this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2024
615 points (98.3% liked)

Political Memes

5601 readers
2503 users here now

Welcome to politcal memes!

These are our rules:

Be civilJokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.

No misinformationDon’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.

Posts should be memesRandom pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.

No bots, spam or self-promotionFollow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Was he lying back then and is truthful now, or did the pandemic just break him?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 99 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This was also around the time when the public perception about Musk was different. Reddit thought of him as a "real-life Tony Stark", who put a car in space and is a little eccentric. That perception about him peaked on August 2018 when he appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast. Around 2020 he started to go deeper into QAnon-esque rabbit-hole, turning into the despised far-right wacko he is today. Of course he has been always an opportunistic hack.

[–] WhatAmLemmy 47 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

He genuinely did not ever appear (publicly) to be a shit bag narcissist, though. I say this as someone who kept an eye on musk from around 2000, and invested early (as well as exiting early due to his narcissism). In every interview he just came across as neurodivergent, but never as though he didn't care about the planet, the environment, or the climate crisis. He was one of the only wealthy people promoting electric cars 20 years ago, well before it was considered profitable. He was also the only wealthy person advocating for risk mitigation as a species (a mars colony).

Regardless of recent events, I'm not dumb enough to believe he was always a sociopath who simply managed to act like an empathetic human, flawlessly, for well over a decade. If he were always the narcissist he is today, and has been the last 5-10 years, the cracks would have been apparent long ago. Musk is not, and has never been, a great actor. In fact he's always been extremely awkward; what you see, is what you get. That was legitimately refreshing before the narcissism! Instead I came to the conclusion — like many people before me — that absolute power corrupts, absolutely. Narcissists are not born; they are created. It's no different to Bezos. In this interview from 27 years ago he's just a regular nerd; not the corporate "let them piss in jars" sociopath he is today. The evidence is clear. The evidence is abundant, going back long before antiquity. Extreme wealth and power create narcissism; an anti-social, destructive mental illness. For the sake of all life on Earth, Billionaires should not exist.

[–] dil 6 points 2 months ago

Thanks for posting the Besos interview!

Super interesting that they were already hoovering up user data as fast as they could in '97 - half a gigabyte per day.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

pretty sure still thinks about him that way