I was a fan of early Elon. He had many problems but he was overall good.

Then he turned full ultra right wing nationalist who engaged in science denial. Supported a president that is unquestionably racists and unquestionably fascists. And he made this clear by doing some Nazi salutes on top of that.

Then he used that influence to sell a completely false idiotic story that cuts to discretionary spending could 'fix' the budget deficit, like a complete idiot who had never watched 2 youtube videos about the US budget. Then used to slash and burn many beneficial programs while having no impact on the deficit what so ever.

He was supposed to be science and engineering progress driven, but then allied himself with ultra-right wing anti-scientific fascists who try to dismantle the whole education system in favor of at best best creationism or more likely nothing at all.

Not sure why its hard to understand. The only people who don't understand are ultra-right wing facists who don't understand why other people don't want to support ultra-right wing facists.

Does that explanation help?

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defmetrix 2 days ago | parent [-]

I hear what you are saying. There are many CEOs and companies that I also dont like. But I dont spend everyday checking their stock price and cheering for them to fail like they are my rival sports team. I just dont understand why many people are so glued to watching his companies, rooting for failure, and running to post on the internet as soon as something bad happens. I cant think of a similar situation.

	▲	rootusrootus a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> I just dont understand why many people are so glued to watching his companies, rooting for failure Because it is a game. A personality cult. Elon made it so because that shoots the value of his companies towards the moon as the true believers buy & hold. And in any game there is opposition, the scale of which will be directly proportional to the fans (so just as fanatical, just as loud). The root cause of this situation is Elon correctly understanding that he could become much wealthier making people dream of Tony Stark than in emulating Tim Cook. Also, plenty of people want him to fail because this is a clearly unhealthy corruption of the public markets and is likely to have negative consequences for otherwise uninterested bystanders who get caught in the blast radius. And some of us are bitter that this is as close as we're ever going to get to a real life Tony Stark, and it stings.
	▲	panick21_ 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		SpaceX is not just any old company. Its a trillion $ company at the heart of one of the most contentious topic in the modern world, AI. And its not just relevant for Elon, its also about the general outlook for the economy and AI. Most people retirements are in index funds that Musk tried to manipulate, so the stock value coming down before any S&P inclusion is important for many on a personal level. Also, the reality is, Elon made himself a massive public figure deliberately, he very publicly embraced one side of the culture war and make his opinion on every public constantly. He literally one of the most important people because he literally bought one of the largest media platforms and made sure it fully embraced right wing points of view. You are complaining why Elon is in public debate and people are so interested. That's because politics is a public argument between different parties, and Elon has used all his influence to support one side of that. And that is the result. And not just in the US, Elon tried to insert himself into politics of other nations, such as Britain or Germany as well. Making most of the western world angry. Why are you surprised that he gets treated like a politician when he acting like a politician? You can't be the CEO of total independent technocratic companies and at the same time be a public ultra-right wing facist supporter who endlessly engages in a public culture war. Specially if those companies are directly linked to him view voting shares that give him ultimate power.