[situationista]

I have the distinct feeling that Elon's motives are genuine, that he genuinely believes he is on a mission to save humanity, and is genuinely convinced that he is the only one who is able to do it. The problem is the last point - he's developed something of a saviour complex, and has convinced himself that if what is at stake is important enough (reverse climate change, become interplanetary species, restore free speech) he somehow has a moral obligation to take it upon himself. Whereas earlier in his career financial constraints might have hemmed him in, not that he's the richest man in the world he's becoming tempted to use that power in an Emperor of the Universe fashion, attempting to fix everything he believes important. If he stuck to solving just one existential problem, such as electrifying transport, he'd probably be quite well respected in the long run. The richest man in the world, who already holds massive power, also buying up the "de facto town square" was never going to go down well. We need more people with Elon's vision, drive and determination, not one Elon with more and more power.

[memish]

This makes much more sense than calling him a fraud and projecting one's envy onto him. Frauds don't build and they don't solve problems.

His fans are supporting the savior complex because he's virtually the only one who is actively making a better future in a significant way. While everything else is crumbling. They forgive the mistakes he makes given that context.

[notyourday]

The highest upvoted comments in this thread are just that: jealous people who cannot believe they aren't successful but he is.

[Bubble_Pop_22]

Success is measured by subtraction.

If Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, TheBoringScam etc. disappeared overnight, consumers quality of life would not be affected one bit. It's very similar to Ferrari or Tiffany&CO going under..it's meh. Contrast that with Exxon, Saudi Aramco, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Walmart, Costco, VW, Daimler...

There are unknown private companies such as Vitol selling 300bn dollars worth of products per year. Do you know Vitol? No? Well why would you...the CEO isn't constantly shitposting on twitter.

Musk is like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden etc. What you call success is what people who don't fall for cult of personality call "being a BS-seller". Convincing fans and supporters that they are some sort of hero against dark forces

[rez9x]

I agree with you on this and think his savior complex is likely compounded by things like the potential Twitter buyout. There are a lot of people who view Twitter as a extremist echo chamber and want to see it change, so they're treating Musk like Twitter's savior now. Anecdotally, I've seen as much support for Musk's actions accidentally destroying Twitter as 'fixing' it.

When I see how small of a subset of the population actively use Twitter, or have even posted once, compared to the political power it has, it's hard for me to argue we're better with it around.

[jsmith45]

The outsized influence of twitter largely has to do with the fact that basically every journalist, celebrity, politician, brand, influencer (original, pre-Instagram meaning of person on youtube/twitch/whatever who can accidentally/deliberately create trends just by wearing something or offhandedly mentioning something).

Having all of those people, plus pretty small proportion of "regular people", can make it really feel like everyone is on twitter. But the many of the heaviest "regular people" users are often actually those who are trying to promote some agenda, which can be one that is very not-representative of the public at large.

But this feeling of everyone being on there, means that if a small group of vocal participants who have an agenda can get something trending, especially if they can do with with only limited pushback from other groups, it makes it feel like something everyone cares about. Worse is that the algorithm tends to promote extreme views a lot because they get more interactions.

Now the influencers, politicians, celebrities, journalists, etc are not very much not immune to mistaking an artificially algorithmically inflated hot take by a tiny but vocal minority on twitter as representing a consensus of a huge group of regular people on twitter. The next thing you know, the current twitter outrage is on the news, and your favorite celebs are probably talking about it both on and off twitter.

This can cause people who never would have seen or interacted with the twitter controversy to become involved. Obviously if the news is talking about it, this is a big thing that a very sizable chink of the population is feeling, right? It could not possibly be not something initially stirred up by at most few hundred extremists of some form on Twitter, right? Wrong.