I did not see this published outside of India. But not sure why. It’s all based on Xitter.
Imagine having more money than anyone’s ever had
Being stressed, depressed, drug addicted, and an actual Nazi.
Times like this I think about Enya. Yeah, Enya. Where’s she been? In a fucking castle. With a fuck ton of kitties.
She made her millions and said “oh golly, I don’t need to do much of anything anymore. And I quite like castles and kittens.”
She didn’t say “what can I do to make more people like me?” And then please the most hateful people on earth. How are these paths even a choice one has to ponder? Go fuck off in a castle full of cats.
Yeah if I found myself with more money than I know what to do with I’d spend my time and energy volunteering and working on projects and spending lots of time with friends.
Hell, imagine if these losers went carnagie and started building libraries instead of trying to get them banned. Or maybe something bold like the “Elon Musk bullet train”. They could st least try to be loved instead of whatever they’re doing now.
I hope Yanni is in a palace full of pups. And Rhys Fulber a temple full of snakes (I’m assuming he likes snakes).
It’s kinda crazy to me because let’s say you do want to be the most beloved person on earth AND you have more money than anyone ever, you could do that?
Like at one point musk said if there was a plan to end world hunger in 6 billion dollars he would do it, and of course he didn’t… But if he did, a small fraction of his infinite wealth would be gone, but people would have loved him.
If, Tesla actually produced a fully self-driving electric car that was better and cheaper than anything else, he’d have even more fans than he currently does.
If, he actually created high speed mass transit, instead of whatever the fucking “hyperloop” thing he made is.
He could have done probably all of this for the price of twitter, but nah instead he had to go be a nazi.
Doing like even half this list would make him beloved by the average person who isn’t too interested in him. They’d see all the good he does and say “That’s what a billionaire should be.” and not do any digging. It’s honestly batshit insane to me that someone can say “everyone hates me and it makes me sad but I’m not going to do anything about this because clearly they are the ones that are wrong.”
Like how do you fuck it up so bad. The first time I heard of the guy I bought into that “elon musk is ironman” persona thing, and now he’s just a crazed nazi I want nothing to do with.
Narcissism, ego, and wealth create one hell of a combination.
He wants to be worshipped by the masses, but he’s also the kind of person who needs to appear powerful and can’t stand being in any position but first. He has to be the richest person while also being the most adored, and he isn’t willing to sacrifice anything to achieve the latter.
He also thinks he’s Tony fucking Stark.
For him it was his parents and South Africa. Drugs + environmental influence is the guaranteed way to create a monster.
Basically his entire childhood he understood that there are two classes of people: the people who earned something, and the other is the rest of us. People who look different, have to work, or talk funny.
Don’t forget his trans daughter. Pretty sure that she was a catalyst.
Like at one point musk said if there was a plan to end world hunger in 6 billion dollars he would do it, and of course he didn’t… But if he did, a small fraction of his infinite wealth would be gone, but people would have loved him.
Not just that, but an NGO said we could do it in that budget and he bought Twitter with the money instead
all that turned out to be scams, his charities, the hyperloop was meant to stop california from developing thier own fast rail system.
Its because lying about doing it or considering it works out enough why actually do it
This is the difference between the ultra-wealthy of the gilded age and today. Those of the gilded age built things with their wealth for the public, so they wouldn’t turn against them. Today they think they’re untouchable. They hoard their wealth and don’t try to do anything with it.
Yet, the gilded age came to an end with regulations, because they were amassing too much wealth. They only had a small fraction of what the ultra-wealthy today have. Something needs to be done about them, and the government isn’t taking action…
According to Harvard Business School, in 1937 J. D. Rockefeller’s net worth amounted to 1.5% of GDP. In today’s wealth, that would amount to about $415.8 billion. And to be honest, I have more faith that the Rockefeller number represents an accurate representation of the real, if not necessarily liquid, wealth that he commanded, whereas rather more of the modern-day billionaires’ wealth is smoke and mirrors based on their own bullshit evaluations of what their assets are theoretically worth.
It’s still a contest between which dragon is lying on top of a bigger hoard of ill-gotten gold, but those gilded age fucks were really historically impressive.
We really need to start dragging useless billionaires out on the streets and just stringing them up.
Mark Cuban is cool, he’s doing billionaire stuff the right way. And he’s never had any sexual assault allegations, as far as I know.
