> Musk's popularity is largely BECAUSE of his Twitter antics

I don't really buy this. I knew loads of Musk fanboys who were crazy about him before Teslas even become available. The 50+ folks that I'm friends with have mostly never used Twitter or read a Musk tweet, but they think Teslas are cool and are reminded that StarLink brought rural Ontario better internet than our own government tried to do for decades. Obviously Musk is an ass on Twitter (and probably in person), but like a lot of neuroatypicals, their talent seemingly makes up for their abrasiveness.

note, musk created his twitter account in 2009... shortly after he became tesla's CEO. So unless you're talking about the original roadster, his twitter account existed before those people learned about tesla/musk.

Musk has pretty much used Twitter has his primary media communication method. Going so far as to say Tesla has no marketing budget because he's such a star on twitter. He has practically zero reach elsewhere. Sure, if he publishes on another platform, people will pay attention, but he doesn't... twitter is pretty much the way he communicates with the world.

If you dont think twitter is the reason you know Musk, then let me ask you this: who was the CEO of Fiskar? They released their EV product shortly before the model S. But you dont know the guys name do you? The product isnt why we know musk.

Musk was pretty well known prior to Tesla because he was one of the PayPal co-founders (technically a co-founder of X.com which merged with Confinity to form PayPal).

I'll say as a person who was just coming out of HS and not in tech yet at that point I don't think I had any idea who Musk was until after he come into Tesla. I'll also say he wasn't as wild on his twitter till after Tesla and SpaceX bumped up his public profile.

> Musk was pretty well known prior to Tesla because he was one of the PayPal co-founders

Well known outside of tech? I don't think so.

The fanboyism is quite considerably amplified by his public statements.

Without them, we may not get much press at all from him, he may be a bit of an unknown quantity.

His Social Media / PR is a gigantic part of his value. It distorts reality to a much, much larger audience.

Do you remember 'Maroon 5' the band? They had 'Really Big Hits' back in the day . Banger / Chart toppers. But it wasn't until the lead singer was on 'The Voice' did it make them a 'Household Global Name'. There were a poppy band with a tiny bit of an edge that appealed to a demographic, now, they are like 'Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune' - multigeneratoinal giants.

Musk has fanboys that are Dentists in Malaysia, street kids in Cairo, wannabe ballers in mid level cities in China etc. etc..

I wouldn't call myself a fanboy but I believed he genuinely wanted to advance the electric car, no matter who ends up coming on top. This was the version of reality I saw in 2009 ish. The goal was not to make money. I thought he actually wanted to show the big carmakers that you can actually sell an electric car.

Back then I didn't know about how good public transit is better than even the cleanest electric car because I had never experienced good public transit and well I have very limited imagination (I thought the Dropbox was a sucker that I was taking advantage of because I could get extra 50 MB or whatever by just walking up to someone in my dorm and referring them to use Dropbox, even if they had no intention to continue using Dropbox...)

Musk's companies have done some truly amazing things. He absolutely created enough buzz with Tesla to put EVs on the map, after they were fading. Battery tech. StarLink. SpaceX. They are all long overdue.

Also: He's a complete hobgoblin of a human being.

Both things can be true.

He still does the car for the same reasons, and it's still 'a good thing for green' he's just a bit older, a bit fatter, a bit richer (and targeted by 'socialists' a bit more often), he's a bit more irritated, and frankly, anyone who starts to let loose on Twitter is going to make waves.

About 80% of the people that I respect, I have lost respect for because of Twitter.

They just can't help themselves with the populism.

My dad is an 82 year old Musk fanboy. Why? Because Musk made fun of Elizabeth Warren. My dad likes him because Musk trolls people that my dad doesn't like. Period. Musk took Rush Limbaugh's place, along with Hannity and Carlson.

But I think any liberal/left-ish person who grew up with super conservative parents has lived this their entire lives.

Your father is like most people.

That said, Musk is nowhere near as outrageous as those talking heads.

Off topic, but the reason Levine joined The Voice is because Maroon 5 had famous hits for 10 years.

