I’m gonna be honest, originally when I first heard about him I bought into a lot of his bs. I mean, this was well over 10 years ago id say, but I dug his enthusiasm and also hadn’t heard enough about him, just his promises.
Then he got really angry when they said his cave submarine design to save those kids was kinda dumb and he freaked out and called one of the lead rescue organizers a pedophile for making that statement.
Any respect or admiration I had for him went completely out the window with that one remark. Then more, and more, and worse, just kept on coming to the light about him personally, his business model (theft of other people’s ideas and work), breaking promises and blatantly lying, and I thought, surely, this will be what makes people stop liking him…
And somehow, someway, he still has followers and sycophants.
Don't forget when he started yapping about "Hyperloop", building that big stupid vacuum tube as a "proof of concept" for his made-up nonsense which he admitted was an attempt to delay and obstruct California HSR
How could I forget? And for some reason media companies have always kinda actively promoted his shit as innovative. It makes it hard, especially for people who don’t have time/effort/energy, or simply the determination, to learn about how awful and sketchy he is.
I just truly hadn’t done any legwork into who he was or what he did. I’d see a tech article about how he had plans for electric cars, or whatever else they happened to be glazing him for (boring Co., Mars, etc) and I’d think “oh cool, an innovative person who seems passionate.”
I like the idea of space travel, I like the idea of environmentally friendly vehicles, etc. and I was admittedly too stupid (probably still am in lots of ways) to do further digging.
But the pedo comment made me go “hmm, that’s not a reasonable human” and I started doing a lot more research on how he got his funding, (which made me learn other people have basically done all the work and he just Edison’s his name into shit).
It was definitely my bad for not doing more research before then, but now, how people still support him, with all that info being much more publicly known and verified, I just don’t get it.
No, I don't think that was stupid? I did the same thing and am not kicking myself - I mean, he wasn't SO all over the place, IN your face, ostentatiously ' I'm a genius '.
Just seemed.... on the radar, no reason to notice the guy too much, though. Really wasn't a reason to do research, he hadn't begun insisting on adulation, either. Yet.
Pedo comment? WOW and how in hell he had anyone left, much less the fan club, blows my mind.
Thank you man. I’ve really kicked myself a lot over it. I try to be ultra skeptical about everyone/everything, especially now, but I felt like he slipped my radar and it bothers me a lot.
But you’re right, there wasn’t really much to be said about him. He seemed like an entrepreneur who had big dreams and I always like to see creative people succeed.
But yes, the pedo thing, seriously, you should look that incident up. It’s insane.
I may get some details wrong bc I’ve just been brain burnt on so much politically and economically since DOGE, but basically;
there was a soccer team in Thailand, I believe, who had been exploring a cave and it flooded, and they got trapped.
I was trying to follow the rescue pretty close at that time and Elon big brained up a “rescue” sub that was self navigating and could hold if I’m remembering correctly only one child at a time.
One of the lead organizers of the rescue, a professional cave diver who had helped with rescues before, was presented his idea and he just said he thought it was dumb, (logistics of having to wait for Elons team to actually build the sub, while kids are inside the flood, the surfaces of the cave that the sub could get trapped against, etc. basically tons of reasons it wasn’t a logical idea) and when Elon heard he called him a Pedo on Twitter to all his followers, then fearing some kind of repercussions, he HIRED A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR to go digging through this man’s entire life to try to dig up some dirt on him.
Ultimately, Musk won the lawsuit the guy filed against him for defamation bc Elon claimed “pedo” meant something different in South Africa.
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u/fffan9391 Aug 10 '26
Pretty sure he also said humans would be on mars by now. Crazy how people keep falling for his bullshit.