Having a verbal fight is one thing, even throwing around "dirty" language is in some way acceptable among grown-ups, as long as both sides know the limits. One of those limits is that you never, never, never, NEVER accuse your opponent of socially stigmatizing behavior, especially not if you have no basis for doing so (and even if you have evidence for it, it's still kind of bad style to bring that up). Being a pedophile is probably the most stigmatizing accusation possible in todays' society - just the accusation alone, no evidence whatsoever necessary, can destroy the life of perfectly honest people if it "catches on" somehow, and stuff like that quickly catches on and develops a life of its own. Especially when publicized by some guy with a cult-like following of 22 million people on Twitter.
If Musk was a kid, he should have gotten seriously disciplined by his parents for this, in hopes that he'd learn where the limits are. For adults, it's up to the legal system to do this job. To be honest, I have little hope for Musk to learn any new tricks with regard to acceptable limits for his childish temper tantrums, but I nevertheless hope he doesn't get out of this entirely unscathed - this one was just way too far over the line.
It doesnt' help that Silicon Valley basically made this behavior glamorous - Steve Jobs is the primary exponent of a crass person getting a cult-like following. While I think it's a useful trait while in pursuit of achieving unreasonable things - like ground-breaking design innovation, sending cars in space, expanding a niche car market to mainstream - all these guys, Musk, Jobs, and so on are basically sociopaths, and we shouldn't be afraid to call them as such.
It's not just social skills that he lacks, the interview with his first wife[0] where she notes that he regarded her grieving for their first kid (SIDS death at 10 weeks) as "emotionally manipulative"[1] is something else entirely.
[0] https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-start...
Uh, maybe in SV, but not in, say, politics ;)
However, he then sends this baseless tweet. And doubles down on it. It is juvenile, petty and disgraceful behavior. It would seem that everyone is deeply flawed in some way.
It's not just that he can go from zero to full-on character assassination in three messages, not just that he doesn't care who he does that in front of, but also that he very evidently values a dollar bill with his signature as more than $1.
It's openly-expressed megalomania.
People have joked about him being one failure away from turning full super-villain, but if he does stuff like this again, he really risks the stock markets destroying everything. Tesla lives and breaths on outside funding at the moment. It can be snuffed out.
Wait, is it not objectively true that the autograph of a famous person tends to add value to the things they sign?
Ebay has a category for Musk-autographed stuff. People post stuff in that category, and sometimes it sells. Are you saying stuff advertised as having been signed by him would be worth more without the signature? :-)
Elon really needs a (social media) handler.
What a narcissistic prick. Confirms his stupid sub was nothing more than ego-stroking.
The problem seems to be he is convinced he is smarter than everyone else and being dismissed obviously did not sit well with him. The most important thing is all the children were rescued safely and obviously the rescuers have distinguished themselves.
This is a lesson for all those convinced about their own smartness not to assume everyone else is stupid, and the importance of humility and maturity.
Especially by a person who has a huge following and every word he writes can have a massive impact on peoples perception. As a lot of people pointed out, the term pedophile can be very damaging on one's life. Now put these two things together...
With great power, comes great responsibility. When you are a leader you have to be careful what you say and do. Granted, we are all human, but deleting a tweet doesn't even come close to an apology.
Instead, he doubles down on every real or perceived slight against him. Donald Trump does the same. It must be an effective PR tactic because these two American luminaries do it, but it's frustrating to watch how this stuff consumes so much media oxygen from real issues.
That being said, both men engaged in a juvenile uncivilized exchange, initiated by the British diver, so there's no need to get courts involved.
It would seem that Musk is deeply flawed in some way.
Nobody is perfect. Hope he learns to apologize and be the bigger person because the benefits of that approach for those that are publicly adored cannot be overstated.
Twitter jabs are funny until the audience - or participants themselves - start to treat them too seriously. That's when the problem starts. I'm sad to see Elon falling into this trap.
It's understandable to be pissed off and call the other guy an asshole. This is totally fucked up and not at all understandable.
Even if insulted (and how insulting were these previous comments, really?) a random diver speaks for himself, a public figure heading and representing multiple big corporations should be able to keep his mouth shut instead.
He simply told Musk to go away and take his toys with him, before he hurt someone. Was he direct and a little bit rude? Sure, but the overall situation was quite tense, so there wasn't a lot of time for fine detail and detailed explanations.
Being a billionaire shouldn't be a negative trait. Yet, it is, because so many of the 1% show lack of empathy and disregard for the common man and a single focus on generating wealth for wealth's sake. Musk does not seem to be in it for the cash, and thus looks different.
Musk is, very transparently, an engineer at heart. He tinkers and creates and takes absolute joy in the creation process and in the result. It just so happens he's also a billionaire. Combine the hacker mentality with lots of cash and you get crazy creations like SpaceX, Tesla or The Boring Company.