And the band was more popular before The Voice. Levine is more famous since.

> I don't really buy this.

I think you're both correct. My experience is as you described, but Musk has also developed a following among political conservatives attracted to his abrasive, thumb-nosing antics.

thats definitely a recent development. conservatives weren't big proponents of early EVs.

Liking him for railing against government agencies and brash style doesn't necessarily mean they are EV fans.

Neither was Musk, which is sort of the whole point of Tesla.

Conservatives still aren't a proponent of EV, especially government mandates for them or to pay for them.

That has nothing to do with Conservatives liking or disliking someone. I guess Conservatives are just better at respecting people they don't agree with on everything.

It's not 'conservatives' as 1/2 of them loath that stuff - and 'agitation' is traditionally an artifact of leftist populism (with traditional conservatives usually being small-c, establishment, older etc.) - it's more a bit of a businessy libertarianism, with hints of anti establishmentism that's in many ways more popular among the youth. Also, it's a hugely populist and international appeal, spreading his 'Noisy Tweets' around the globe.

See how much more popular he is now that he makes 'controversial' statements [1]

It's as PR trick as old as time.

Edit: but yes, technically he has taken a public shift to the 'Current American Right' in the mysterious political situation we are in, that's fair to say. Just wanted to indicate it's a 'new and kind of specific normal'.

[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=CA&q=%...

I appreciate your analysis, but would like to add that I feel that "traditional conservatives" seem to have largely disappeared or become voiceless not only in the US but also in other places like e.g. the UK. I imagine in decades prior traditional conservatives would have found people like Trump or Boris Johnson obscene and distasteful.

However, I don't see many of that old guard speak out against them. It seems with the reducing success projections due to changing demographics, many see winning as more important than values. Or at least that is my only explanation.

> many see winning as more important than values.

Interesting thought. For some analogy, if a bunch of skinheads joined my local baseball team and started playing dirty against the other teams and became the champions, would I care that my team has been hijacked, or would I not care because now my team is winning?

Obviously in the political example, the skinheads talk about "values" and people who want to be deluded just nod and repeat "values!", or they demonize the opponents by saying they'll bring in "dirty migrants", etc...

I wonder if the lack of voices you notice is at all related to the well-publicized data indicating conservatives do not feel they can express their opinions publicly without risk of punishment.

I think they’re talking about people like John Major or John McCain; people with conservative views but at least a patina of decency, restraint, and respect for the rule of law. If Boris Johnson and his coterie can express their opinions publicly, Major types certainly can.

It’s just not a winning proposition anymore; there’s not much market for “conservative who is reasonable”.

I don't think you are getting this right. A example would be Senator Elizabeth Chaney. She has been actively shunned by conservatives because she is willing to tell the truth about the 2020 elections. So she is being publicly punished for not just opinions, but actual facts, by conservatives.

I also disagree with the idea that conservatives are being punished for their opinions. Rather conservatives have been complaining that they are no longer allowed to punish other people for the way those people want to live their lives. A couple of examples:

1. The "Don't say gay" bill in Florida is not about people who were teaching about sex to young kids (there have been no actual accusations of this, only badly worded things that sounded like this). It is entirely about teachers teaching that it is ok that a child in their classroom has two dads or two moms. It is trying to wind back the clock to when those families would have to be kept "in the closet", or face social shunning.

2. In the recent case of the football coach who lost his job for leading prayers on the field after games. That one is again about the majority wanting to be able to use social power to push its religion. Despite what the majority of the Supreme Court said, he absolutely was using his position as a coach to push his religion. There was even testimony from a player who felt pressure to participate in order to get playing time.

It's a demonstrated fact that traditional conservatives are punished for expressing the opinion that Donald Trump is obscene and distasteful.

I think you and onos are not quite making the same point.

Conservative voices are a bit suppressed in some places, like on Campus. Some don't like to accept that, but it's true. But it's a kind of Social Justice institutionalism that would be the issue there.

Otherwise, 'classical conservatives' who voice their opinion against Trump, are also ostracized by that far right gang, which is very true. So that's a different kind of 'fear to speak up'. Liz Cheney is getting punted out of Office for that right now.