He’s still a billionaire though right? That billion dollars still belongs to him, right? As in, he has it, we don’t. As long as he has a BILLION of the credits most of us struggle to find a thousand of per month to pay rent, he’s not a good guy, he’s a wealth hoarder like the rest of them.
The government is taking action, just not the action we’d like.
Turns out, having obscene levels of wealth and power is really bad for your psyche.
We talk a lot about taxing billionaires for the good of the 99%, but it would do wonders for the well-being of the 1% as well.
I didn’t expect to learn about Enya in this discussion. Thank you, kind sir!
We were just having a similar discussion, though not about Enya. My position was if I had a billion dollars, you know what I would do? I’d recreate Hogwarts Castle. I’m not even a huge Harry Potter fan and hate what’s-her-name, but how cool would it be to live in a beautiful movie set house the size of a small town?
Muskwarts?
Sounds like a venereal disease. Though to be fair, so did ‘Hogwarts’
Sorry babe, you’re gonna have put the blindfold on, the warts on my hog are back
I’d make sure I had enough money to live comfortably, travel lots, etc. Then I would get busy trying to give the rest of it away.
If I had Musk money, I would commission lots of hentai media and bribe politicians to give more rights to everyone. No more porn bans in Texas, science-based textbooks in schools, term and age limits on SCOTUS, sex work is protected work, buy anime & cartoon IP to make it public domain, ect.
…if only.
I’d be on a beach, half drunk, with a book. That’s it. Y’all are crazy making more work for yourselves lol.
unlike jk rowling using her wealth and fame to become a “terf”, i think shes buddy buddy with musk too. she must be constantly depressed and stressed from that too. and many pointed out her books are actually low-key her prejudices. also family guy has pointed this issue out 2 different cutscenes too.
Welp, I have a new goal in life.
Does anyone know if she needs someone to help care for the kitties…?
un does she need someone to be another kitty?
If she adopts us both, I will feed you, brush you, trim your claws, etc!
I selflessly offer to do this for a modest sum of 100k per year.
Hero…
I read a “fuck ton of titties” and got a little confused
Also good.
Not to defend Musk, but there are plenty of examples of money destroying someone’s life. I’m thinking primarily lottery winners. Just because one person successfully adjusted to it doesn’t mean it’s easy and everyone can.
Of course Musk is a special case where he ruins other people’s lives with his wealth but that’s not my point.
The idea that 70% of lottery winners lose all their winnings isn’t true. It’s based on a fake statistic.
The news loves to highlight the cases where that’s true because it reinforces the cultural notion that wealth is tied to morality.
The cultural notion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic
Everyone knows 50%of statistics are made up.
This is 100% true half the time because the internet.
Damn that’s messed up, yo.
This fact perfectly dismantles the idea of meritocracy, which is why the “lottery curse” lie is pushed by the wealthy. The lottery selects specifically for people who are prone to gambling and poor choices, and yet the majority do just fine with their winnings, because the truth is that wealth protects you from the consequences of your choices.
Yeah that’s one if those truthy sayings that no one really looks into.
I completely agree the point of the lie is to convince poorer people that they aren’t good enough, smart enough to handle wealth.
It’s not the most important reason by a long shot, but it’s yet another reason why extreme wealth hoarding, aka billionaires and centimillionaires, should have been taxed out of existence and legislated from existing going forward:
Even they aren’t happy, even sitting in the complete victory of their coup. They could have a dozen space station mansions each and they still wouldn’t be satiated or satisfied. They can’t be satisfied. That is their defining character deficit. Literally everybody loses so long as the avarice diseased capitalists remain in charge, even them. The intensity of their cringeworthy attempts at social media flexes betrays their intent and blasts us all with their screaming insecurities day in and day out.
They’re mentally ill with an obsession/compulsion related disorder that they’ve manipulated civilization into enabling at literally every possible expense, including mass human murder and seriously risking human extinction for short term private profit.
They should be in mental health facilities receiving inpatient treatment for their extremely destructive antisocial behaviors for both their and everyone else’s safety and wellbeing, too bad at least in the US they defunded mental healthcare into utter ruin (and education, and common infrastructure, etc) to cut their own taxes through their captured government.
The inmates are truly running
the asylumour society.A good way to think about it, how would society percieve them if they were hoarding anything else at this scale?
