There was a time when I admired Elon Musk. Back then, he was leading the way into space exploration, with a company that was designing reusable rocket boosters that would automatically land back on a barge in the ocean, instead of falling back into earth as trash. He was also heading a cool electric car company, during a time when the internal combustion engine was king. It seemed like he was the visionary we had been waiting for, a real life modern day Tony Stark.
The guy already had his quirks, but during that time they were forgivable and even endearing, and were mostly not considered as red flags. After all, he was revolutionizing space travel, with ambitions of going to the planet Mars to start a human settlement, along with saving the planet with his emission-free Tesla cars. He already had a bit of an authoritarian streak, but a lot of us thought that it was probably necessary considering the heights of his ambitions “for mankind.” To be fair, during that time, most Filipinos were also into authoritarian leaders, having elected supposed strongman, Rodrigo Duterte, into power. It must’ve been a phase we collectively went through.
To be fair to Elon, he did achieve what he set out to do. Space X rockets now regularly bring their payload to space while boosters are reused. Tesla led the electrification of the car industry and even joined the world’s top car manufacturers. For a while, it became a brand that everyone wanted to have. However, somewhere along the way, his true colors shone through and it turned out that he isn’t as cool, or nice, or as smart as he initially seemed.
As Mr. Musk gained wealth and power with the success of his ventures, he became more opinionated and radical, which is tolerable for someone who is still trending up, but is worrying when it became apparent that he had already hit his high water mark.
For me, the two biggest developments that signaled his decline would be his irrational purchase of Twitter for a whopping 44 billion dollars, and the Tesla Cybertruck.
Nobody will understand why Elon chose to sink $44B into Twitter. Maybe he thought he could run it better, since he tweeted regularly. But what actually happened was that he overpaid to own a household name, only to tank its value by renaming it X, a name and verb that I still refuse to use. And then, in a bid to make back his “investment,” he destroys the platform’s integrity by selling the blue check marks that used to be given only to accounts that earned a verified status, differentiating them from the fake news peddlers and rabble rousers that otherwise dominated the social mediascape.
Just like that, X, formerly known as Twitter has become a wasteland of information where Elon is king. The interesting thing is that although his weird authoritarian and right wing point of view rules, along with the fake news domination that followed the sale of blue checkmarks, even Donald Trump who was banned after the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, which he instigated mainly on Twitter, and was reinstated by Elon, doesn’t even use it anymore.
There is also the Cybertruck, an ugly vehicle that still saw production because it fit Elon Musk’s idea of cool. To be honest, it had a chance at actually being cool if it had been produced properly, but as soon as it was released into the wild, numerous quality issues popped up, derailing the hype train and making its ridiculous price point a travesty. He may be ahead of his time, design wise, but the shoddy execution revealed his hubris. Tesla was the cool kid on the block a few years ago, but that is no longer the case, as a Chinese car maker BYD or “Build Your Dreams” has already overtaken it in terms of sales.
They say that you shouldn’t meet your heroes, as they will only disappoint. I haven’t even met Elon yet but he has already disappointed, which I reckon is mostly because he has been showing too much on Twitter, in posts and the way he runs things. That has made him lose the aura of being special and different, because the more we see him in words and action, the more we see that he is looking like just another crazy dude who knows how to take credit and probably got lucky. And given our experience with such con artists who like to present themselves as extraordinary but ultimately disappoint when it comes to delivering the goods, detecting bullshitters has become a little bit easier these days (I hope).
As one of the world’s richest people, Elon Musk probably thinks he has earned the right to stop giving a hoot and do and say anything he wants. This would be great if it turns out he were a great person underneath all that, giving us and our kids someone to emulate. However, it is a loss for those who have looked up to him, only to find out that he is just another weirdo who shouldn’t even be a source of inspiration.
Why does it feel like such people are becoming so much harder to find these days? Hopefully I’m mistaken and not just looking hard enough.*
