To think Elon has lost his mind?

[JennyBeanR]

I used to be a big supporter of his. I was absolutely obsessed with his work on SpaceX and neuralink. His Joe Rogan interviews are some of the most interesting conversations I've ever listened to. Since he bought twitter I feel like he's been radicalised. I honestly can't square the man he seemed to be while building this extraordinary career with who he had become.
I still agree with him on quite a few topics, but his outbursts on twitter this week to stoke the riots is just reprehensible. His comments seriously make me feel sick. I really hope he is held to account when the dust settles. Although I don't hold out much hope.

In the app so can't set up voting properly, but essentially
YABU - Elon Musk is of sound mind
YANBU- you're right, he's lost it

The trouble with humanity is this constant search for heros and leaders.
And that has led us down the darkest of paths.

if you think about it, its a kind of collective infantalisation where we are looking
for replacement parents but on a more mythic scale.
We want to look up to them, and be dazzled by them, and perhaps even hope they will 'save' us all from ourselves.

The reality, he has always been unstable and erratic, and he is a manchild whose mother defemds him on social media at his advanced age.

We project on him and put him on a pedestal and then knock him off with all the associated disapointment and disillusion, but in the end he is just a ' very naughty boy'.And he is responsible for pushing AI with OpenAI.

A great book written in the 90s that adresses this transference of authority in our society and individually, is the Guru Papers
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guru-Papers-Masks-Authoritarian-Power/dp/1883319005

Musk is someone whose bank balance is higher than his IQ. Best ignored. 🙄

Thank you for that, I read it and it definitely doesn't say that he believes 'only smart people' should have children. I was starting to worry about my comprehension.

He's an interesting character, and has some controversial views, but I'm glad that there is information permitted on X that you just don't see on MSM.

You can report the most blatantly racist and anti-semitic Tweets and get told they don't break Twitter rules. I'm not talking about borderline, I'm talking about blacks being called savages, all Muslims being called racist and Jews threatened with murder.

He's now blatantly posting nonsense like "why aren't Churches being given special protection when mosques are?" Yeah, why is that?

He's supposed to be the owner of a platform promoting free discourse and the "marketplace of ideas", now he's an open political participant not only in his own country but trying to be the same in our country.

Whether you like him or not Keir Starmer was elected on a platform to abolish the Rwanda scheme, set up a new Border Task force and process the claims of the asylum seekers in this country. That's exactly what the government has done or is doing. There is no legitimacy to demands that they should do anything any differently.

Above should be "all Muslims being described as rapists"

No, we don't compromise with the "grievances" of violent racist thugs.

He lost it years ago. If you look up his family history and read what his first wife's experience of him was, it will be pretty clear why he's acting like this. He's very rich and very messed up.

I was just saying to my H last night, remember when Elon was cool and had so much promise? What happened to him? He's beyond awful now, he's downright scary.

I guess he has so much money he doesn't care, or has been radicalized by some evil forces.

I’m disengaging from your faux naivety. You’re not posting in good faith.

I imagine he got middle aged like so many of us.

Wow there's a lot of misinformation on this post! Why do people comment when they clearly have little to no knowledge?

1. He did not randomly call that lovely diver a paedophile. He took his engineers off their work for his company and had them build a mini-submarine that might've been useful in rescuing the boys. Some people thought he was doing it for publicity, others that he was just invested in the rescue as all the other humans on earth (maybe more so as he had 5 sons of a similar age) and thought he could possibly help. He flew it over to Thailand and the 'lovely' diver told him he could "stick it where the sun don't shine". Without even examining it. He then referred to said diver as "paedo guy", which he claimed was a generic insult rather than an accusation of actual paedophilia. The judge agreed and threw the case out, ruling that it was the diver who started it.
2. He never worked for Apple?! I've never heard of him ever being accused of stealing anyone's code, I think Zuckerberg did - though he also never worked for Apple.
3. He has been accused of stealing the Tesla idea but won that court case; there was already a name and a vague idea when he got on board, but no car. It was him (and most importantly his money) that took Tesla from being a glimmer in the imagination to being the the behemoth it is today, which has completely transformed the entire automobile industry. The judge, having reviewed all the evidence, agreed that he was indeed a founder - along with a couple of others who had joined after the initial incorporation.
4. The animals tested on by Neurolink were already fatally ill. Does that make testing on them ok? Maybe not, but surely no worse than all the testing done on millions of both healthy and non-healthy animals all over the world. If you want to complain about animal testing, great - but why would you start with Neurolink?
5. His father didn't own an emerald mine. He had shares in an emerald mine, which provided a bit of money before going bust. Whilst the family was seemingly comfortable, they were definitely not super-wealthy. The father has since been declared bankrupt.
6. His father was also a member of an anti-apartheid party. Elon was certainly not raised as pro-apartheid.
7. His first wife wrote an article about him in which the worst thing he apparently did was tell her he wouldn't employ her. Oh, and when their child died he found it too hard to talk about, but she wanted to and tried to make him so he apparently called her 'emotionally manipulative'. He also allegedly told her that he would be 'alpha' in the relationship on their wedding day - but she stayed married to him for many years and bore him six children so she doesn't seem to have been terribly bothered about it, bit odd for her even to mention it really...
8. He won't ever be going bankrupt. Obviously. Unless the entire economic order collapses - in which case I would think him also being poor would be of little consolation.

