this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Enough Musk Spam
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For those that have had enough of the Elon Musk worship online.
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From what I’ve experienced through other people is that their obsession with musk has nothing to do with logic, reasoning, or because they value musk as a person. It comes purely from a place of toxicity. It’s like the “own the libs” mentality. It’s not about being better then the next guy it’s about tearing down their belief system and making it worse for the other side.
"He hated the people I hate" has become the main attraction point of conservatism these days
Yup because that entire party focuses on hatred. Not fixing things or making anything better.
Today, I 100% agree. But I mean, he's been around a long time and has been a couple of different things at different times, in the public eye.
I made a comment a couple pages back in my history (cause this is a very new account) explaining what made me rumble him - the road tiles and roof tiles, a one-two punch of terrible ideas that made me check the receipts and conclude he was a simpleton, the very model of a modern aristechnocrat. My poor wife was the one who showed me the article and got the full force of my visceral reaction to how bad an idea this was, relative to what was already required for our descendents not to perish in fire. Up until then he was just the "founder" of Tesla, who strangely had not been mentioned in the early articles I had read many years before about the battery-powered sports car made by "a bunch of engineers". I had kept a bookmark of one of the articles through the aughts and had offered it up as a retort to smug Hummer owners in forums once or twice. He wasn't in it.
But there is a special and rare animal out there somewhere, cause, you rewind as recently as like, six months ago, maybe nine but no more than that, I could bring you to a few otherwise serious and fairly high-IQ [insert jackoff motion here] spaces where I hang out with other programmers/IT folks, and nine months ago I could have introduced you to people who hold more or less the same progressive [jackoff motion intensifies] opinions as a "hard left Democrat" who would, when I would call bullshit on this or that ridiculous thing he did, talk in very detached white dude tones about how "Elon knows what he's doing, and doesn't bother to tell everyone. I've asked him to coffee but so far he's not answering."
Near as I can tell, because I was not paying enough attention to even taste his PR let alone eat a full serving, the image that was sold to a credulous liberal public was that he was acting on behalf of the good, non-toxic future of humanity at the highest levels, and a lot of people who are smart enough to be the tech workers who make Hollywood go (I am specifically a Technical Director, which is a fancy job title for Python Programmer on Hollywood productions, I am one of many, nothing special, but I am speaking of my peers here), they drank that koolaid up. To say nothing of the executives who put him in the Iron Man movie to have his ass kissed by Tony Stark. A lot of people missed that, apparently, but it's on youtube, "Tony Stark kisses Elon Musk's ass" is the only accurate description.
I have gone into that space once or twice with a link or two in recent months to casually dunk on him, because I have taken my position that he is a simpleton with money for a long time now in clear and public terms and I was curious to see if anyone would speak up to defend him - so far, he has lost every fan I used to personally know he had; I cannot find anyone in my direct circle who will speak on his behalf, anymore.
So the creature, perhaps the cryptid, that I would like to behold and examine, for science, is the person who was an avid Musk fan one year ago, and remains an avid Musk fan today. I think these poor souls deserve both help, and study.
Ya I think these people are just extra special. It doesn’t matter what your political beliefs are, if you’ve gone as far as being a “fan” of a billionaire then something is immediately wrong with you.
The level of obsession people have with celebrities and billionaires has gone way too far and quite frankly it’s extremely unhealthy and damaging to society.
So I don’t bother using logic and reasoning to try to understand why someone is a musk fan or a trump fan or whatever. At the end of the day I write these people off as mentality unstable and incapable of using logic and reasoning. I don’t engage with these type of people because they are unhinged and absolutely nothing good can come from engaging with someone that can’t use logic to solve a problem.
I do categorically agree with you, but I have, and you might also have had, the benefit of a lot good environment that deliberate fostered my critical thinking, including being plugged into punk in the late 70s by an uncle who knew I would need it. But I've still got my heroes, some of them problematic ones, so I don't hold the mere having of a hero who is not my hero against someone.
I also don't waste my time with Trump fans or that ilk, because in the case of Trump I cannot identify how any of his fans are getting anything from what he's offering, other than literally the much-vaunted "own". Like, to explain the 2023 Trump fan, as far as I'm concerned one needs to reach for Plato or Nietszche and their conceptions of how mental slavery works. I don't think anyone's come up with anything that explains it better than either of those two; the only difference would be the degree to which they apply the principle.
