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/BD401 7h ago

His fall-off was epic. There was actually a time (like early-to-mid 2010s) where he was genuinely beloved on Reddit, where if you said anything negative about him you’d get downvoted to oblivion.

He went from “quirky billionaire who wants to go to Mars” to “wannabe fascist shitheel” crazy fast in the public eye.

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u/MilkChocolate21 3h ago

Him being beloved on reddit says more about the kinds of people on Reddit. He was always an a hole

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u/kalashnidog 1h ago

Reddit was and is filled with insufferable tech bros after all. 😂

They’re still here, but support for Elon has waned because he’s a preening douchbag.

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u/shorty6049 5h ago

Yep. People here are saying he's always been bad. Yeah, sure, maybe he has. But in the public eye he used to be this unique person who seemed to want to use his money to advance the human race.

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u/AloneExperience7520 3h ago

Looking at his family history, he's always been a fascist shitheel. He was just a shitheel with a good PR team.

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u/kalashnidog 1h ago

All it took was that Thailand cave incident for things to start unraveling fast. Once people started to realize who he really was, his PR dream was over.

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u/craidie 2h ago

Thing is, as far as I know, he didn't have a PR team, atleast early on in the early 2010:s...

Which makes it even more weird.

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u/AloneExperience7520 2h ago

He was a significant investor in Tesla, Solar City, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and OpenAI. Those PR teams were effectively his PR team.

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u/kalashnidog 1h ago

It’s pretty wild how the Thailand cave incident was the huge and immediate turning point for a lot of people, myself included.

I thought he was an overall respectable guy until he started throwing a tantrum about his dumbass submarine idea being rejected and calling the guy actually leading the rescue effort a “pedo”. I immediately was like “What the fuck…?” and did a deep dive to gain some insight. And I discovered… a lot.

Within a week I went from respecting Elon Musk as a visionary to thinking he was a cringe asshole who bought everything he’s known for.

I imagine for many that’s the case. Elon’s PR success largely hinged on people NOT knowing who the fuck he was. When the facade fell, so did he in the public eye.

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u/zapthe 1h ago

He went from Tony Stark to Lex Luthor.