I cannot find a single thing about him that’s likable. His ideas are all fucking stupid, and he only got to where he is now through rampant exploitation, disregard for safety in his factories, and stealing the “founder” title from every company he bought. He literally just bought his way to the top, and for some reason people see him as a deity. He isn’t charismatic, like a cult leader, and he gives off the impression that he peaked in middle school. So what about him is so likable to people? I don’t get it, and I probably never will.
I used to like him about 6-8 years ago.
He was bringing back a focus on space where NASA had been anemic for decades, making records with SpaceX engines and rockets and reusability.
He was making electric cars a thing again after a century, or at least making hype and market pressure to popularize them.
With connections to solar, he was making large-scale rechargeable batteries more of a thing.
He was doing all of this with a stated goal of "save the planet, and save humanity from the risk of planetary disaster" which is pretty cool.
He was a geek and an immigrant who was bullied in school.
As the kicker, he made an announcement saying "All Our Patent Are Belong To You", basically putting all Tesla IP in the public domain in favor of an open-source philosophy. He seemed overall rather left-libertarian, which is what I considered myself at the time.
But then the Hyperloop project was lackluster, the Boring Company was stupid, Neuralink is potentially catastrophic to humanity, his personal life is fucked up, he started to have a bunch of hot takes and petty fights online, and he became really anti-union and it came out how abusive to Tesla and SpaceX workers he was.
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