But that has always existed - the centre/far elements of 'each side' definitely have wars. You can see it play out at the NYT editorial staff among the Social Justice left (younger) and the Traditional Liberal left (middle aged).

I don't feel that Musk can be reasonably located anywhere in there.

>Conservative voices are a bit suppressed in some places, like on Campus.

I think it's a bit misleading though. Who would goto college and listen to somebody repeat ad nauseum their parent's conservative talking points they've already heard their entire lifes? Or listen to someone even more radically conservative than their parents?

Also a lot of those "suppressed" people were just openly bigoted and claiming to feel persecuted when they're not allowed to persecute people they don't like.

Well you've proved my point for me.

Your assumption that 'conservative' voices lack in legitimacy and are merely repetitious of their parents views, and worse, that they are trying to 'persecute' people is itself obviously bigoted, and gives us a crystal clear example of the problem.

Even views such as 'people ought to be treated for who they are and not their intersecting identities' is oddly 'conservative' in 2022. Or 'Trans women are different than women' - some argue is a transphobic/conservative position. etc.

> Even views such as 'people ought to be treated for who they are and not their intersecting identities' is oddly 'conservative' in 2022.

Claiming to do this while doing the opposite is a popular "conservative" position in 2022.

It's a demonstrated fact that traditional conservatives are punished for expressing anything that Leftists disagree with, which is everything because a conservative said it.

This is mostly true of social conservatism. No one is getting canceled for saying we should reduce taxes and spend less in government.

Yes, they do. You want grandma to die? We need to spend 1 billion to Ukraine right now or else Grandma will die. You want to murder Grandma? You should lose your job over this. I can't believe you can't be a little generous and send something to the current political target of the month. You are too selfish to have a job.

I've seen the logic train be that bad. Cancel culture has no end.

It's a demonstrated fact that unhinged hyperbole isn't a demonstrated fact.

The 'old guard' is not populist and the least PR savvy. They are speaking out, just not making the rounds on the news.

Note that as long as Trump had 'populist power' then Fox etc. would kind of following along supporting that. The Romneys, Cheneys, Bushes just didn't have the outlets.

It's changed a bit as Murdoch has dumped Trump, but the current trend is definitely a bit populist as they are backing DeSantis, who is frankly probably more traditionally conservative, but playing the 'Noise Game'. Same thing in Canada with new conservative leadership.

Note, young people are really, really pissed. Housing is completely unnafordable, they are in debt, inflation is taking off, and most of COVID wasn't a huge risk to them for 21 year olds it really was kind of 'a bad flu' it's really 40+ where the risk starts. So they are naturally going to be more emotively pissed off about all of that pain 'they endured' on behalf of others.

In Canada, the likely new Conservative Candidate is taking a 'populist turn' and kind of supporting the 'anti mask wave' (I mean, it's not crazy up here, but still it's a movement) - but shockingly he's more popular among 18-35 year olds than the far left NDP which is traditionally where they are strong. Shockingly, the 'Establishment Liberals' are the #1 party among 45+ all the way past 75.

This is an artifact that more clearly highlights what is going on everywhere, it's just not as clear.

The 'geriotoocracy' in the West is a bit left on social issues, and pro 'big business' on others. The 'establishment' policies are hugely favouring stock owners, real estate owners, retirees, pensions etc. etc..

Paradoxically literally just today I'm reading 'Russian Telegram' and they are complaining about the opposite: Putin and a massive class of Neo-Soviet jerkoffs stealing decades of hope from young Russians.

Young people have more opportunities than ever before, and have had a cushy upbringing for sure - that said - their challenges are very real and they have a right to be angry

I see very desperate kinds of comments on Reddit these days, sad people who feel completely voiceless.

In that context, a bit of populism is understandable. Musk is playing into that. Trump a little bit. WallStreetBets etc..

For some reason, it's not 'Bernie' this time around, it's a bit more 'Musky'.

So I think that is a big part of the appeal, and specifically with Musk it's probably not fairly traditional values.