Imagine the guy having warehouses all over the world filled with toilet paper, private security around the compound, and campaign ads to reduce real estate taxes for storage units.
Or somebody having the largest lego collection in the world, constant buying out and threatening other collectors.
It’s a mental illness.
How could they be happy? It’s like a person that weighs a full ton feeling full. You don’t find yourself in that position if you can possibly feel sated.
Like honestly the man probably needs to commit himself to a Buddhist monetary or something where he can learn to humble himself, live with himself, and learn to be sated. Without drastic internal change he will live a life of misery
I’m sure there are some that are happy but you never hear about them. A secure, well-adjusted individual with boat-loads of money doesn’t need to stir shit up. They can relax.
The insecure, maladjusted individuals will constantly be defending themselves against perceived threats despite having the means to offload all of that to paid professionals.
The best evidence of this is the creator of Tumblr. He sold it and got a payout of like a hundred million dollars or something and completely disappeared from public life. He only ever appears in the news when he makes some big donation to a charity.
That’s Tom, who has nothing to do with Tumblr.
I’ve read a load of academic articles on psychopaths recently. Narcissism is linked to all sorts of terrible behaviours, and cos they don’t accept they’re wrong, they don’t tend to change their behaviour even when they’re hurting themselves
Well said friend! I agree wholeheartedly.
Just to pointlessly clarify, this is article is a paraphrasing of tweets by a journalist who calls himself a Musk biographer. The quoted journalist is not, as the possessive apostrophe in the headline implies, a biographer hired by Musk.
I didn’t realize it was the guy behind the Proof series, but I like his work. His book on Elon is apparently upcoming.
Some zippy quotes from that article include:
Musk “was sued for stealing the idea for Zip2—which fired him as soon as investors got involved” and “was going to run PayPal into the ground after his company merged with it—again he was fired.” He then “invested in Tesla when it was distressed and quickly began running it into the ground.”
Musk founded Zip2, described as “a sort of digital Yellowpages” by Belmont Hill School’s The Panel Online, with his brother. The outlet reported that in an attempt to impress investors in the company, Musk “created a large, fake casing around the Zip2 computer to make it seem like an extremely advanced supercomputer” — a move that worked, but investors who put $3 million into the company did so only after Musk agreed to step down so “someone more experienced to take his place.”
The code used by the program, which Musk taught himself, “was soon exposed to be so scrambled that a majority of the program had to be rewritten by more advanced programmers.”
Musk ultimately returned to the company as CEO and benefitted financially when it was sold to COMPAQ in 1999. He used the $22 million his 7% share brought in to an “internet bank” at X.com — the same company he merged with the founders of Paypal. He was named CEO after the merger in April 2000 but was removed from the position six months later.
SpaceX, Abramson continued, is Musk’s only “truly successful and novel company” and a chunk of its success was owed to President Obama, who Musk “successfully lobbied” after “Russians had laughed Musk out of Moscow.”
What a trajectory, failing upwards at each step.
Good thing he’s a white man! Or that plan would have never worked.
Oh man… So Obama not only roasted Trump so bad that the touchy little bastard ran for office, but he also handed Elon his only genuine W.
Talk about a monkey’s paw president.
thanks Obama!
I have watched that joke start off unfunny, get repurposed ironically, fade into sincerity and circle back to being unfunny, get exhumed in a funny way, die again, and now there’s just this breccia of nuance that makes me feel weird and sad… But in a funny way.
biographers are not always and more clearly rarely “hired” by their subjects.
True, hence why the grammar used in the headline implied to me that these were the words of a biographer either hired, or at least sanctioned, by Musk himself. So I just wanted to point it out in case other people were having the same interpretation as me.
So he a Musk biographer, not Musk’s biographer.
someone buy him a pistol.
So exactly like Hitler was. Great. This isn’t alarming at all.
Better for Musk to be evil and in mental decline, than for him to be evil and stable. The latter implies that he would be around long enough to see his plans through.
Good
He’s been crazy for a very long time, this is nothing new. The only thing new is the amount of power he has now.
If could go off the Internet, I’d probably do that, but the hope of finding something good, sometimes delivered upon, and the few good people bring me back to the good and the bad parts.
I love Elon Musk. <3
No shit Sherlock.
Perfect answer to this.PERMANENTLY
So nice to see a good news headline these days.
