When someone's as public a figure as Musk, it becomes nearly impossible to be any sort of human being and still be "decent" according to the standards of the noisy crowd. The few celebrities that are mostly universally liked pull it off by having almost no personality, so everyone can agree, "oh, yeah, they're nice."

After @popehat's tweet the other day [1], it finally sunk in that everyone's favorite hobby today is finding people to hate, and hating them. A lot of people are competing to be the noisiest about it, to make sure that they have an opinion about other people and that as many people as possible know what that opinion is.

We've added audience participation to the afternoon soap opera.

Celebrities can let the public chisel away at them until the only thing left to say about them is that they're "nice", or they can resist being chiseled at and that will only make the public hate them more.

[1]: https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1021912366722637825

footnote: people whose hobbies include "hating Elon Musk" might interpret this as a defense of Musk. It's not. It's an indictment of modern society.