Bijan Stephen, writing about Elon Musk’s adoring, unquestioning fans:
Gomez isn’t alone. She’s one member of a vast, global community of people who revere the 46-year-old entrepreneur with a passion better suited to a megachurch pastor than a tech mogul. With followers like her, Elon Musk – the South African-born multibillionaire known for high-profile, risky investments such as Tesla (electric cars), SpaceX (private space travel), the Boring Company (underground travel), and Neuralink (neurotechnology) – has reaped the benefits of a culture in which fandom dominates nearly everything. While his detractors see him as another out-of-touch, inexpert rich guy who either can’t or won’t acknowledge the damage he and his companies are doing, to his fans, Musk is a visionary out to save humanity from itself. They gravitate toward his charisma and his intoxicating brew of extreme wealth, a grand vision for society – articulated through his companies, which he has an odd habit of launching with tweets – and an internet-friendly playfulness that sets him apart from the stodgier members of his economic class. Among his more than 22 million followers, all of this inspires a level of righteous devotion rarely glimpsed outside of the replies to a Taylor Swift tweet.
The most vocal of those fans have an impact: they’re an army of irregulars waiting to be marshaled via a tweet and sent on the digital warpath against anything Musk decides he doesn’t like, the iron fist in Musk’s velvet glove. They’ve become known for haranguing people they believe have crossed him, journalists especially, with relentless fervor. The attacks are standard social media-era fare: free-for-all bombardment across social platforms by people who are not always vitriolic but who nevertheless barrage the perceived enemy with bad-faith questions.
Just to reiterate: this article is about Elon Musk – not somebody else.
Idol worshiping, is stupid.
He’s an eccentric person, who happened to be at the right place at the right time, made smart business decisions, has the right mix of genius vs craziness. He’s very inspirational. I love following his progress in SpaceX. I’m skeptical of The Boring Company, and I hope Tesla is successful but am aware of the worker complaints and his over promising.
However there is also a lot of anti Musk people. People that look at the contract NASA awarded SpaceX to do resupply missions to the ISS and somehow twist it into him swindling NASA for money for nothing. There have been reported “sponsored content” articles trashing Tesla.
There is definitely a Musk reality distortion field. My take, let him do what he wants as long as he’s treating his workers okay. I would love to see a manned Mars mission in my life, not holding my breath on the US government agreeing to fund one, or actually fund one that that wont cost a trillion dollars with 80% of funding going to “overhead” costs into shareholder pockets. If he can build the BFR/BFS and make that crazy dream come to life, I say no one get in his way. If he pulls off the impossible, build a few statues, but no idol worshiping.
When Musk wanted to build a green house on Mars, but decided to build rockets instead.
https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-tried-to-…
Yeah, it works both ways… he’s got some crazy-devoted fans who can’t believe anything negative about either he or his companies… as you say, very reminiscent of the Jobs “reality distortion field”. SpaceX is a real success, but Tesla is struggling to deliver on their promises, and some of the others are borderline-delusional.
But speaking of delusional, there are also some absolute whack-jobs among his critics… conspiracy theorist types who think everything he does is one big con job, stealing from taxpayers, etc, etc. There are genuine reasons to question him, but some of these folks just seem to be high on something… rocket fuel, maybe.
He is the face of the “TechDudeBros” in USA who are dumb enough to think that they could be like him, and authoritarians seeking authority to follow.
Almost as bad as the Tesla cult.
“But it has a real AUTOPILOT!”
Sigh.
I still immensely enjoy riding my Tesla P100D and watching Falcon launches and landings.