Reddit is overflowing with non-stop Musk hatred. They spout lie after lie about him in every single thread where he's a topic. The most popular lie being that his business efforts - ie his success - were funded by an emerald mine that his father owned (neither thing is true).
The goal is to strip Musk, top to bottom, of any and all personal accomplishments. And to repeat any lies necessary, as many times as necessary, to reach that end.
I say this as an emotionally independent, objective observer of the craziness, I have no stake in it, and don't feel one way or another about it. The seeming mental illness the topic of Musk draws out of people is astounding however, the herd promptly acts like deranged lunatics when he comes up as a topic. Partisan collectivism mentality in action perhaps.
Until Trump drove them nuts I had never seen anything like it before, in person or online. There must be a name for such a massive scale of crowd insanity, to describe the frothing-at-the-mouth irrationality that a single entity can spur in a very large number of people.
No need to ascribe political malice where typical internet popularity-seeking will suffice.
"Elon didn't have anything to do with his companies' technical successes" and "Elon had everything to do with his companies' technical successes" are both low-energy, groupthink-supported replies at this point.
I don’t see anyone claiming Steve Jobs personally designed the iPhone PCB by hand while mining cobalt on the weekends to stay in shape, but on the other, I don’t see anyone claiming that he just provided money and the vision and engineers just manifested themselves.
Much easier to say “musk is actually a lucky idiot” than say “musk worked hard and built a multi billion dollar empire”.
The first avoids personal responsibility for their failures, while the second will send their narcissistic amygdala into a meltdown.
He fell upward every time and started with a sizable fortune. He absolutely didn't work so hard that he "built" a multi-billion dollar empire, no one human can work that hard.
Give it a rest.
Besides which, I can absolutely guarantee you that if I gave you a “small loan of one million dollars”, you’d be bankrupt by the end of the decade.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-min...
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-min...
Try harder.
"According to a Facebook post from Errol, the Zambian emerald mine he held a stake in "collapsed in 1989.""
Which by definition means he owned an emerald mine during the apartheid Era.
Regardless of his political beliefs or leanings, there is no means or manner in which such a mine could have operated _at_all_ without being advantaged by said apartheid norms and thereby being dependent on whar in effect slave labor.
How about You try harder.
Nothing else, carry on ...
Do you really need that or are you just sealioning?
After that, he seems to have been in the position of having to make his own way, while only getting help by a partial investment from his family in a further round of his already-succeeding company that he set up living in his office. So in the positions millions have been. There aren't millions of Musks around but there are millions of younger adults that have more than they deserve. But facts don't bend for your weird fantasies to be true.
Funny thing is, some time ago I thought Elon came from a background where he got a lot of money to start his successes, and still cheered him for making so much more from that than really anyone else. Then people started trying to show in him bad light, which backfired hilariously and now his origin story puts almost anyone to shame.
^ then don't engage in actions which could be misconstrued as such. It's Poes law mfer.
Also, youre shifting goalposts. Tossing out herring and engaging many other fallacies.
If I were a betting man, I'd put money on the probability that you are in fact being disingenuous or are a delusional fool....
Again, if you dont like that reasonable perception of you then alter the behaviors that induce said perception.
I am not shifting goalposts. Note that I'm not the original arguer here. I just noted that you basically doomed Elon from birth regardless of what good he's done during his life, which is a crazy weak argument.
I know people who think that casually considering non-comformists delusional is reasonable. They come in many sorts, but most often its Occam's razor so I don't hate and won't get more involved.
I am not disingenuous. I just hope people would cheer on the people of our time who push on innovation instead of attacking them for their money or pecularities. With enough mass just throwing lazy attacks things can only get worse for everybody.
This is just devolving into typical troll vs antitroll bs and I'm not interested in participating.
Review the thread and return to the actual arguments presented rather than continuing to avoid the actual issues raised/admitting you were wrong.
>Just a FYI your argument is that Elon got a Huge Head Start to his serial entrepreneurism just because someone in relation to him had a business 40+ years ago in South Africa. Far after which he lived almost as a destitute during his college years.
Which you can't retort and makes other arguments meaningless. Which are already so badly-colored (narcissism, trying to dredge up race relations) that are not worth deliberating on for anyone's sake.
Seriously, this was actually already answered.
Quit sealioning.
That’s a year of tech-bro salary.
Why aren’t you a multi-billionaire yet? Surely you can turn 400k into at least one billion dollars, since you obviously look down on musk so much.
Or is even 400k more than your earning potential?
Need I say more?
The only thing they seem to contribute to is… the global scale.
> top 5% childhood positioning, services, access to material and equipment, and more.
Strawman, moving goalposts, etc.
"top 5% childhood positioning, services, access to material and equipment, and more.
Strawman, moving goalposts, etc."
Nope what i listed were specifics, those advantages he gained.
You know that but chose to misrepresent with a red herring.
This is the SOP for Elon fanbois, just more trolling type behaviors just like thier wannabe lord and savior.
Really... it's rather sad and disheartening to know you folks actually drank the Kool aid and aren't just playing games, rather actually think like this and genuinely believe you arent fools.
Social media on the other hand doesn’t attract the same kind of believers at that level and there’s no one who cares enough to make it work in spite of him. Being a far less (or barely at all) regulated industry means he’s free to intervene and meddle in the most egregious ways, and the results are obvious for all to see. As a result of Twitter he’ll likely be in lawsuits (from investors, banks etc) for decades. Meantime SpaceX and Tesla will continue to do well. Not because of Musk but in spite of him.
Rivian’s current sales numbers rival Ferrari.
Fisker is dead.
Faraday is dead.
Nikola just had a truck catch fire twice.
Lordstown is dead.
And if any of what you claim is true, then explain the success of:
Zip2
PayPal
Starlink (we can count this as separate from spaceX)
And he was a co-founder of openAI. Though whether he actually did anything useful there is debatable.
Bezo's mission is to offer orbital fun rides to cashed up tourists.
Fisker failed due to its major investor (DOE) halting future financing, and then being hit with the loss of a large number of vehicles in Hurrican Katrina. Up until then they were following a similar startup arc (with the same sorts of problems) as Tesla had in their first few years. [0]
With PayPal, Musk was insistent that the venture proceed as X.com (despite brand testing showing that people were likely to associate it with porn), but was overruled. He was also opposed to the sale to eBay, which actually catapulted PayPal in terms of growth, and embedded it as a "must have" for e-commerce. [1] [2]
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/fisker-...
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-elon-musk-fired-from-p...
[2] https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-milli...
It's like they have a personal investment in Elon not having done the things that Elon has very clearly actually done.