Comment by prohobo
4 days ago
Ughhh, Elon Moosk amirite? Such a fraud, because [???]
I don't really understand why these kinds of comments persist except as some pathological cope when confronted with a world that doesn't work the way you want it to.
It's not convincing, it immediately outs you as a zealot, it's counterproductive in every single way. Why keep doing it?
> don't really understand why these kinds of comments persist
One, you can make money criticizing Elon on the internet.
Two, controversy is catnip to the man. DOGE was a disaster. X and xAI look like aborted disasters. And he’s clearly gotten bored with Tesla. It isn’t hard to project that on SpaceX if you don’t know the heritage.
My guess is Tesla's pivoting to batteries and storage. Huge demand, great margins, competitive advantage.
I'm very disappointed Tesla has (seemingly) abandoned its goal of producing 20m Model 2 per year. Forfeiting the mass market is a bummer. More so every passing day.
(I'm bearish on Robotaxi and (Tesla's) self-driving.)
He's a much bigger asshole than he is a fraud, but he is a fraud too. There's no hype like Musk hype.
I fully agree with you, but the answer is obviously "because he's a very unpleasant man."
Lots of powerful people are unpleasant, but Musk additionally got involved in politics in a very visible way at a very partisan, polarising time in American history. He didn't attract as much hate before 2024.
Maybe more people should listen to Musk's political message. The Biden Administration was playing nasty games, blocking progress on both SpaceX and AI generally.
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just saying: he is good at vaporware on a large scale and kind of a fucked up person. It's not weird people are skeptical. But he also has basically an endless money supply so he can throw money at problems and make them go away eventually. But his timelines are basically all lies used to get venture and retail money into the game.
That describes basically all founders though, minus the endless money supply. That's how business/sales works: make promises, build product later.
Also SpaceX, Tesla, PayPal, OpenAI, Grok and Neuralink aren't vaporware...
The claim fundamentally doesn't make any sense.
Cybertruck, Semi, Hyperloop, robotaxi, point-to-point rocket travel, tunnels, the list goes on.
Making promises and "it's essentially ready, it's just about regulators" are quite different, if not for Trump he'd be done for securities fraud.
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> confronted with a world that doesn't work the way you want it to
Sure.
Some of us are just trying to figure out the new rules. What is all this hypercapitalism stuff (aka Muskism) and who are the people (lunatics) pushing us there?
So it's natural to kibitz about one of the most powerful people on the planet. Especially when he's also a world-striding shit poster, antagonizing everyone, demanding a response.
FWIW: the writings of Jill Lepore, Quinn Slobobian, and Ben Tarnoff have been most illuminating. Ditto their misc guest appearances on various podcasts.
X Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/elon-musk-the-evening-rocket
Elon Musk Is Building a Sci-Fi World, and the Rest of Us Are Trapped in It Nov. 4, 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/opinion/elon-musk-capital...
Muskism: Guide for the Perplexed
https://www.amazon.com/Muskism-Guide-Perplexed-Quinn-Slobodi...
https://bookshop.org/p/books/muskism-a-guide-for-the-perplex...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/mar/26/muskism-by-qui...
https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/muskism-review-elon...
So you just hate him. Great. Now stop derailing every thread related to NASA/Spacex launches.
Citations, please.