Ladies and gentlemen, please take a seat! Tonight we are talking about someone who needs no introduction. Whether you know him as a wildly successful serial entrepreneur, or as an insane innovator planning to send us all to space, you’ve all heard of Elon Musk. I mean how could you not? The press goes gaga over all the crazy things that this man does. Sending a car to space? Check. Posting memes that crash stocks? Check. Naming your son after a wifi password?  Check. Starting a tunneling company that sells flamethrowers? Check. Being forced into buying a social media company? Check. Once you do a little digging (the boring company might help), you will find all kinds of news surrounding him.

 

What about his fans? The Elonators, the Musketeers, or whatever they call themselves these days, are a fascinating bunch. And I use the word fascinating because I have never seen a fanbase be this blind to their Messaih’s actions. Probably has to do with Elon musk being a visionary and all.

 

I mean this guy bathes in hypocrisy and power. Quite a unique combination if you ask me. He called himself a “free speech absolutist” while he was planning to buy Twitter. So guess what he did when a few journalists came together to discuss why they were banned, on Twitter Spaces? He simply shut down the entire functionality, claiming that there were some legacy bugs that needed fixing. His fans claim he is going to save the planet, but he has invested a lot more in taking over Mars than in preserving Earth. He claims he is neutral towards workers’ unions, but if you start something Pro-union in Tesla factories, you get fired the next day. “Let’s work towards a glorious Utopia instead of indulging in these useless discussions,” – Musketeers on Reddit, probably.

 

A quick question to all Musketeers. What is your favorite Elon controversy? There are after all so many of them to choose from! Remember when he downplayed Covid-19’s severity and criticized lockdown measures? Or when he blacklisted a blogger for complaining about the poor management of a Tesla Event (free speech y’all!). I loved how he used fancy graphs to show how hate speech was going down on Twitter while independent research was showing that it actually went up. Oh, wait I think I loved it even more when he was hell-bent on removing all bot accounts on Twitter, but stopped midway when he realized that they make up half his followers. Pick your favorite controversy and leave it in the comments below.

 

Any fans of patriarchy in the crowd? Give me a cheer! Yes yes, Elon comes from a male-dominated South Africa and is known to have said some pretty wild things to his partners. Coming home from work and not logging off from “Boss mode”, telling his ex-wife, “I am the alpha in this relationship” on the night of their wedding reception, to calling her “emotionally manipulative” for openly grieving their child’s death, Elon is setting new standards for patriarchs to reach. Do I also need to point out that Tesla and SpaceX have had multiple sexual harassment incidents, that the management did nothing about? Elon fans, please, don’t defend him in this regard.

 

I hate to break it to all Elonators, but Elon Musk is just a man. A very rich, very ambitious, very eccentric man, but still just a man. He is not perfect by any means and only a few of his attributes are worth idolizing. He will probably go on to achieve great things for humans, and he definitely put humanity in a different direction, but he is not going to single-handedly change the course of humanity. With an ego the size of Mars, he needs to surround himself with the right people instead of basking in fame. Let’s enjoy the show that this multi-company CEO and eccentric billionaire offers, with a healthy bit of skepticism.

 

Sources :

https://www.livemint.com/news/elon-musk-disables-twitter-spaces-after-clash-with-journalists-11671181886225.html

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/10/tesla-workers-union-elon-musk

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/16/business/tesla-workers-fired-union/index.html

https://www.businessinsider.in/science/news/elon-musk-promoted-coronavirus-misinformation-for-months-then-his-own-infection-kept-him-out-of-spacexs-astronaut-launch-/articleshow/79418415.cms

https://medium.com/@salsop/banned-by-tesla-8d1f3249b9fb

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-twitter-hate-speech-data-n-word-rising-slurs-1849846553

https://www.indiatimes.com/technology/news/elon-musk-will-remove-spam-bots-from-twitter-but-also-half-of-his-followers-568280.html

https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife/

https://www.space.com/spacex-sexual-harassment-allegations-lawsuits

 

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