> There are a lot more businessmen doing substantively worse things for the world that don’t catch an ounce of hate
I'm certain nobody likes those vaguely described bad things and would agree those "substantively worse" things are worse. So what? The topic is Elon and thus we see people's reaction to Elon.
> The problem is, he clearly doesn't care whether anyone thinks he's an asshole or not.
It's a natural consequence of a progressivist assumption that all ultra-rich people are assholes. Given that, you can't fault an ultra-rich person from concluding that being called an asshole is noise to be disregarded. IMHO the real problem is too many people are consumed with having an opinion about whether he's an asshole or not. What I see is a bunch of highly online people who utterly exude delight in saying anything mean about Elon, which is a sad state for them to be in — regardless of Elon's inherent virtues or iniquity.
In the past couple of years he's fallen much too far down the right-wing rabbit hole for my tastes, but I don't blame him given how the political left are constantly berating him for not adhering to the Correct Opinion™ on the full suite of progressive issues. The left have forgotten how to win arguments on their merits, or how to tolerate a diversity of views. The left have rejected him, but the right still want to talk to him, and people wonder why his views are being increasingly shaped by right-wing perspectives.
Regardless, who cares what Elon thinks anyway? I don't form my political opinions by agreeing with whatever any ultra-rich person says, and I don't know anyone who does.
> Because some people are so rabidly anti-Elon that they would rather nail the feet of the human race to the ground than allow that "bad man" to succeed at taking us to the stars.
There are good reasons people are anti-Elon, and I don't need to list them here now. Technological advancement is nice, and it can be a good thing that one "eccentric" billionaire puts a lot of money into this. But there are consequences, and it's good that there are people who are critical of this. It's ok that people like Musk are scrutinized. In my opinion, there's way more room for scrutinity by mainstream media instead of them instead of sucking up every word he says.
I guess I can buy that some of the criticism is objectively gratuitous but, humans hating everything another human does, if that human is hated themselves, isn't really anything new.
I guess the real question is, why should anyone expect Elon to have exemption from the hate game that everyone else is apart of?
> He certainly had his detractors before then, but it's hard to find a single person standing up for him today.
Maybe in your echo bubble, but that is factually quite incorrect.
Elon has made some questionable choices over the years and while I not a fan of many of them, I think he generally at least tries to use his capital for the betterment of the world. I think his "mission" is in fact the reason he uses to justify harsh behavior like described in this article.
Definitely. You've got bankers robbing the public for trillions, and wars of questionable effectiveness costing five trillion over the last decade or so, and then you've got Elon taking very large personal risks in technology that could potentially have great positive impact on humanity, and yet he gets the same level of hate in the press.
> the only conclusion would be that Elon is the force of evil and a reincarnation of satan.
Speaking of one sided... I'd argue there are many more nuanced conclusions you could derive.
I'm sure there have been comments towards him that are ad-hominem accusations of "evil", but in general and this thread specifically I think it's his virtue signaling around "free-speech" and "innovation" rightfully being called out for what they are; self-serving and quite vanilla capitalist maneuvering.
Setting up straw-man arguments like you've done is the same kind of defensive, fallacious reasoning his aforementioned zealous followers engage in.
Like Rick & Morty and Jesus, the worst thing about Elon tends to be his fans.
It's reconciled that these people have elon derangement syndrome and insist that they know his business better than he does despite never having done anything like it before in their lives
That suggests people hand out equal hate to all billionaires. JK Rawling seems like an obvious exception to that narrative.
From what I have seen billionaires tend to get more hate because they simply have more negative impact on peoples lives. Elon kicking out Tesla’s founders is hard to judge objectively because they might have done a worse job, but it’s easy to identify lots of dumb shit he did that harmed the company. Presumably he did plenty of positive things, but the negatives are just easier to identify.
Elon isn't morally worse than my grandparents. It's currently much easier to rally people around things they hate than things they like or support. It seems like that was always true to a certain extent, but social media in particular has dialed it up to 11. Most of my coworkers and family define themselves by what they hate rather than what they like. I put a lot of effort into not going in that direction.
I like Elon less and less the more time goes on, but it has little to do with much of the complaints raised in this article and similar pieces. Elon can't help it that crazy, rude, or sexist people gravitate towards him. He's a flashy tech billionaire, of course he has a cult of personality. We should focus more on the technology and the massive taxpayer bills involved. To all the people who raged at him for not 'reigning in' his 'fans': do you really expect him to be so kind as to go out of his way to make himself look bad and berate his customers at the same time? Let me reiterate: he's a tech billionaire.
I would also like to point out how the article goes out of it's way to mention that Elon Musk's crowd (I refuse to call them 'Musketeers', what vapid click bait nonsense) is full of "cis white liberals," in a clearly accusatory tone. What the hell is that supposed to mean? That they're all ignorant and hateful? Is the fact that there are shitty people on the internet somehow the fault of the white race, or is it just exclusively Musk's fault?
This kind of shit is what people talk about when they complain about 'social justice warriors' - authors publishing what amounts to rehashed complaints from Twitter and plaigarism with an underlying theme of "but think of the minorities!" Life sucks. Twitter sucks. Sometimes rich people suck. I wish it was better but this is not how to do it.
Both your original comment and this one make zero sense because you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the dislike for Elon, and you seem to be projecting it onto Tesla and then extrapolating it to EVs in general.
People can dislike Elon without disliking Tesla.
People can dislike Tesla without disliking EVs.
Again, your argument is illogical as presented, and I suspect is borne out of an emotional reaction to the aforementioned wealth growth that you spoke of.
I'm certain nobody likes those vaguely described bad things and would agree those "substantively worse" things are worse. So what? The topic is Elon and thus we see people's reaction to Elon.
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