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The parallels between Musk and Stark seemed perfect on paper. Both are billionaire tech innovators with a flair for the dramatic and dreams of changing the world.

  • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
    178·
    20 days ago

    The parallels between Musk and Stark seemed perfect on paper. Both are billionaire tech innovators with a flair for the dramatic and dreams of changing the world.

    They’re not, though. Stark is a rare engineering powerhouse who personally pushed past a lot of engineering boundaries, and Musk is an investor/programmer who mostly puts his name on existing things.

    I might change my mind if Musk personally invents AGI, nanobots, and a previously-unknown clean energy source capable of powering a 1/3rd of NYC with a room no larger than a foyer, like Stark did, but I’m not holding out much by way of hopes.

  • captainWhatsHisName@lemm.eeEnglish
    95·
    20 days ago

    Hey vocal.media why not proofread your articles a little better? The first letter is a typo, never seen that before.

    Un an interview that’s got everyone talking, Robert Downey Jr has finally addressed the elephant in the room; those persistent comparisons between Elon Musk and the character Tony Stark.

    • SplashJackson@lemmy.caEnglish
      16·
      19 days ago

      Yeah but Musk in the MCU got Thanos-snapped and the Avengers wisely left him out when they snapped everyone back

  • Crewman@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    52·
    20 days ago

    Elton never invented anything, he’s skated on other’s success. He’s more the evil partner from the first Iron Man using others’ inventions.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zipEnglish
      24·
      20 days ago

      Now now, Elon does technically have one patent to his name personally.

      Its the shape of the charging port for Teslas.

      He patented this with the idea that if he ever did actually build out that massive EV charger network, he would basically be owed royalties if it successfully became the USB C of EV charging ports, so himself personally would be owned royalties if other car companies wanted to use that charging port shape.

      But that was like a decade ago, and last I heard he fired the entire team at Tesla dedicated to the charging network.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
    51·
    19 days ago

    Stark actually was intelligent though. He really invented all the stuff he used, he earned the right to be a bit of an arse.

  • masquenox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    43·
    19 days ago

    Are people ready to admit that characters like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne has always served to propagandize the idea of “genius millionaire/billlionaire” capitalists despite the fact that no such thing has ever existed in reality?

    And that this propaganda is partly the reason why parasitic fraudster racketeers like Musk, Gates and Bezos gets to get away with their gargantuan crimes against humanity?

    No?

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
      39·
      19 days ago

      are you ready to admit that fictional characters exist in fiction because it gives an escape to readers to fantasize about themselves as the hero?

      get over yourself bringing all that hatemongering in here.

      you think you offer a special perspective that none of us have that pertains to the widening of socioeconomic gaps between the rich and poor? yeah we get it, “rich man bad!”

      calling comic book characters propaganda, what’s wrong with you?! you think the writers of these characters have some kind of secret cabal where they purposely write great things about rich people just to make actual rich people look good?!

      your perspective is skewed and you need to re-evaluate it.

      • Seasm0ke@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        19 days ago

        It isnt so much direct propaganda as conditioned propaganda. Stan Lee was a playwright for the us army a title I believe less than 10 people held at the time. He spent his late teens and early 20s being the hand on the page for the voice of the US government. Being immersed in those ideals it is no wonder he regurgitated us red scare propaganda and he expressed regret for it.

        This didnt stop though and with iron man stan lee said:

        “I think I gave myself a dare. It was the height of the Cold War. The readers, the young readers, if there was one thing they hated, it was war, it was the military. So I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree. He was a weapons manufacturer, he was providing weapons for the Army, he was rich, he was an industrialist. I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him … And he became very popular.”

        Prpaganda is defined as

        “deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist”.

        Iron man certainly seems to fit. Remember Stan Lee was in the military when it was antifascist. As a result he was pro military and he used his position to sway people toward his own views which… were developed when writing for the army. …

        It doesn’t have to be a secret conspiracy to act as propaganda. Social conditioning reinforces it. Americas civil religion permeates every aspect of life from the pledge of allegiance in kidnergarten to the anthem at ball games. If you do not recognize it and challenge it you will repeat it.

        I personally think in the case of Batman it was less nefarious. A plot device gone awry. After all, how could a normal man compete with Superman? In our society he would have to be rich to fund his inventions and afford superhuman tools.

        • masquenox@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          19 days ago

          I generally agree with your post, but I’d say one correction is in order here.

          Remember Stan Lee was in the military when it was antifascist pretending to be antifascist in order to wage war on colonialist rivals.

          The US military has never been antifascist.

      • angrystego@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        19 days ago

        I think there’s some kind of general fascination with rich people ingrained naturally in the human mind. It’s not just in comics. It’s present in many fairy tales, mythology, religious books…

        Iagree it can help the rich to get away with things. But I also think it’s not fair to blame authors for using good old archetypes, while I also support kindhearted critique of those archetypes - it’s important to understand their role in social context and to make authors aware of the downsides.

      • masquenox@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        19 days ago

        gives an escape to readers to fantasize about themselves as the hero?

        Your “escapist” fantasy is to be rich, dress up in tacticool BDSM-gear and be allowed to beat up working class people?

        Yes, comic books are propaganda, and the super-creep variety has always had the smell of Objectivism to it.

        It’s certainly worked on you.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.eeEnglish
    37·
    19 days ago

    When Stan Lee created Tony back in the 1960’s he probably took his inspiration from Howard Hughes.

    Hughes had been the inspiration for a famous novel of the time, “The Carpetbaggers.”

    HH was played by Leo DiCaprio in ‘The Aviator.’

  • Subtracty@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    20 days ago

    His cameo in the 2nd Iron Man movie always felt so cringey to me. I don’t know how it came about, but I like to imagine Musk asked the production for the role. It is so clear to me that he desperately wants to be seen as the man who will single handedly save the world. His companies do incredibly impressive things, I cannot discredit the work of SpaceX, but the more he speaks, the more I am convinced that he is just an egomaniac cosplaying as a genius.

    • abbotsbury@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      19 days ago

      I don’t know how it came about

      iirc the facility that we see housing the evil iron man ripoff suits was a SpaceX facility irl

  • Honytawk@lemmy.zipEnglish
    17·
    19 days ago

    Musk has much in common with Tony Stark though

    Mainly being egocentric and a POS human.

    The difference is that Tony had a character development that made him more likable, while Musk became more hated.

    That and the genius bit, of course.

  • Duamerthrax@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    19 days ago

    Well, Stark is actually a fictional character in a genre that too often uses the term “smartest X alive” when that’s not how intelligence works at all. Also, like others have said, Howard Hughes is more likely the inspiration for Stark. That being said, the closest irl “tech savant” I can think of is John Carmack.