> I don't care how much he works, but he's gotta do something about his thin skin and incompetence with the media.

This sort of thing usually comes from a severe lack of sleep and recreation.

He just needs to stop doing PR.

On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of his media appearances have been widely popular. But something seems to have snapped in him recently, perhaps culminating with calling that cave rescuer a pedophile. The dude has serious problems that are probably exacerbated by stress and lack of sleep. He needs to take a break before something bad happens.

Not everyone expect an industry leader to fake a persona in public so as to appear like the media want them to.

Wall Street might want that but hey, who cares?

It's not about how the media wants him to look, or even what shareholders of his companies want, it's about how the perception of his broader endeavors. The defensive way he reacts to any kind of criticism undermines the personal image which he has worked so hard cultivate.

Why does the image thing take 80% of the headlines and conversations, while Tesla just surpassed Mercedes and BMW in sales?

Can you find one major newspaper / website who reported that info? I certainly can find dozens of articles about Musk smoking weed, and yet not a word about the fall in BMW/Mercedes sales being hit hard by the Model 3...

We wouldn't be commenting about Musk image if they media were actually talking about the 50K deliveries of Model 3. But hey, Musk prefers to cultivate (or ruin) his image I guess...