Foucault might have something to say, but y'know, academic Postmodernism is a measurable part of how we got here, so fuck that guy...
But the circa-2020 Musk fan, that person is easier for me to explain to myself. That person has been steeped in capitalist mythology and deprived of a real picture of history, and statistically speaking, has not had their critical thinking fostered very well at all, and they believe that their life happens in a more or less static social world that does not have the upheavals and strife that happen in Those Other Places, because that is the reality that we North Americans have lived in for the last thirty years. We are so bored, in fact, we have nothing better to do than fuck up our own society with convoys and antivax movements that killed children with measles years before Covid came for us all.
So in the end, I see their current silence as indicative of thought taking place, and take good hope from that.
I likewise see the increasing loudness and escalating hyperbole of the right as a sign that they are at least becoming aware that they are losing; at some point, simple ignorant pride/pride in ignorance will explain whoever is left in that group.
At least celebrities are just doing their job usually. You don't become a billionaire without ruining a lot of lives along the way
The obsession with either is weird but only one of them is inherently evil
Right until said celebrity goes on talk shows spewing toxic shit for their fan base to gobble up.
Being obsessed with celebrities, or ANYONE is not a good thing. It opens you up to manipulation which we can see how celebrities take advantage of.
Young people today are focused on their celebrities, instead of focusing on themselves. It’s not a good thing because these young people are being shaped by the bad behaviors of celebrities.
We need to stop giving these toxic assholes a platform.
And?
That person just has shitty ideas. They're still not responsible for fucking over many people's lives like billionaires do
Not responsible? They have lots of influence and many of them collaborate with billionaires. To say they aren’t at all responsible for their shitty ideas because they don’t possess as much wealth as billionaires is drastically ignorant.
Influence isn't always going to produce results. Musk and Bezos ruin lives. Gwenneth Paltrow gets well off people to waste a few hundred dollars over and over.
If you have any real examples I'd love to hear them
You literally don’t even know what you’re arguing about.
If you are trying to convince me that celebrities have zero influence in the world then you are wearing clown shoes.
I said influence isn't directly ruining lives
Give me an example instead of being an insufferable ass
Cool so now we are going to argue about degrees of influence? You’re the insufferable one because you’re all about arguing about stupid shit instead of just accepting that you’re wrong.
Instead you’re going to double down and defend celebrities. It’s OK that celebrities do garbage things because there is a billionaire around the corner who is worse. What an ignorant position to take.
I guess big corporations are wrong about using celebrities as frontmen for their shit business since according to you they have zero influence.
👍
I'm just saying, it's such an impact, according to you, please give me the very easy to find examples you have off the top of your head
Defending celebrities? What, did an actor steal your mom away from your dad or something? I don't know any or give a shit about anyone in Hollywood bud, keep your vivid imagination going if that makes you feel better.
The real point is they're not worth the effort if we're going to address real issues. You really think commercials are what are ruining so many people's lives? Really, you're that dense?
Why are you fighting so hard to not give an example?
You want examples of celebrities who have a fan base? What for?
To be honest I don’t even know what point you’re attempting to make.
You responded to my original comment about how I think that it’s unhealthy for people to have an obsession with celebrities and for whatever reason you decided to focus on the wrong part.
Are you trying to say that billionaires are worse? I am not disagreeing. All I am saying is that people need to stop giving a fuck what celebrities are doing and what they think. People need to focus more on individualism instead of some moron fad a celebrity is into.
I want celebrities who have ruined lives with their "influence"
And what are you going to do with said information? Are you writing a book?
You said being a fan of celebrities is dangerous to society. You said it was due to their influence. Really just trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that you had a point. Since you're so insistent refusing to come up with anything, I guess not
If you really think it’s a huge leap in critical thinking to imagine how someone can use their celebrity status to abuse people then that sounds like you’re extremely naive. That’s how you end up with assholes Bill Cosby. What’s the matter little buddy? Are you not getting enough attention at home?
There's a lot of insecure projection going on, and you're so cranky just for being asked for examples and clarification.
I didn't ask how. I asked what. You finally named a single celebrity, bravo, you're not as stupid as I gave you credit for
Cool cool good talk there chief keep up the good work.