Musk is also becoming a serious magnate, I mean, he was literally the richest guy in the world, and so the reality of people wanting to have 'higher taxes on the rich' surely grates on him, how long can he truly, culturally identify with the 'rebellious youth changing the world?'. He now has to 'get the goddam factories moving, this COVID stuff is overplayed!' and 'these greedy politicians want all my damn money, can't they see I'm changing the world?'. It's a bit of 'There Will Be Blood' going on. And he's pumping it all up on Twitter.

I think we don't need to worry about Musk though, he just has a bit of an opinion, a bit of a big mouth, oh well.

If his popularity is due to what he posts on twitter it would appear that a large proportion of the human race are deranged morons.

He can be popular due to Twitter and people can also not be deranged morons.

Twitter is very popular with a few niche groups: Journalists and people in tech for example. The former is influenced by Elon's antics on Twitter and end up writing news stories or making documentaries [1] about him. People learn about Musk through these respectable publications. The latter group spreads the gospel of Elon's TED talks and press conferences to their friends and family. Being subject matter experts, they're more likely to be believed.

Previously the coverage was mostly positive, but Musk's antics on Twitter have caused both the former and some of the latter to turn slightly negative from what I can tell. For example, it's now a common joke that Elon's wealth is partially due to being born wealthy. His family owned emerald mines. I didn't notice that in the popular consciousness until very recently. Phoney Starks is also making it's way into popular usage.

1 - https://www.nytimes.com/video/NYT-Presents/100000008464087/t...

The emerald mine stuff is super overblown and only matters to people who don't like Musk for other reasons.

If owning some natural resource like a mine or two was all it took to become a trailblazing entrepreneur who played a key role in Paypal/Tesla/SpaceX then Musk wouldn't be as popular as he is with many because there would be so many more like him around.

Musk is clearly an extraordinary individual even if he sometimes acts like a dickhead and had a small boost from owning emerald mines. But like I mentioned above if owning a profitable mine of some type was all it took to be an entrepreneur at Musk's level we would be drowning in them and he wouldn't be such a big deal in the first place.

But in the case of Twitter, Musk clearly seems to be in the wrong here legally.

> But like I mentioned above if owning a profitable mine of some type was all it took to be an entrepreneur at Musk's level we would be drowning in them and he wouldn't be such a big deal in the first place.

I don't have an opinion on how big being born wealthy plays in his success. Just curious though -- how many profitable mines do you think are in operation and how many people do you think own them as a percentage of total global population?

What level of profit did the mine bring in? That's the real question that I've never seen an answer to.

You can own a gold mine in the California mountains and come out of it with nothing but debt. It would sound like you're rich in the newspaper stories, though.

> What level of profit did the mine bring in? That's the real question that I've never seen an answer to.

Who has time for ascertaining the facts when there are politically derived narratives to promote.

Mines specifically? No idea. But come from backgrounds if wealth and privilege comparable to what Musk had from his families Emerald mines? A huge number.

Think farms, family businesses, real estate empires, even just well known doctors or other professionals.

Elon Musks family were comfortably upper middle class but really nothing special in terms of wealth. There would be hundreds of thousands of American families as rich alone.

This assumes that everyone who has lots of money and advantages chooses to try to run companies. That's not the case at all. I grew up around ultra-wealthy people and many of them wanted to focus on the arts.

So you have a small sample size - extremely wealthy people. Then you cut that down massively again - those people who also want to run businesses. Then a bunch of other things to narrow the pool lol. But then, finally, you cut it down to "and then the ones who succeed".

I don't think, at that point, the numbers are going to be behind you.

Wow, even being critical of Musk can’t prevent the downvotes if you dare mention some of his accomplishments.

Except that Musk has talked about how he had to work his way through college and basically didn’t benefit in any way from his dad.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1211054942192119808?s=21...

While I agree that the emerald mine stuff is overblown, I don’t buy the idea that Musk was self made and independent. He didn’t always have free capital, but he seems to have a solid network through his extended family from early on that helped him.

