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Yeah I didn't read past the first paragraph of Hanania and I really thought you had something significantly better than a rolling stones article called 11 WTF Moments From ‘Character Limit,’ the Book About How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.
That's fucking gossip. Gossip based on a ridiculous premise no less. Musk is obviously not neurotypical, he has been accused of weird behaviour all his life and yes that includes ridiculous leaps of logic that don't always pan out. A large part of his success is because of his willingness to say and do things others believe you shouldn't. That practically demands society will call you unhinged.
Nothing in that list looks more unhinged than when he was calling that diver a pedo for making him look bad, and that was well before he bought twitter, so is he just a slow motion train wreck that also makes successful rockets and ai and doge and fakes playing diablo? There's a whole lot of ruin in that man! The last item in the list is about Jack Dorsey also believing some 'conspiracy theories', because gossip doesn't care about truth, it is a social tool used to enforce normality.
Musk doesn't operate like normal people because Musk is not like normal people. And thank God for that.
I linked the Rolling Stone piece because that was the piece Hanania linked in his article, if you were paying attention, and as much as we look down on Rolling Stone (which is absolutely reasonable, it's a rag), the claims that I took from it are true. It links Musk's own tweets. He really did believe that Twitter had fake employees and that Paul Pelosi was attacked by his gay lover. I then gave two additional examples of my own, so I was not relying wholly on one article - Musk's belief that Community Notes were being gamed, and that Dominion voting machines were influencing the election. These are all directly sourced to thinks that Musk said himself, in public.
Um, yes? Musk is clearly an erratic man with a bizarre relationship with the truth. He said unhinged things well before 2022, and he continues to do nonsensical things today, like buy high level Path of Exile 2 accounts and unconvincingly pretend to be an uber gamer. None of that makes it implausible that he has gotten worse over time.
I am aware the rolling stone article was in the article, my point was that you were unequivocal, so when you said he has gotten a lot worse over the past few years I was expecting a sharp obvious decline, not 'he did the exact same shit half the men on the planet have done at one time or another'. The Paul Pelosi thing was hilarious! I want it to be true too! So, much like I do with serial murderer Ted Cruz, I pretend it is true. This is common behaviour. It's not good, but it's not something you should be using to judge someone incompetent, particularly when they continue knocking it out of the park in other areas.
Similarly common is thinking your employees are lying to you and stealing from you. The voting machines thing I'll just say that I don't see how it's more outlandish than all cops are racist or republicans want all women in chains - the only difference is those conspiracies have social approval.
But yeah everybody does shit like that, the only difference here is that Musk is a public figure so his bad behaviour is isolated and blown up into a big deal. The justification for this is society needs to show people how not to behave, and if you want to say he's being a stupid prick I am right there with you, but the media became the west's new priests without the discipline of the old order and are no longer policing bad behaviour, they are instead weaponising mental illness against their enemies. That's all I see happening here.
If this is what you think everybody does, then... well, I question how many people you've been interacting with. Most people, I notice, seem to be able to not spend hours every day tweeting nonsense. Most people did not respond to the Paul Pelosi story with "LOL, I wish that were true, it'd be hilarious!", even if you hold that Musk was joking, which he does not appear to have been doing anyway.
No, most people are not like Elon Musk in this regard, and I find this an odd defense considering that you just said that Musk "doesn't operate like normal people". Which is it? Even in this post you accuse the media of "weaponising mental illness" - is Musk mentally ill? Is that your position? Is his behaviour normal or not?
If this were the case I would expect there to be similar stories about every public figure, or at least, about every public figure that the mainstream media blob does not like. But that is not the case.
Lmao ok.
I will clarify some misunderstandings.
I said half of the men on the planet, which was hyperbole, you got me. It is common to want embarrassing stories about people you dislike to be true was my point. if you think it isn't I question how honest you allow the people in your life to be with you. Also most people do indeed say stupid shit on xitter all day every day. That's why everyone hates it? It is also common, when you have a conspiracy theory, to follow it as far as you can for fun. It is also a useful mental exercise, because it allows you to think in ways you hadn't previously.
Secondly, yes Musk is similar to other people in some ways and different in others. He is, in my opinion, more different than similar, but like most people he has two arms, two legs, a heart, and cognitive faculties regulated by hormones. Therefore he is susceptible to influence, he gossips and loves and hates and admires just like normal people, but he isn't normal.
Thirdly the media weaponises mental illness by using it to smear people who are merely badly behaved by isolating their bad behaviour and finding a pattern they can claim shows this behaviour is part of a trend that justifies taking from them. Musk might be mentally ill, I don't know, I'm not his doctor. I do know that he doesn't seem to be 'much worse' than he was 7 years ago, so I guess I remain unconvinced.
Sure, I've wanted bad things to be true about my opponents, though at my best I try to follow Lewis' advice. But I hope that I, and more importantly, I hope that most public figures would have enough presence of mind to not publicly endorse obviously false theories to that effect.
I don't disagree with you about the media being awful. I agree that they're agenda-driven and will put anything involving Elon Musk in the worst light possible. It's just that in this case I tend to agree with Hanania that Musk has been getting worse, and I suppose I find Hanania more credible for that judgement given that Hanania and Unherd are not mainstream media outlets, but are both part of the wider 'dissident' sphere that might otherwise be sympathetic to the right.
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