated Hollywood Starlets, but ended his life with some extreme mental health issues.

Here’s a quote from Getty Images on a play on his final years (photo is of actor Rip Torn portraying Howard Hughes: “Long white hair, outgrown fingernails, pills, dark rooms and tissues to keep away the dirt were among the descriptions of the life of billionaire Howard R. Hughes in his last years.” [Just the first hit when I went looking for data on what I remembered of Hughes’ final years.]

Here’s a BBC summary of his life. which they suggest might have ended with “Howard Hughes [as] the archetypal super-rich hermit, said never to have trimmed his nails and to have kept urine in jars.”

4729

I listened to a big chunk of that Spaces thing and it was terribly underwhelming. I’ve been in dozens of meetings like that, where some clueless higher up trots out inane, trite, too general ideas while some middle management sycophant edges him on, and the underlings all say “ok” while thinking “wtf no”.

Elon sounded like the typical dude that thinks he masters some technology just because he uses it a lot and knows a couple of very general concepts, ignoring the depth of the dunning-kruger pit he´s at the bottom of. And Hotz might be a good hands-on hacker but was completely out of place as Evil Advisor…

If that had been a meeting of some up and coming startup I wouldn´t give these guys a dime.

4730

If I had to put a friendly spin on it, I think it’s mostly that the kind of people who hang out around here, educated, interested in forward-thinking endeavors, climate change, and a strong lean towards space exploration are putting together the pieces of how much this emergent potential idiot and potential right-wing horror show had to do with those companies.

I think it’s fair to say that we all like/liked Tesla as an idea, we liked the stated goal of making EVs mainstream, we liked the efficient reinvention of space travel. It just seems to be turning out that the public face of those probably had very little to actually do with it and was grandstanding on the original ideas of the invisible founders.

4731

The most certain proof against the Dunning-Kruger effect is owning the company itself.

4732
4733

Well, that’s one way to boost morale and create a supportive workplace! Er, or not.

4734

I guess he was cut “for a reason”.

4735

Source: Elon Musk brought his mom to a meeting with advertisers where he tweeted about Trump. He later fired an exec who didn't find the tweet funny, report says.

4736

So very Trumpian.

4737

Video of said meeting.

4738
4739

Twitter has restored a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and support groups after its CEO Elon Musk was criticised over their removal.

4740

It’s impressive how insecure Musk is, and that he does these dumb things and then immediately reverses course after criticism.

4741

Almost as if there’s no plan or forethought to anything he does.

4742

Given how the one on Reddit is weaponized, esp against marginalized folks complaining about said marginalization, this may not be a bad thing.

(At least on reddit it can be blocked)

That said, guaranteed if this is the right thing, it will be for the wrong reason.

4743

… aaaaaaand now Musk is signal boosting - “Epic Thread!” he enthuses - a New Year’s “predictions” tweet from Russian official Dimitri Medvedev that, among other things, forecasts war between France and a German “Fourth Reich,” as well as civil war in the USA in 2023. (No link because I just can’t.)

4744

Jesus, how can you not? He’s like Trump without the degenerative effects of age and dumbassness. Well, maybe a bit more of the latter than the former.