What happened to Elon Musk

10 years ago, he was seen as a progressive who wasn’t entirely polished for the Media which was part of his charm, he even cultivated Obama and seemed a darling of the Liberal class.

Fast forward to today, and he’s unbanning Alex Jones and he is telling advertisers (Who constitute the majority of income for twitters platform) To go fuck themselves.

What happened?

He’s South African.
And, do a little background reading about his Father, ans step-sister. Disturbing family BG, at best.

I don’t know what that means, other than maybe he has the characteristics of the bad guys in Lethal Weapon 2 or a Neill Blomkamp film?

Elon Musk has never been liberal (certainly not in the modern political sense, nor arguably in the ‘classical’ definition); has always pandered to whomever was in power to get subsidies, development support, and preferential status in government contracts; has always demonstrated the narcissistic and self-aggrandized behavior of an entitled man-child; has been a thin-skinned, offensive jerk who dissembles about his personal and professional history for as long as he’s been in business; and has long manipulative and litigious toward people with whom he disagrees or feels have wronged him. His behavior here is absolutely nothing new except that the bigotry and irrationality are now coming out as he occupies center stage in public discourse.

Also, Elon apparently doesn’t understand the definition of “blackmail”, and that companies electing to spend their advertising budget elsewhere than his increasing unstable and flailing platform do not satisfy it.

Stranger

Drugs? And years of family alienation because he’s so toxic?

He’s always been awful, but getting a lot of attention and even more money has apparently removed any filters he once had. He’s probably surrounded by a bunch of sycophants who enabled him to the point he’s become completely delusional.

Quite frankly, I don’t think he’s ever really had any filters. He certainly got thrown off the board of PayPal because he was an obstructive and disagreeable presence who wasn’t contributing anything, and he’s been pretty vocal about whatever opinions he holds regardless of evidential basis, as well as claiming primacy in various technical developments which even a cursory assessment would show to be charitably described as exaggerated. However, he’s never made such a monumental blunder as buying a social media platform for a value well above its already exaggerated valuation and then destroying most of its legitimate merit and goodwill among its community of hardcore users, all due to a sophomoric pot reference ‘joke’. All of the money and accolades have certainly made him bolder and more self-assured in his imagined greatness, all the more so for the legion of Muskholes who fête his every pronouncement and believe him to be the ‘genius’ behind the actual innovations of his companies (and vigorous reject observations and reports of the problems, ethical lapses, and flagrant discrimination), but it isn’t as if he wasn’t the same self-aggrandizing jackass that he’s been all along. He just now has to deal with the vagaries of celebrity, and is too thin skinned to pass of criticism or accept the idea that maybe he should consider the opinions of others. And he’s far from alone in this; he just happens to have put himself in the center ring of public spectacle.

Stranger

Many, many drugs.

Money corrupts. Infinite money corrupts infinitely.

Being an ultra-rich person with mainstream views doesn’t garner much attention.

Musk is a massive narcissist who’s addicted to attention. It doesn’t matter that it’s overwhelmingly negative.

He’s perfectly willing to break his toys if it’ll show Them.

I just feel sorry for his employees, who if they’re smart have an escape plan in place.

Presumably it means that he comes from a country full of bigots who apply stereotypes to entire classes of people.

I’m gonna go with this.

ISWYTD. Well-played.

Musk has always had detractors, he has an independent/eccentric streak and never really ‘played the game’ much, especially when he’s had ‘F-you’ levels of money. I’ve found it particularly odd though that he’s never had so many enemies since he bought Twitter and promised more free speech.

The “promise of free speech” is one thing he’s absolutely positively failed to deliver.

And he’s delivered a lot of personal chaos & stupidity instead.

I’m not real sure what your point is. But if it’s mesnt as an oblique assertion that the world or USA hates free speech, you’re dead mistaken. At best.

The problem isn’t that he promised more free speech (even though it’s questionable whether he even did that). The problem, IMHO, is that he wrecked the validation system, which was the best thing about Twitter.

He’s a megalomaniacal narcissist whose main need in life is to be liked and admired by a lot of people. He targeted young liberals at first, because those are generally considered the cool kids. But those cool kids were a little skeptical of his “I’m not like the other billionaires, teehee” bullshit and he wasn’t getting the adulation he needed. He saw years of Trump and realized that you can be worshipped by right wing types just by being a huge asshole who spouts bullshit all day, and so he pivoted to that. The dumber and more assholish he gets, the more those deplorables love him, and so he’s leaning harder and harder into it.

Thank you, I now have shouts of “Diplomatic Immunity” and Danny Glover responding “It’s just been revoked” running through my head.

It means he’s a spoiled rich white man who grew up in a country where spoiled rich white men were the only people who mattered.

Musk seems to have lost interest in ‘X’ and appears willing to cause its financial death.