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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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I've seen people expressing bafflement that the average midwit on Reddit might think they could run Musk's assets better than Musk if they had the same luck/unscrupulousness to have the same resources. I ask, after seeing Musk apparently fail to understand Wikipedia costs money to provide, who wouldn't?

The most charitable read here is that Musk thinks Wikipedia deserves less money, not no money, and, like, ok Elon, I think you deserve less money and if you don't care about that opinion, why should they?

  • -24

Is there anything more singularly obnoxious than a Reddit thread of smug shots at Elon Musk? According to them, apparently he doesn't know electricity and servers cost money. And firing most of the worthless staff at Twitter was the worst self-inflicted wound anybody could have ever made!

You ask why this causes bafflement, but do you really think these idiots know something he doesn't? That they have a better grasp of tech and its funding than the man who has a history with payment processors, cybercars, rockets, and now social media - and Elon is just bumblefucking his way to success? I'll grant that he is human and more error-prone than his godly 4d troll image would have some believe. But give any one of his businesses to a chump in that thread (or a group of them) and watch it go belly-up or taken away from them under their noses.

Maybe Musks's single qualification over these people is that he doesn't post on Reddit. A lot of Musk criticism clearly comes from a type who thinks they could do the same job he does even better if only the world had been more fair and gave them the opportunity to do so. It's laughable and contemptible in equal measure.

I've spent many hours discussing this exact line of thought with several people, and no, they insist he's a "failson" who's just short of being literally retarded and his entire business model is a matter of burning daddy's money and causing unmitigated destruction in every field he's active in.

In other words, Musk Derangement Syndrome.

The worst is that people are somehow convinced that Elon grew up rich when it's the furthest thing from the truth.

Elon grew up middle class with almost no connections to important people. More than that, his father was absent and abusive, often giving Elon's mother no money while she worked multiple jobs to support her family.

Elon is the embodiment of a self-made person. I think that's one reason that people have EDS (Elon Derangement Syndrome). They can't accept that their own failures are the result of cowardice and lack of effort. Therefore, anyone who succeeds must have had an unfair advantage.

No they dislike Elon because they see him as a traitor to the left.

Something happened to Elon in the Ukraine war situation. After helping out Ukraine greatly with Starlink he had some sort of bad encounter with the State Department / National Security types.

Despite being a loyal tech lefty for years none of his friends would do anything and he realized he needed friends on the right to balance things and protect himself.

That's what lead to his crusade for free speech and his Twitter purchase. Word went out on Reddit that he was a traitor and should no longer be trusted. People fell in line and started attacking him.

"Fetid, Shit-Covered Elon Musk Announces Plan To Revolutionize Nation's Sewage System"

Speaking of once-great institutions, wtf happened to the Onion? They used to be genuinely funny, and apparently it's all just hate clapter stuff now.

A lot of it moved to clickhole, and then because most of the stuff left was politics, TDS slipped it a Mickey and had its way with it.