So "X" - nothing to see here. Elon's in control - Part XXX **Threadbans in OP**

Cordell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121141884#Comment_121141884

Was that before paypal became THE internet payment operator, or after? And the fact that he was forced out is as relevant as the fact Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple, but he was the one who saved them after.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121141896#Comment_121141896

His ideas would have destroyed paypal and were rightly ignored.

Doctor Jimbob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121141871#Comment_121141871

Ah yeah I'm sure they were just sitting around twiddling their thumbs until the mighty Elon jumped in with his genius ideas. Just like he's going to save Twitter by firing a heap of staff, not paying rent, and preserve free speech by putting it behind a paywall.

It's not hard to recognise his achievements. I've acknowledged his ability in investments and marketing.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121142031#Comment_121142031

It's not hard to recognise his achievements. I've acknowledged his ability in investments and marketing.

This is the problem though: the infatuated are all-in on the idea that if Musk says or does it, it must be a good idea. There's no critical thinking WRT his actual actions, no matter how ostensibly or obviously inane or bad they are. There must be 4D chess at play, it's just part of the brand etc. - while bad behaviour is waved away as liberals being thin-wristed and unable to take a joke.

Clearly Musk made huge strides in Tesla & SpaceX, regardless how thin his actual contributions might have been - but he headed the changes that ramped them both into market leader positions. I've said it dozens of times already but I liked Musk, I admired his far-thinking WRT space travel & the electric car. But the bloom has clearly come off the rose, Tesla in particular now struggling to keep parity with the waking behemoth that is the car industry. The Cybertruck now a proper albatross around Tesla's neck, all while Ford makes bank on the electric F150.

Were Musk the true innovator and bleeding-edge thinker, he'd had recognised you gotta iterate and keep moving; to constantly develop and evolve your product, not build stupid cyberpunk / Halo inspired vanity projects. Steve Jobs tried to come up with things people actually want, even if they didn't know it yet. Elon Musk is building an immensely stupid truck 'cos he likes video games.

Cordell

the infatuated are all-in on the idea that if Musk says or does it, it must be a good idea

I never said that, I'm only puzzled by the fact some people are incapable to recognize his achievements simply because they don't like him.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121141896#Comment_121141896

Thing is, you've largely spent the thread fawning over Musk, claiming every move of his genius. So what idea of his since the start of this thread has turned out to be genius? Twitter is a disaster, the cyber truck is still looking unlikely to ever be released and all other car manufacturers are having no major issues joining the EV market.

Tesla has the US lead but VW have the overall lead in Europe for example. Also the brand is getting a lot of flack over unpredictable behaviours of cars and manufacturing quality.

Doctor Jimbob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121142104#Comment_121142104

You keep saying this despite multiple people acknowledging his achievements. You just disagree on what his achievements are.

Cordell

Thing is, you've largely spent the thread fawning over Musk, claiming every move of his genius

I certainly haven't done this, I only recognized him for that are unquestionable achievements: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink.

K-9

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121141428#Comment_121141428

Tesla wouldn't be where it is without Government hand outs. There were times they were in serious bother cash flow wise and wouldn't have made it through without government backing. Obama gave him big subsidies IIRC.

pjohnson

Tesla was a leader but Musk was to unfocused to fully capitalise on that advantage due to his distracted by utterly stupid side projects sorry "innovative designs".

He needs to be kept on a short leash as most of his ideas are utter nonsense. His companies succeeded due to him being surrounded by smarter successful people. When left to his own devices its disaster after disaster.

Cordell

His companies succeeded due to him being surrounded by smarter successful people.

And that's precisely what great leaders do: they surround themselves by smarter people and only lead them, not do their work for them.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121140081#Comment_121140081

Pffft.

He's a guy who came from money that invested some money wisely in a couple of projects and not so wisely in others.

That's it.

K-9

Kind of reminds me of the big time property developers in the artificial boom times. They got obscenely rich because they got lucky that they worked in a particular industry, at the right time.

If they were so smart and successful, they'd have got out before the crash, but they didn't see it coming. Or made a business decision that it wasn't going to happen, soft landing and all that.

superflyninja

This thread seems quite polarised, so I want to make it very clear from the outset that I'm not on either side of the fence about Musk. I REALLY dislike some things I've heard about him like his forcing people back to the office etc but he seems to have accomplished a great deal with SpaceX and Tesla and I admire his drive to get to Mars as a backup plan for humanity. I fully appreciate that he did not personally create the tech, he simply steers the ship. Id put him in the same box as a Steve Jobs figurehead. I'm sure Steve didn't personally design the iphone processors and hand code IOS either.

