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/circadian_light 9h ago

That seemed to have been the turning point. I don’t recall any overtly crazy behaviour prior to that.

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u/Oriflamme 8h ago edited 7h ago

If you cared about labor law and that kind of things, you knew he was already a POS at the time, but no worse than most billionaires. I think he was already denounced for taking credit for everything like he invented/founded it, but these voices against him were few and far between.

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u/wcg66 5h ago

He forced the real founders of Tesla to name him a cofounder as part of a settlement from a lawsuit from one of the real founders. Musk is not the founder or cofounder of Tesla.

https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/gdx3yr/til_that_elon_musk_was_not_an_original_founder_of/

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u/GrantGorewood 1h ago

Don’t forget that the Muskrat took the founder series VIN – 002, the historic Tesla roadster that was supposed to be given to one of the original Tesla founders Martin Eberhard as a part of the deal that actually made the Muskrat one of the founders of Tesla retroactively; and gave it to one of his “Close Friends” instead. Eberhard was later given a replacement roadster, either number three or four ever produced; but he had to sue Tesla and Musk to get it.

Also, the reason that Eberhard had to settle for the VIN – 002 (and eventually 004) is because Musk demanded and insisted that he get VIN – 001.

There was actually a lawsuit filed related to this, it’s Wild to read that even back in 2009 it was obvious that the Muskrat was kind of a jerk. Apparently Musk and Tesla even let the person who test drove the car drive it into the back of a pick up truck, and then they didn’t repair it before shipping it to Eberhard.

You can read about the whole situation here, it’s actually kind of insane that they got away with it.

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u/Familiar-Cheetah-422 22m ago

So, the ONLY thing he really did was founding Space X ?

That dude is one of the most impressive impostor in the world.

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u/Honest-Weight338 7h ago

I remember my dad loved him, and would talk about the working conditions at his companies as a good thing. How he would tell his workers that if they weren't willing to basically live at work, they could leave. I couldn't figure out why that was good.

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u/RedNewzz 7h ago

Sounds like your dad read “Atlas Shrugged” and drank the Kool-Aid.

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u/sirspidermonkey 5h ago

Other billionaire have the courtesy to lie about it, pretend to be shamed when called out on it, and offer (meaningless) changes when challenged.

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u/notscenerob 8h ago

Wasn't public at the time, but he was trying to get to Epstein Island all the way back in 2012-2013

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u/Visual-District9838 7h ago

He wasn't cool enough to get invited lmao

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u/sando138 2h ago

How horribly unlikeable one has to be, to be a rich diddler and be told they disbanded the rich diddler club just so they don’t have to tell you they won’t invite you.

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u/Flaxmoore 5h ago

If I remember correctly, one of the Epstein files documents has him essentially begging to get to the island on Christmas.

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u/Koshindan 5h ago

Seems unlikely that he hasn't used his wealth as the richest person* to start his own by now.

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u/Nyoteng 6h ago

He was so lame and cringe he couldn't even get an invite to the lame and cringe island.

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u/donitdotis 1h ago

the guy literally has kids all over the place and is loved by millions.

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u/GivePLZ-DoritosChip 5h ago

No there were a lot of signs, people just refused to accept him being a d-bag especially on Reddit where you would be downvoted to oblivion for even talking down their favorite Elon.

/r/EnoughMuskSpam has existed for a long time and the pedo incident was actually quite a while after the sub was created and already fully populated. There were pro Elon trolls on it for the first 5ish years still defending him and calling us all nutjobs.

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u/cups8101 2h ago edited 2h ago

The warning were coming from people in the automotive(and to a lesser extent the space) industry since the beginning. The problem is that most tech people didn't listen to them or didn't want to listen to them.

A little off topic but GM CEO Bob Lutz kinda talked about why people had a general dismissal about Elon way back in 2009/10 on tape

Little by little Musk managed to increase the pool of people that turned on him because he would talk about something that they personally knew about. For example: The funny interaction with a Netflix Software Engineer woke up a lot of techies.

But all these traits were always there. In fact his first wife wrote essays when they got divorced about his behavior. Telling your just married wife, "I am the alpha male in this relationship" does not seem like normal behavior.

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u/rz2000 6h ago

His crusade against a NYT car journalist was pretty unhinged, and shockingly uninformed about how his cars work.

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u/InitHello 7h ago

There was crazy before that too, but it was more like ... "*bong rip* what if we put the roads underground, man!"

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u/KiloJools 5h ago

Didn't he also reinvent the train or something?

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u/Hellknightx 5h ago

Allegedly that was right after he fired his long-time publicity manager who kept him on a somewhat tight leash. He let his ego get the better of him and he fired her because he didn't think he needed a publicist anymore.

Then when his entire left-wing fan base turned on him, he flipped sides and went crying to the Republicans because no one else liked him anymore.

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u/FoxFyer 4h ago

I do. Most people who are asked seem to regard the cave-diver incident as the moment they lost respect for Elon, but my incident came much earlier than that during an early Falcon test at Kennedy, when the rocket exploded on the pad. No big deal, that happens; but in the aftermath, on social media, he appeared to seriously entertain the notion that NASA - who was allowing him to use the launch complex - deliberately sabotaged or destroyed the rocket somehow. He retweeted allegations by his fans about someone seeing a "flash" on top of the Vehicle Assembly Building prior to the explosion for example, implying some kind of secret attack with a laser weapon or some damn thing I suppose.

Eventually when the adults working for him came up with the actual reason for the explosion, the conspiracy-wank disappeared; but the fact that he took it at all seriously in the moment was enough to convince me that he was a nutjob actually and I never took anything he said seriously after that. And that has proven to be the right decision, over and over and over and over again ever since.

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u/donitdotis 1h ago

this is pretty normal. all football coaches feel likey they are getting robbed by the referee. there is always this sense of a conspiracy going on. this is pretty normal with competitive people.

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u/Thepsycoman 6h ago

I don't know if it was before or after that, because frankly I never cared much about any celebrity. But I had some level of respect for him, I believe I remember hearing him say something about how if him and science ever disagree follow the science.

Next thing I know, covid and the science is cutting into his bottom dollar, suddenly he knows more and they should just open up. From there it was sharp downturn or maybe I just paid more attention

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u/blacksheep998 4h ago

He used to have PR people who ran his social media accounts but he decided to start getting more directly involved with that around the time of the submarine thing.

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u/PeterVanNostrand 6h ago

That’s when his penis surgery went wrong and left him impotent.

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u/ChickenOfTheFuture 7h ago

I think that was the switch from eccentric to crazy.

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u/tantan35 2h ago

None that was public.