Putting on my tinfoil hat, I recently thought about a comment on how Donald Trump selected his cabinet. According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s main criterion was how good a candidate looked on TV. Presumably, the rest was secondary. As you are also aware of, before his real or pretend fallout with him, Trump temporarily worked with Elon Musk. If you look at this guy’s vita, you can only be impressed: richest man in the world on and off, created trillions of value for his shareholders by hitting one home run after another (PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, Boring Companyz, xAI, Twitter/X), father of “at least 14 children”. It sounds all a bit improbable, though.
I do not want to claim that Elon Musk is not a successful guy. He clearly is. However, there are also episodes where you wonder if this guy is retarded. He was caught lying about being one of the top players in Diablo IV and his Elden Ring build was also mocked. For some reason, he is chasing “gamer cred”, but he does so by outsourcing the gaming part. This is incredibly immature behavior. Similarly, if you have watched a few of his interviews on Joe Rogan’s podcast, you cannot help but notice that he comes across as a supplicant. Him smoking weed on camera was absolutely laughable. Then there are his attempts at impromptu comedy in high-profile events. It does not really make sense.
The public image of Elon Musk is unbelievable. My interpretation is that he, as the son of a wealthy emerald miner in South Africa, was very well connected. This means being well-connected to people who have money. After making it big with PayPal, I think a much more plausible story is that this initial entrepreneurial success, which was made easier by having access to money and having key connections, Elon Musk is being used by venture capitalists as a figurehead. The carefully crafted image is that he is some kind of real-life Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne rolled into one, and this image is used to artificially inflate the value of the companies he is involved with.
If you think that the above is completely outlandish, then consider that big companies sometimes hire well-known people not to do any work but only so that the company can say that this particular person works for them. This is the extreme version of being an “evangelist”. I am aware of a few people who created an important open-source product, which led to them being put on the payroll of big tech. Their job is simply to maintain their open-source software, nothing else. I see Elon Musk in basically the same category. The real work is done by other people, of course. A great example is his takeover of Twitter: he was able to get the money together, got a lot of attention due to his celebrity status, but got out quite quickly, with a new CEO taking over very shortly after the sale was finalized. On a side note, that CEO stepped down a few days ago. Tech reporting is heavily left-leaning, but here is the take of The Verge on it. Someone else will take this job soon, of course.
The best way of viewing Elon Musk is to think of the pre-woke practice of getting hot chicks to promote products. People like looking at hot chicks, so you saw them in advertising all the time. Due to the “halo effect”, the desirability of these women was expected to lead to the products advertised this way appearing as desirable to the customer as well. Elon Musk is basically the male, no-homo version of this. He is used as a booth babe for venture capitalists so that they open their wallet wider. His real job seems to be fathering one child after another. This is not a bad gig if you can get it.
I don’t view this as an outlandish scenario. In fact, it’s the only one that makes sense given his public persona. He’s almost like a modern day Howard Hughes. As for his apparent involvement in right-leaning politics as of late, I find it hilarious as either he or his handlers heavily support H1B visas and, most notably, Indian migrant workers flooding the US tech sector.
One thing they might not have accounted for is how impulsive he has become. This could be partly due to ketamine or other drug use. I’m sure it is not very favorable for him to be out in public throwing Roman salutes and tantrums about the current Puppet in Chief. The latter of which has created a lot of bad publicity, so I don’t think it was faked. Notice how when Trump was campaigning he was quick to infer that Clinton and Prince Andrew were involved with pedo island, however, his current stance is that we just need to grow up and shut up about it because Obama and Hilary created the Epstein files to hurt MAGA, or some nonsense: https://youtu.be/ihiuSnzZnXA
Also, somewhat related, but I’ve noticed this phenomenon among plebs who think that just because some like Elon Musk is rich and successful that their opinions are somehow more valid. Joe Rogan says some of the dumbest shit, for example, and often will invite guests on who share his biases and whenever someone who actually is knowledgeable about subject comes on he will just cuck out and become agreeable to save face. My point is that normies will often avoid any type of critical thinking when it comes to criticizing someone like Joe Rogan by just defaulting to, “well, he is super high status so he must be onto something.” As if they couldn’t possibly be compromised and prone to ridiculous or even downright harmful opinions. It’s just lazy.