Im curious about the shifting public perception of Elon Musk though. I've been vaguely aware of Musk for quite a while, for a long time it seemed that he was hailed by many quarters as a genius rich guy, that was constantly referenced by pop culture. But (again as someone not very familiar with any actual details) the public opinion started to sour on him, Id guess around the time he was talking about buying Twitter. What triggered the turnaround? Its like he is now mentioned in the same breath as Trump. Does anyone have any recommendations of some decent Youtube videos or anything about Musk that are worth diving into?

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143270#Comment_121143270

I was along the same lines as yourself. His was always just a name I heard about big tech companies and what they were doing with SpaceX, Tesla etc. I wouldn't have known that much about him, even for the first while where he was making cameos in films like Iron Man 2, that may as well have just been a random actor.

But speaking of things "worth diving into", where he really became a "this guy seems like a bit of a pr*ck" is when he put forth plans to build a submarine-type thing to save the Thai boys who were trapped in a cave, an expert on the matter pointed out why Musk's plan was awful and wouldn't work.

So Musk, on Twitter, called him a paedophile.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter

Pretty much everything I heard about Musk after that just showed him up as an arsehole. Most of his successes, even with SpaceX, comes from doing deals for government contracts.

He's less of a tech genius and more a businessman, breaking laws and manipulating stocks/shares when he needs to and when he knows the fines will be less than the profits. But his ego also made him sign a contract for Twitter for more than it was worth and which he couldn't legally get out of (he tried), and it's lost a huge amount of its value since he took over and is likely to continue losing value.

He's not an idiot, but he does and says really idiotic things, and part of it is due to pure ego due to the successes he and his companies have had, and the public persona of him being a genius he's able to craft by doing cameos etc. That said, I just call him an idiot because it's quicker.

Cordell

Steve Jobs was a prick of an order of magnitude higher, he denied his daughter and he has stolen money from Wozniak in the early days of Apple. Yet somehow he's a hero for people who disregard Elon Musk.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143270#Comment_121143270

I admire his drive to get to Mars as a backup plan for humanity

Just on this: not having a go at you personally, only I've got a little tired of this vision of Musk's that somehow Mars should be earmarked as a "backup plan" or somesuch; as opposed to him leveraging his unimaginable wealth and sway to try and make Mars unnecessary to the survival of humanity. WE still have a planet earth, just about: why not try and terraform that? lol.

I can't admire that he's not even gonna try and save earth, but instead just context shift all our flaws and problems on another planet altogether - one that can't even sustain life in the first place. Requiring an even more brittle setup for humanity's existence than the planet we're on. One slip and everyone dies? And if not giant domes on Mars, then a very long-term terraforming tactic that, again, asks the question of why not put that time and those resources into saving Earth? Cos we'd be all dead by the time Mars was terraformed, at the rate things are unraveling both politically and environmentally.

Again not taking aim at you specifically, but I've seen it said before here and elsewhere; like Musk's Mars plan is another piece of breathtaking genius, without stopping to think about the immediate, solvable problems that'd make Plan B totally redundant. It's all well and good daydreaming about Martian colonies - 'cos that's a conveniently abstract plan that doesn't require thinking about fossil fuels, poverty, autocracy, rainforests, ice caps or the myriad of things that need addressing here.

I just can't swallow the idea that giving up and focusing on Mars is a particularly insightful, celebratory tactic by Musk

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143421#Comment_121143421

Not to mention that, you can't own the Earth, but if you're the one setting up the first colonies and providing all the access, transport etc on Mars, you would have an ungodly amount of power and control.

That's why he'd rather spend 500bn to set humanity up on f*cking Mars, than spend 50bn helping to protect Earth.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143270#Comment_121143270

I would wager that Steve Jobs had more to do with Apple's success than Musk did with any of the businesses he bought. Jobs helped build Apple from absolutely nothing when Steve Wozniak showed him the development of the Apple I and he helped make Apple into a giant, although I would say that Wozniak was the bigger brain of the two...and I mention that as someone that dislikes Apple intensely and is one of Bill's little soldiers, for better or for worse.

