He could have been known for that. But his never ending rants are slowly deflating his reputation. He built his reputation up and he's slowly destroying it. He's in his 50's so he has a long time to go. Only the future will tell.

The opposite is also true. I've met many people so stupid to claim things like "Elon is an idiot, he only is so rich because he was rich to begin with and he hired a bunch of specialists". I somewhat agree with a comment you reply to, as I think it's premature to judge Elon on the twitter deal. Let's be patient and see what happens in the next year or two; I know, most people have a hard time remembering about a war in Europe for more than a month, but if we're discussing maturity of fans or haters then I'd hope for an agreement on HN regarding that patience.

My point being, it's somewhat ridiculous to expect a $44 billion transaction to go like this:

- I'll buy this for 44 bn.

- Nah, or wait, alright.

- Alright, I'm buying.

That's big money and probably a lot of advisors are involved. It's still possible that Elon will eventually buy Twitter. If not, I will be inclined to think that it was either not well-thought out proposal or a trick to sell Tesla stock...