r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 12h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/Crow-T-Robot 9h ago

This is who I thought of. If he had died in the early 2000's, he'd be remembered similar to Mr. Rodgers, someone who did enormous good. Even though he had already done horrible things, its very unlikely that the evidence would ever get looked at.

I remember he did an AMA maybe 12 years ago on here, and a few people tried to ask about some troubling things that some women had started to mention. Those all got down voted to oblivion, no one would believe anything bad about Cosby 🤔

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u/4ofclubs 3h ago

Reminds me of the weird Elon Musk cult that existed here in 2016.

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u/Voidtalon 2h ago

You mean before people learned he was an impulsive immature individual who might not be AS smart as he thinks? (I can't deny you have to be intelligent to some degree to run a company that large or twist markets THAT hard to bail yourself out of a 42bn verbal mistake).

Musk I think is a case of power and fame really REALLY going to his head, unfortunate racist backgrounds aside in 2012-2016 he really did seem to be pushing for good things so I can't really fault someone of that time thinking he was good.

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u/4ofclubs 4m ago

I mean I knew around 2016 based on comments he was making and his pathetic desperation to be liked but to each their own.

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u/Vinon 2h ago

I remember he had some idea back in...2013 I want to say? To have some sort of fast shinkansen like train pod thing connect places. Back then I literally knew him only as "the guy with that idea", had no idea who he was apart from that, just thought the idea sounded cool.

I think many of this "cult" were probably like me. Or at least I'd like to believe that.

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u/Innisairre 1h ago

I'm the same as you. It seemed for awhile like he had some brilliant ideas that would change the world for the better and then...I guess his PR team couldn't keep up the spin? He got butthurt when some people were mean to him and decided to let his garbage side run free?

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u/4ofclubs 3m ago

Ideas he never executed on

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u/BLT_Trade_r 1h ago

I don't think so, I think that whenever he died, people would have finally outed him. In Hollywood, it was known what he did. Once he was gone, the fear of libel suits would have been mitigated.