Musk simply bought, or bought into, existing companies and hired people to do the work that made those companies successful, at least for a limited time. He's not an innovator, he's not a designer, he's not an engineer and he certainly is no leader of any calibre.

He's a guy with money and a, sometimes, eye for an investment.

Out of everything he's been involved in, Space X is probably the most interesting. But, one has to ask, to what end? I can't see the Mars idea ever really coming to fruition, so eventually it'll end up morphing into a company that will evolve into space tourism for rich people? What the hell good is that?

Doctor Jimbob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143407#Comment_121143407

Is he? I'd file them both in the same category TBH.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143374#Comment_121143374

I've often wondered how much his autism plays into the public persona that we see of Musk. He seems to lack some very basic social skills and his utterings can be curiously peculiar at times and devoid of a self reflection.

He may, indeed, be a prick on occasion. But perhaps he just doesn't have the wherewithal to understand that the next thing out of his mouth isn't a genius comment. It's just kinda rude.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143501#Comment_121143501

Yeah; there's not much lingering fondness for Jobs as a Perfect Human Being, and there's a much stronger culture of critiquing the man's obvious flaws - as seen with the very film adaptation I quoted.

It probably helps the man's dead now so the various skeletons could come out of the closet, the worry about right-to-reply passed. While Musk is still alive for another few decades, followed by a horde of pathetic man-children whooping his bullshít and aggressively dog-piling even tepid criticisms of their idol. To loop it back to Twitter, the service has only helped whip these idiots into a bigger frenzy than we ever saw with Jobs worship at its height.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143519#Comment_121143519

It probably doesn't help when he has sycophants constantly feeding him adoration and positive reinforcement for the most base-level tweets or comments.

"Your meme game is strong".... An adult man said that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywlsTbKsl6k

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143553#Comment_121143553

JFC if I had to work in an office with grown-áss adults like that, behaving like fratboy teenagers, I'd just go on the dole and take my chances there. No wonder there's such pushback again "blue haired feminists" and their ilk from these morons, getting in the way of these arrested development sausage parties. They'd otherwise have to grow up.

Christy42

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143544#Comment_121143544

Pretty much. People mention other billionaires not getting backlash except they do. The issue is there are very few defending them. You call Bezos an utter scumbag and people agree and there is less to talk about. You call Musk a scumbag and people come out of the word work to defend him which generates more discussion.

He also puts himself out there more. I know Bezos is a horrible human being but is he an idiot? No idea, haven't heard him discuss very much. Musk has sought out attention and people get annoyed when it isn't all favourable.

Knew his name before the Thai diver issue but just in relation to his companies. That I think was the start of people turning against him. There was also the terrible tunnel idea but that seems to be mainly to stop US cities from picking up plausible public transport solutions keeping the reliance on cars. Now twitter is what he is most publicly known with and that has been a disaster.

Plus SpaceX is great for satellites etc. but all his big talk is Mars, he is about to miss his own deadline for it and we'll Mars is a terrible, terrible, terrible back up plan for earth. Even with all the damage we have done it is in far far far better shape to host life than Mars is so why not focus on Earth? A manned mission would be cool and it will happen eventually but not for a good long while.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143421#Comment_121143421

The whole colonizing Mars thing is clownery of the highest order, as a means to save humanity just adds pure notions to it.

I’d put my left nut on it and say it’s never going to happen, ever.

eightieschewbaccy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143519#Comment_121143519

There's a fair bit of dislike of him in the autism community with the implication that he could "cure" autism with the neuralink thing. The unpleasantness of those kinds of ideas tends to be loved by some though.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121143553#Comment_121143553

The same grown man probably said "your brain chip implant game is strong", hence we are where we are.

Agent Coulson

Free speech Elon doesn't like when X staff don't like their boss.

Will he pay for this employees legal fees?

Musk vows to pay legal costs for users who get in trouble at work for tweets

Elon Musk of X, formerly known as Twitter, said there is "no limit" on how much the company is willing to pay

https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/1705272774598537384

nachouser

That RTE report is abysmal. It's like it was created by a chat bot asked to form an opinion.

"The judge on an ex-parte basis granted Mr Rodericks grant the plaintiff the injunction. against Twitter International Unlimited Company.

The judge said that while he was not making any findings of fact in the action, he was satisfied from the evidence that the disciplinary should be halted by the court."