Having said all that, I agree that he has little to no understanding of the UK, or probably anywhere outside America. I also think he should stop spouting off at every opportunity, I don't think he is helping the world (or his brands). I think he has fallen down a far-right rabbit hole since his child's transition, and I think there's nobody telling him to stop it.

I am however pro-Twitter as over the past few days there's been a lot on there which is unnervingly missing from the mainstream media. I definitely don't think that should be anyone's sole or main news source, but I do think it's important there is a place where people can report what is happening from the ground. I also think it needs to be closely monitored to make sure fake news is removed quickly.

There is nothing that man won't say to get attention.

It’s not about compromising. Or negotiating. I’ve not said that the rioters are in the right. Of course what they have done and are doing is destructive, wicked and scrounged productive. But unless these men are listened to, and feel they have been heard by the government they will not stop. the frustration they feel is that they are a section of the population that does not have a voice and does not matter to the government

You have a majority of the population who want immigration reduced and the politicians are ignoring this. And have done for years.

That's a fucking lie! Immigration was consistently in the top 5 priorities in the lead up to the GE. It was widely discussed. No one is ignoring it @hamstersarse. The Tory government lied to you about it. Made promises they couldn't keep and used immigration to stoke a Culture war that has now erupted into violence on our streets.

It is total bullshit to say politicians are ignoring it.

I agree with Musk as do millions and millions of other Brits ..none will be on here though as it isn't really a forum, just a collection of people crying about how racist everything is. Reading the thread, I'm sure many think 99% hate Musk and think he is a naughty racist wearing a pointy white hat. The reality is entirely different.

No one will be on here though.... Bollocks.🙄 You're here and so is the person quoted who posted just after you @TiredCEO34 .

I'm getting sick of the "silent majority" lie. You're not silent. Your not the majority.

Excellent man just speaking on R4 at the moment. From the equalities commission I think.

Good post @otnot

Its like there’s a lot of misinformation about Musk out there….🤪

I wonder why outlets like the BBC would like to smear him? 😵‍💫 A mystery indeed.

Although the real mystery is why anyone believes a WORD the BBC says anymore. As a pp has pointed out, X shows you very very clearly all the things they miss out, or misrepresent.

Thanks for picking up on those points. I was going to directly quote about neuralink but you summed it up.

I disagree with the people claiming he's always been unhinged. I wonder if they've ever actually listened to or looked into what his companies actually do. The glittery rocket comment was particularly ridiculous 🙄

It's been interesting overall reading the comments though. I think I just wanted to vent my anger/disappointment at his apparent downfall.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/06/riots-thuggery-14-years-tory-race-baiting

Includes commentary on Musk.

OK, so they go to the government and say "We want immigration stopped altogether".

What is the government supposed to do then?

I work in tech. The sub was a prototype, which is to say a new, untested design. No one in their right mind would have used it in the very difficult rescue situation the cave divers were working in. When someone who knew more than Musk called him out on his hubris he called him a paedo.

Why this is regarded as mitigating circumstances in Musk losing his grip on reality, I cannot fathom.

I think it’s fair enough to criticize his behavior or things he’s said, but I hate, hate, hate how threads criticizing him always seem to end up with people saying, “he’s a narcissist,” “he’s a psychopath,” or whatever other armchair diagnosis they have. He’s autistic. Of course he comes across as “weird” to other people. Lots of autistic people have had those terms used against them before diagnosis - author John Elder Robison has people tell him he was going to grow up to be a serial killer - and it’s disheartening to see people using them when it’s common knowledge that Musk is autistic.

I know, I know - “my relative/friend/co-worker is autistic, and s/he doesn’t [fill-in-the-blank].” Okay, but do you really think Musk’s behavior, demeanor, et cetera is totally unaffected by autism?

I've always found it very odd that the same people who complain the loudest about misinformation appearing on X are the very same who happily spread complete nonsense about Musk - you think they'd at least be certain they were only posting facts on threads where they're moaning about fake news!

I'm a huge supporter of his companies and do wish he'd focus more on them and less on politics. I think that when he realised he'd been lied to about his trans child he started to notice other places where the media/government aren't being completely honest, and now his own algorithms are bombarding him with endless 'far-right' posts.

I think there's some credence in this.

He had Sunak opening the door for him.

Sunak got kicked to the curb in the GE.

He then thought Farage would replace Sunak.

Farage got called out for his comments.

So now he has to go it alone to get heard. So he has to shout louder.

He's just a sad little man who's only "friends" are people on his X business so he has to do this to feel special.

Sad fuck he is.

At the point he created it they were desperate. They still had no idea how they were going to get to the boys; the diving rescue was seen as near-impossible and it was by no means certain they were going to attempt it. Many people were coming up with ideas, maybe his wouldn't have worked but he thought there was a chance he could help and so he tried - which is more than any of the rest of us did as we gawped at the telly with our fingers crossed. He does of course have some of the world's very best engineers in his service, the very fact that they could build a working submarine at all in two days is spectacular!

The diver, completely unprovoked, was extremely and unnecessarily rude to him and the court case decided Musk's retort was therefore perfectly legal. Especially as he did not call him a paedophile, he used the insult 'pedo guy'. I imagine he was extremely hurt to be attacked when he was genuinely trying to help, like anyone would be, and he lashed out.