That meant he had a readily available set of investors, advisors, and partners. That ranged from Greg Kouri, pivotal in forming Zip2 and X.com, to Roelof Botha. Roelof is the grandson of Pik Botha, the last apartheid South African foreign minister who had built up extensive connections amongst the US elite.

Success is so much easier when you go to knock on doors and find them already opened for you.

I don't mean to represent that I think it's a fact, only that people are increasingly repeating it, which represents more negativity than I think Elon has received in the past.

Interestingly though, it was Elon who said his family owned an emerald mine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140802011449/http://www.forbes...

That was a Forbes interview in 2014.

The relevant section:

> JC: How do you handle fear?

> EM: Company death – not succeeding with the company – causes me a lot more stress than physical danger. But I’ve been in physical danger before. The funny thing is I’ve not actually been that nervous. In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I’m thinking, “Man, this could really go bad.”

Who knows what happened between when he was 15 and 17 to his family wealth that made him essentially penniless in a foreign country.

Edit:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1375212880790913025

This is where Elon says he arrived in Canada with only ~2500 CAD.

Elon says he arrived in Canada with only ~2500 CAD.

He went to Canada and could rely on his family network.

>Who knows what happened between when he was 15 and 17 to his family wealth that made him essentially penniless in a foreign country.

His estrangement from his father.

anti musk sentiment mostly stems from the post-2016 leftist surge. most of the mainstream internet was technocratic before

A hundred years ago, you just traveled from city-to-city with your posse of 20-guys. Those 20 guys would pretend to be an interested crowd (which draws in / astroturfs fake interest) Real people then start to join the crowd. You then show off your snake oil product working ("guest#1 from the crowd", who is of course your buddy), and then the real people will get excited, and buy your snake oil.

Today, you just buy a bunch of likes / retweets to perform the same astroturfing on a larger scale. Bonus points if you "meme" it and "go viral". You want all those people out there to be spreading your message at no cost to you.

A little bit of astroturfing goes a long way. People want to feel as part of a community. So a bit of fake-generated content and fake-interest helps at seeding the crowd and popularity.

---------

Stage magicians still do this today for entertainment purposes, rather than illegitimately hawking fake snake oil. Its a very good bit of entertainment. It does take some practice but once you get the technique, its quite repeatable.

Turns out that human psychology / group dynamics are in fact, predictable and consistent.

On TV it's the Laugh Track

With everything that's happened in the past decade, don't we know that already by know?

It would definitely appear that our monkey brains aren't very good at reasoning through social interactions that happen through mass media.

Whether or not this makes most of us deranged morons or not is in the eye of the beholder.

Most people don't pay that much attention.

They like the 'vibe' and that's that.

They may not specifically clue into the mapping of 'vaccine hesitation / conspiracy' to 'health outcomes', they might just view it as 'opinion' - which it is of course, but most responsible people understand the 'dots have to be connected'.

I think it's a bit part of the reason why a place like HN won't grasp populism: we are almost by definition 'anti populist' by our very outlook.

Even smart young people are usually busy with school, partying, social things, they don't all have time to parse all of the shifting nonsense, and those that do are more often than not trapped down rabbit holes, I think searching for 'an identity' more than they realize it.

This is populism. We (the crowd) make decisions on rough statements, headlines, a few words here and there, prejudices, assumptions etc.. Some of use a bit smarter than others, almost none of us see our blindspots.

Yes

Welcome to earth?

got bad news for you

> Except you can just buy up supporters by gaslighting huge masses of people on Twitter. The house in question.

What's the path from the masses on twitter and courts which will hear the case? Public opinion doesn't matter here. The case over the contract doesn't even have a jury if I understand correctly.

> Public opinion doesn't matter here.

Public opinion doesn't matter with regards to winners/losers of the case. But public opinion matters from the perspective of Elon Musk continuing to build his brand and grow his fanbase.

Even if Elon Musk loses the court case, he still want to turn this whole charade into a positive for himself. IE: Fail upwards, etc. etc.

