Elon Musk, a name synonymous with the terms innovative, rich, and most notably, a jerk, has had his fair share of controversial moments, starting all the way from his early Silicon Valley days. His fans call it Tall Poppy Syndrome. I call it not blindly following, there’s no better way to put this, ruthless imbecile.
Now, the Tall Poppy Syndrome theory does hold some truth to it, especially when you look a few years back when Elon first bought his masterpiece of a car, a McLaren F1. For those who don’t know anything about cars, his McLaren F1 was one of the 106 ever made. Its top speed is 240 mph and goes 0-60 mph in 3.2 seconds. Recently, one of these cars sold for $20 million at an auction. Impressive, right? It was, and that’s why people started hating him. It’s because he was wealthy enough to own one of the rarest cars on the planet.
This is where it gets interesting, though. While showing this car to an investor, Peter Theil, he crashed the car right after saying, “Watch this.” But, of course, as his fans love to point out, other people have crashed this model before, which is very true. Other people, however, have thought of insuring the car, which Musk didn’t. Who needs insurance when you can buy the insurance company itself?
This incident started his long list of controversial moments, which range from his children’s names to Donald Trump. I just would like to point out that is a very wide scope, but hey, we’ve always loved Trump and Elon, the dynamic duo, right SNL? In fact, a better name for Elon is Leon, chosen by his best friend. In all seriousness, though, Leon is a much better name than X AE A-12 (still trying to figure out how to type it out properly) pronounced X Ash A Twelve. Out of his 11 children, I’d say X AE A-12 has the best name, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t agree.
From what you can see, out of everything I’ve listed so far, his naming abilities (that definitely should be a crime) are the least of our concerns. Really, we should be focused more on what he’s doing with X, formerly known as Twitter.
From the start, Musk’s plan for X has been to reform it into what he calls an “everything app,” where you’re able to, as the name suggests, do quite literally anything, such as shopping and posting videos in the same application. I’m not an expert, but to me, it feels like TikTok is doing all of that while X is doing none. In fact, what X has done is promote anti-semitic views, fuel racism, and be the main source of right-wing misinformation, all due to Musk, who reportedly requested a change in the algorithm so people can view more of his feed on their timeline. My problem with this is that you can support whoever you want, but you should not be feeding your 203 million followers misinformation on something as important as the election.
Since July, Musk has been promoting pro-Trump conspiracy theories and has accused the Democrats of voting fraud (even though he was the one giving away a million dollars to Trump supporters), which is not something to make light of. He has also spent $119 million to support the Republican Party and made a wild remark to Taylor Swift after her endorsement of Kamala Harris.
A question that has come to many people’s minds is why? What does Musk gain from Trump’s victory? The answer is a lot. Under the Trump administration, Musk’s brand, Tesla, will be able to launch its robotaxis, which previously failed regulations. Elon himself is rumored to be appointed as a “Secretary of Cost Cutting” or “Head of the Department of Government Efficiency,” which, for those who might not know, don’t exist. But of course, anything can be added for our special boy.
I’m sure that as “Secretary of Cost-Cutting, Musk’s first move will be to fire 80% of the government, RIP Twitter. As said before, did that turn out well? Absolutely not. The value of our previously much-beloved site dropped by 80% after he bought it for $44 billion.
Although, Elon Musk did add a very entertaining aspect to Twitter. His tweets are some of the wildest things I’ve seen. My favorite: “I’m up for a cage fight if he is lol” as a jab to Mark Zuckerberg, who created the rival company Threads. Unfortunately for us, this fight never happened, but I would have bet all my money on Zuckerberg.
Something to point out though, is that Musk isn’t all bad. His accomplishments and vision should not be discredited. Recently, his company, SpaceX managed to re-land a major component of rockets, a step toward his goal of building a reusable spacecraft. Tesla, despite all the hate, has a faster 0-60 than his old McLaren. Neuralink is, as we speak, refining the way technology is used.
His work with Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink is fascinating, and I don’t know many people that are able to do what he does. Of course, many people actually want a work-life balance, not just a work-work one, but still. Musk is the prime example of separating the art from the artist (after Kanye West). His work is something I can’t question, but his values and morals surely are.