Musk's tweets about the sub, if viewed from the perspective of a hacker bragging about a hack, are perfectly natural. As is throwing a car up into orbit.
That the Internet at large jumps to reading these fun, creative actions as "marketing" or "self-promotion" or "billionaire arrogance" is a sign that we, as a collective, lost our innocence long ago, and are unable to take pleasure in creating stuff.
It is a shame.
That's what Musk was responding to I think.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-15/thai-cave-rescue-diver...
As with his questionable donations[1], this risks shifting people's opinions.
[1] https://thinkprogress.org/elon-musk-house-gop-contributions-...
To jump to calling someone a pedophile is reprehensible.
And some of Musk's calibre should ... know better.
And frankly, I have zero tolerance for this sort of thing. Sling around accusations of illegal actions against children isn't something we should take lightly.
As far as I'm concerned Musk doesn't deserve anything, other than destitution.
Musk then goes flying off the handle with a completely baseless and and frankly insane accusation, because his ego got hurt.
Not trying to defend him or anything... I just can't imagine how any public person could go that low. He must have known how hard that would backlash.
Always learning something new then.
People with such power should be held to much much higher standards. Or better yet, they shouldn't have it in the first place.
To be fair, he accused Elon’s effort of being a pr stunt. Doesn’t justify the response but it was an attack of sorts.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk...
That guy was coordinating large amount people in high stress situation. If he would allow everyone to walk on him, lie about him and would not be able with people full of BS, the whole operation would had likely failed.
Can't blame him for his outburst at Musk's PR stunt
>Elon Musk can 'stick his submarine where it hurts', says British caver who helped rescue Thai schoolboys
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/thai-cave-resc...
Probably not, as otherwise you'd see news like this frequently. After all, Twitter is public. So let's not generalize this incident too much.
So two angry men shout invectives at each other, and you believe one of them deserves to have their life completely destroyed as a consequence? That sounds a little disproportionate.
Calling someone a pedophile is what you do when you want to destroy someones life.
And I'll continue to believe Musk deserves the worst of all possible worlds until he makes a public apology, streamed live.
Zero tolerance cuts both ways.
I definitely believe that for such unfounded, public accusation from a de-facto celebrity, a very public apology and some meaningful monetary damages are warranted. I feel this would suffice as a deterrent.
Musk could have chosen to ignore calls for help, but instead he exposed himself to the risk of failure. Then he was told his efforts were just PR and to "stick the submarine up where it hurts" by one of the now famous divers who currently speaks from a position not much less public than Musk's. Being told he had ulterior motives after repeatedly asking the person in charge of the rescue mission if they were sure they wanted his help (as the email shows), and after spending what is likely hundreds of thousands of dollars and days trying to help, is extremely disrespectful. I agree that he should have ignored it or simply rebuked it. But I understand he couldn't.
But what people are annoyed about here is that a very influential person is directing the internet hate machine at someone who he didn't like. Calling someone a paedophile is not a fun creative action in my book. Any defence of this as some kind of engineer-specific personality quirk we can all identify with isn't something I'm going to agree with
The world, in general, isn't black and white. One must exercise critical judgment.
A false accusation of that caliber can destroy an innocent person's life and it cheapens the value of real accusations (specially when said by someone with the kind of cult following that Musk has). It's far, far worse than "infantile", "inconsiderate" or "entirely non-productive."
What made SpaceX work is that he found most of the good people stuck in bad organisations already in the space sector, put them under one roof (which almost never happens in aerospace with it's goverment-funded pork-barrel contracts), and provided both the money and the will. Having both, rather than one-of, those last two things (the money and the will) are almost unheard of in aerospace anyway, and are a super-power. They gave the Tom Muellers of this world they space they need to do their work, and they had them co-located with the manufacturing, and they cared about manufacturing techniques, and they made a product. It probably was, and maybe still is, the nearest a company has come to taking Skunkwork's crown as an example of how aerospace engineering can be done right.
He likes to geek out, and he has vision, but he's a pusher of engineers rather than an engineer, and he sails very close to the wind with over-pushing his people. To the extent that any historical or fictional comparison is apt, he's more a Henry Ford than a Tony Stark.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1019472152796381185
Nonetheless, his actions against me do not justify my actions against him, and for that I apologize to Mr. Unsworth and to the companies I represent as leader. The fault is mine and mine alone.
And then he goes on to launch a special event where he gives away ETH and BTC. So I guess that's kinda of nearly almost giving money to a kids charity? It's something at least.
If he's prepared to go around slinging that accusation, then I have no respect for him at all.
The best possible outcome would be if he makes a public apology, and approaches the guy in an attempt to make reparations.
Just a simple: "Yeah, look, that was out of line. I'm seeing an anger management psychologist in an effort to curb my behaviour, and I'll donate a million to a children's charity of your choice."
