I wonder what this timeline would be like if he had accepted that his submarine idea was naive despite the good intentions and just paid to have a nice setup with comfortable tents and catered food for the divers and kids as they got out of the cave (plus their families). Instead of attacking the guy and showing the world who he was, kicking off a cycle of him lashing out at his falling popularity, resulting in it falling even more, then more lashing out, etc.

Even if he was like that the whole time, he might have kept his mask on instead of leaning into it, probably would have never made that offer for Twitter, might have tried to appear neutral instead of joining Trump's campaign.

Though hard to say because the self-driving bs and cybertruck would have still happened and might have kicked off that cycle anyways.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but McAfee must have been at least somewhat skilled in the past, no? That doesn't sound much like Musk.

On 23 June 2021, he was found dead due to an apparent suicide by hanging in his prison cell near Barcelona shortly after the Spanish National Court authorized his extradition to the U.S.[16][17][18]

I guess there is one way he could become the next McAfee...

It's fine. He had potential, and he really did move fast and break things to make Tesla what it was. I don't think EVs would be where they are today without him.

The pedophile thing really was the turning point. It was possible to see before then, but it wasn't even the event itself that did it. He just changed fast around that time period. Whether his views changed or he just started revealing and acting on them much more is debatable.

every time I remember it I cringe and hope nobody else does.

Haha you wish!

A lot of peole are thinking back to that enthusiastic spiel as the first time they heard of Musk. Then they say something like "man, I had no idea at the time that u/arctanthrope was an alt-right lunatic, seemed so normal".

(Just kidding)

I really appreciated him around that same era, as he seemed to be the only rich person actually showing any real care or action to try to do something about climate change. Up until him every rich person and every politician seemed to be actively dismissing climate change as a concern. It feels like around 10 years ago was when political discourse finally stopped trying to argue whether or not climate change is real and instead shifted to trying to argue that any actions to prevent climate change were unrealistic or futile

Remember, Musk was building up an electric car company, a home battery company and a solar roofing company through the 2010s. Plus he was pushing for cool space stuff. We were going to have a colony on mars by 2020! Incredible!

It was the whole hyperloop thing that killed it for me. It quickly became apparent as his Las Vegas "hyperloop" was just Teslas in a tunnel that he was full of shit and it put his other lies and half-truths into perspective. Honestly his antics over the last couple of years have killed my interest in space flight. I fucking loved watching rocket launch live streams. I stayed up until 2am to watch the Artemis launch. And now I just can't bring myself to get excited.

I appreciate that he brought Tesla to profitability and Tesla proved to other automakers and consumers that electric cars are viable and cool. I appreciate that SpaceX has completely changed the rocket industry for the better and now every rocket program worth it's salt in the world is trying to replicate the Falcon 9 rocket boosters. But that's all I'll give him. He didn't do the work, he just funded it, and I appreciate that he did fund it when nobody else would but that's it.

one of the vocally pro-nazi people I still have on Facebook did a paper at university on "Elon Musk: a case for transformational leadership" and has that posted on his company website. he also has clippy as his fb pp, and his profile tag line or whatever has "I am devoted to the well being of the people"

it's an interesting mix of beliefs

mind you this guy is Canadian. he's gradually been becoming more and more right-wing because he has been radicalized by his view of the left through mainstream media. however when it became clear that he was pro-Nazi was when he posted about how the people who were calling Nazis Nazis have blood on their hand for Good's murder and that it was entirely clear it was justified self-defense

I think the first time people (like me) started realising how he truly was when he called one of those Thailand rescue divers a pedophile. He went fully mask off in barely any time after that.

Because how quickly he switched I still wonder if he is someone like Kanye who needs to be on meds otherwise he just can't help himself saying absolutely insane stuff.

It seemed more sudden and severe than just "oh some people didn't not like him and then things changed".

I didn't know much about him really but he seemed to be investing in tech that could really shape the future, which I thought was "progressive". Like when the first Tesla hit the market "big oil" had been suppressing the EV industry forever and putting your money behind something like that was bold and progressive.

Now he's a Nazi supporting conservative nutty governments all over the world.

Yeah, I was one of those. I actually thought he was a cool dude. Especially his "I'll do something I thought of this morning, no idea if it works maybe it'll cost me billions lol" attitude is something I almost admired. I was also kinda happy when he bought twitter because I really thought the platform would improve.

But yeah, I then noticed the platform would not improve and when he went into politics, I lost every ounce of respect I had for the dude. Now I'd like to see him running headfirst into a chainsaw.

Dollar General Justin Hammer maybe...