Your comment implies that there was a time when he was actually trying to buy the "house" in good faith. I'm not convinced that is true... It gave him a great excuse to liquidate Tesla stock without the market responding as strongly as it normally would when a CEO unloads billions of dollars of shares in a company

I think it is actually worse than that, I think he was buying it in good faith.

He believed he had "bought the dip" in stocks. He had bought 3bn worth, announced that he had bought some stock and made 1bn in a day on it - worlds smartest man everyone.

I know, if I buy 44bn worth then at this rate I will make many many billions ...

Once he realised he wasnt buying the dip but was actually holding the bag, deal cancelled. Best guess is he is down 10bn on where he bid so his loss-porn on this one is pretty sexy.

> I think he was buying it in good faith.

My personal theory, which more or less matches Matt Levine's theory from his Bloomberg opinion column...

Musk wanted special features on his Twitter account. He made a stink on Twitter about it, hoping to get more features as one of its most popular users. When that wasn't working, he tried to join the Board of Directors to lean heavily onto the CEO to grant special features on his Twitter account.

Upon realizing that the board position doesn't come with those kinds of benefits, Musk quit the board, bought 9% of Twitter, and tried to push these "special features on my account" proposal that way. Board still didn't budge.

Elon Musk, realizing he has to buy the company to actually get what he wants, starts to buy the company. Then the stock price collapses and its turning out to be a horrible loss. So Musk then starts to throw another tantrum to get out of this one.

------------

The benefits of this theory, is that this "story" proposed by Matt Levine makes every single decision of Elon Musk reasonable (albeit sociopathic, but reasonable and self-serving). From his tantrum in early March 2022 on Twitter, to his 9% buyout, to his flirting as a board member (and then quitting), to the eventual buyout.

It also doesn't require "4d chess thinking genius". Each decision, while reasonable, isn't really that advanced or difficult to follow individually.

Elon Musk just want special treatment on Twitter. I don't know what that "special treatment" is (maybe a bigger, bluer checkmark. Maybe guarantees on the global Twitter Timeline. Etc. etc. Something along those lines...), but special nonetheless.

And as a billionaire, Musk has a number of strategies at his disposal that you or I wouldn't have. Musk is willing to pursue those strategies because he's so rich, and its really not a big deal to his finances.

--------

It just fits so neatly to what has happened, that its the most reasonable proposal of his behavior for the past 6 months so far.

> I think he was buying it in good faith.

> He believed he had "bought the dip" in stocks. He had bought 3bn worth, announced that he had bought some stock and made 1bn in a day on it - worlds smartest man everyone.

> Once he realised he wasnt buying the dip but was actually holding the bag, deal cancelled.

But these concepts don't even apply to taking a company private. Once you do that, there is no stock price. You can't meaningfully claim that your stock is up or down. And what the stock does between when you agree to buy it and when you take possession isn't relevant to... anything.

Lets say you promise to buy a car in 30 days at a dealership (fully fictitious. This obviously can't really happen in real life).

You sign a contract saying "I promise to pay $20,000 for this car and I'll be back in 30 days".

---------

What happens if, within those 30 days, the car market collapses and the cars are now worth $15,000 ? Well, if you were an honest man, you'd still carry through with your $20,000 promised payment. If you were a dishonest man, you'd try to find a way around it.

Same thing here. Twitter's stock price has no relevance after Elon Musk buys it. But we all know that the 60% drop in Tech prices means that Twitter is *probably* down 60%+ like all other tech stocks.

This is what I'm saying:

Once you agree to buy the company, a drop in the stock price doesn't make you any worse off. Your circumstances are exactly the same. You are worse off relative to a counterfactual scenario in which you agreed to buy the company after the stock drop instead of before. But you are no worse off after the stock drops than you were before it dropped.

And this fact is not at all compatible with shapefrog's argument. Elon Musk didn't experience a loss. There is no bag for him to hold. He will experience a loss if he cancels the deal, but that's an unrelated scenario.

In your scenario, the car buyer can immediately benefit from canceling the contract by buying a car (from some other vendor) and pocketing the $5,000 difference. No such option is available in the case of Twitter.

I don't think anyone is confused on this point.