I like Musk on the whole and have a lot of respect for his engineering stuff with the cars and rockets at which I think he's very talented but really on social media he's a bit rubbish and seems to be losing it slightly.
I mean accusing advertisers who stop advertising of blackmailing him and saying he'll let Twitter/X go bust to show them what for is a bit bonkers.
I'm pretty neutral on Musk but he has an established track record of saying stupid shit on Twitter and ruining others' days/lives. Market manipulation, libel, trolling, etc. I guess I don't trust that a man with that kind of track record would be a positive influence on the social media hellscape we already have.
This is acknowledging that he also shares awesome stuff, like technical SpaceX details, and that he often engages with people in a real cool way.
I may not be the first to say this but he seems hasty and childish at times. Not to take away from his achievements but some things need not be said on public channels - especially when you have such a big following. He almost goes into mocking facebook publicly and I don't think that aligns well with the type of figure we imagine Musk to be.
He is an unseriousness person on twitter for sure. If you as a person take anything Musk says on twitter seriously you have greater problems. You shouldn't take anything on twitter seriously in fact.
It's almost like the people who dislike him most are taking him the most serious. It's funny actually.
Musk burned one side of his image quite irrecoverably. My opinion of him, not that it matters much, changed when he took over twitter. Previously, and without digging too deep I thought he was an excentric bloke who was still on the good side of things and genuinely wanted to make the world a better place, the benefit of the doubt he got that I didn’t know much of him. He now appears to me just like any othet insecure power hungry flawed billionare out there. And even worse, he orchestrated scams, eg, dogecoin rugpulls on SNL and so on. Yes, he’s good with money but has no ethics or conscience at all. And him being worshipped by his followers and fans may not only be a byproduct of his fame but something he needs to feed on.
I love a lot of what Musk does but thought those tweets were just insane, classless, and reprehensible.
Fortunately, he's seemed to have calmed down his social media game since 2018 (thank God), but he should still absolutely have to settle with this guy for a lot of money.
Musk has used social media to good effect, but he has also scored some terrible own goals (the bankruptcy joke and this one). I really don't understand why he can't curb his tendency to shoot from the hip like this, we're talking billions of investment and that requires a slightly more mature attitude.
I'd argue Musk himself has fallen prey to this partisan politics - it is really hard to support a large part of his tweets these days. He seems to have fallen into some strange mental quagmire with the failure of his twitter buyout, and his ego is not letting him accept any other reason for it than partisan sabotage.
But the way he is portrayed in the aggregate here and on reddit is even worse. He is either a genius beyond any criticism, or a complete fool, was always a fool and twitter is now exposing that.
We can't simply accept any middle ground, which is that he is likely a flawed human being who did some pretty amazing things once upon a time. If anything I hope we can steer him back to moonshot ideas, because he had a talent for it.
I could not agree more, I've never met Musk but he's probably always been kind of a jerk. My-way-or-the-highway people with Asperger's usually are, however social media seems to magnify the worst traits of someone's personality and expose it to the world over a megaphone. IMO if he'd just logout of Twitter things would get a lot better for his companies, including Twitter, but social media got him. Very few people are immune to social media's grip.
I agree - Musk's behaviour is harmful to his personal reputation, his businesses, his investors, and sometimes beyond. Also utterly unbecoming a CEO of companies which routinely have human life at risk, serve critical national security interests, etc.
(Yet I would not bet against him making a success of Twitter, as he has Tesla and SpaceX.)
Sure, you can think that. I don't fault you. Musk is extremely childish at times and that's putting it lightly.
It's his money to light on fire and his reputation to tarnish. I don't know why people get so miffed by him. Twitter wasn't anything special to ruin and I think it's doing just fine nowadays.
I feel Musk is falling into the same trap most other social media celebrities with large followings fall into. At some point they get addicted to controversy and outrage as long as they get attention. He would be way better off if he cared more about his businesses and kept his mouth shut. The signs were already clear with all the nonsense he did during the Thai cave situation. He tried to suck up attention with his little submarine and then got mad when it turned out it was useless.
Jordan Peterson is another example of this. He used to have some good insights but what I have heard from him lately sounds very authoritative and appeals to his followers but is pretty hollow.
I used to respect and admire Musk on a personal basis which led to me being interested in buying into the products and services he's responsible for (I own a Tesla Model X, and I applied for an avionics SWE position at SpaceX). The more he keeps up his cavalier attitude on social-media the more it puts me - and others in my social network - off from benefiting his companies, and by extension, him.
The same way that I'm not interested in working at Facebook because of Zuckerberg's attitude towards his users.
Thanks. I prefer this comment, where your considerations are reasonably articulated and "on the record" rather than letting the reader project their own assumptions.
I don't think Musk's behavior is capricious, but rather _improvident_. It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the problem domain -- social media -- and functional capacity to process its signals. I'd prefer he turned back to tech, where he undeniably has a much better track record.
Beyond everything else, I think that the Twitter thing has _really_ damaged Musk’s public image. Before Twitter, a pretty common mainstream view of Musk was that he was an, albeit eccentric, magical genius. The signs of trouble were there, of course, but the general public gravitated towards the Tony Stark interpretation.
That has now changed _dramatically_. Very few people now think of Musk as being a magical genius.
TBH I think Musk's own behavior is a big turn off. If the CEO of Twitter isnt going to act professional on Twitter, why should we pay for an ostensibly professional checkmark.
I mean accusing advertisers who stop advertising of blackmailing him and saying he'll let Twitter/X go bust to show them what for is a bit bonkers.
reply