Any publicity is good publicity it seems like. People don’t get that hating is not the opposite of love, it’s indifference. Mute and forget.

I just sent the second part of this to my friend WRT his ex-wife…

Hate is just confused admiration

I confusedly admire bigots and racists? That doesn’t make any sense…

I admire my neighbour who mows at 6 am?

Many bigots are revealed as self-hating closet cases and fetishists, so I could see a naïve analysis attempt to flip it around and assume it must go both ways.

It reminds me of the Trump thing, it seems people really lose all rationality when they are faced with a man who publically doesn't care and does whatever he wants and is successful at it. I wonder if we will one day have a psychological name for this. It must be related to something in the human brain that touches on social repression and decades of instilled moral codes like "Don't say this, nobody will like you" and then when somebody does it anyway, you feel like it's an invader from a different tribe or a tribe member violating the fabric of what holds together the tribe. When really, he's not doing much different at all and they'd privately do the same exact jokes as a kid like "Twitter is Titter! haha! Like titties get it?" I bet lots of people had such a dumb thought but repressed it and when a supposed adult and major social figure acts like that, it evokes anger that the tribe is in danger.

"and is successful at it."

Overpaying, creating a mass exodus, destabilizing the platform, and losing tons of advertisers is "successful?"

The Twitter thing is still in progress and probably his first project where you could say that he has a problem

I’d argue that one of the reasons Tesla and SpaceX are successful is not just because Elno is a “visionary” (or functional equivalent). It’s because he was/is supported by a cadre of “true believers” (eg that we must disrupt the auto industry in order to do something radical about climate change). Those true believers (like all true believers), are willing to put up with lots of strange behaviour in the name of that belief.

Twitter on the other hand was bought with a management layer that could fairly be characterised as the opposite of true believers in whatever Elon is selling. Hence the implosion.

What are your thoughts about The Boring Company?

Yeah you're right about this, but it isn't irrational. Human societies have been as successful as they have because of social contracts. The phenomenon you're highlighting here is just society's immune system to protect itself against violators of those contracts.

Trump fomented an attempted insurrection and you are shaking your head about the rationality of the people who are concerned?

It's concerning that you're not.

Apparently the people that have Musk living rent free in their heads are living rent free in your head.

Mental subletting.

I actually think the "living rent free in heads" peaked awhile ago. At this point it's just clear in a more pedestrian way that things aren't going well over there.