[engineeringwoke]

For how counter-cultural HN has always prided itself in being, I find it a bit hard to believe just how much the media has shaped the story here. There's a lot of reason to be skeptical... it's not that I like Musk but the media doesn't like him and that's no secret. I find it to be quite the opposite of what you're saying, that their press team has done a good job of shaping the story positively for Meta.

The puff piece in the WSJ combined with the all the positive press over the success of Threads, with now a quite rosy view of how it has played out since. I'm personally not a believer that they internally think Threads is a success, but to each their own. I constantly hear from my engineering co-workers about how much Twitter has changed and how the sky is falling, but the user numbers don't back that up and my user experience seems to be much the same.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/zuckerberg-channeled-og-mark-to...

[operatingthetan]

>For how counter-cultural HN has always prided itself in being

Really? A bunch of engineering types who work for big corporations and who also dream and or do start their own hopefully big corporations prides themselves as being "counter-cultural?" That seems like a tough generalization to support.

[meheleventyone]

It’s also encumbant company solely owned by the worlds richest man versus enormous global corporation mostly owned by another one. There is no counter-culture here.

[operatingthetan]

Right, and the closest thing I can recall to a counter-culture here is occasionally seeing the suggestion that software engineers should unionize. The rest is bread and butter tech culture (which loves obscure technical topics, psychedelic drugs, discussing money, various ways of accomplishing tasks in a clever way, statistics, design and so on).

[dorkwood]

The top-voted comment on any article is usually a comment claiming the article is wrong. We're definitely counter-something.

[commonlisp94]

Except for the articles and comments that are flagged and removed. So the "counterculture" is only the opinions everyone mostly agrees with.

[waveBidder]

Contrarian fits the bill

[AviationAtom]

Much to your point of media having an apparent dislike for Musk, I had noticed Business Insider dominating anti-Musk coverage. It was so much so that when they published a flattering article about him I was shellshocked.

I think people assume that because Musk is highly successful that he is a normal person, worthy of being judged by such a standard. From the outside nothing seems normal about him to me. He is almost certainly on the spectrum, yet fairly highly functional.

I attribute half of the hatred for him not because of his behavior, but because of the general anger towards the billionaire class.

I think the sharp divide in perception of him shows that polarization within America has reached unhealthy levels. I won't invoke the terms used to describe people believed to be pro or anti Musk here, but I think most know them. I wish we could get to a point where we discuss less about people and more about their individual actions.

[turquoisevar]

While I can’t deny that people, including the media, have a general disliking for him, there’s plenty of puff pieces to be found, especially by corporate friendly outlets.

Business Insider in particular likes to publish articles that are either outright shameless puff pieces or occasionally contain thinly veiled attempts at spinning things in his favor.

Some examples:

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-new-logo-x-twitter...

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-x-rebrand-...

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-asana-dustin-moskov...

And here’s a Newsweek one:

https://www.newsweek.com/twitter-has-undeniably-gotten-bette...

As for the disliking or hatred towards him, I’m not sure why this puzzles you.

He is simply an unlikable person, doing unlikable things.

Yeah sure it doesn’t help that he’s wealthy in this time and age and it also doesn’t help that he’s attributed accomplishments of mythical proportions that are mostly veneer, nor does it help that he seemingly has taken it upon himself to disprove the business acumen that people attribute to him, but all of those are just cherries on top.

Certainly not half the reason people dislike him.

Gates, Zuckerberg and Bezos are in the same order of magnitude as Musk (at least from the perspective of most people) and don’t nearly get as much hate, because they don’t act like utter tools at every single chance they get.

That’s it, that’s the reason. It’s not rocket science.

Which is why it’s weird that you seem to yearn for a time where people will judge him on his individual actions, when they already do so.