Elon Musk vows ‘thermonuclear lawsuit’ as advertisers flee X over antisemitism::Tesla founder threatens to take action against media watchdog ‘the split second court opens on Monday’

    • die444die@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Did he actually help start any of those companies? I thought he basically bought his way into all but one of them, and the one he was part of he got kicked out of. But I may be remembering that wrong.

      • laurelraven
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        1 year ago

        If you’re thinking of PayPal, I think you are at least partially wrong on that: he didn’t start that one either but another company that was not that successful… I want to say he bought the more successful company and kept that name, merging his into it, and tried to do a lot of his own software engineering on it that was so bad they had to rip all of it out when they ousted him for how badly he was managing the company.

        This could be misremembered as well though, but I don’t think he actually has a single successful company he can legitimately claim the title of “founder” of without having bought the rights to call himself that when he bought the company.

    • adhdplantdev@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I don’t mean to rag on you dude but I don’t think he started that many companies. His company was bought out by PayPal in like the late '90s, despite being listed as a cofounder he wasn’t a founder of Tesla, I think spaceX was also founded before Musk. He did help these companies succeed though so I suppose credit for that.

      • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        He founded SpaceX, but he was the money man. He didn’t like the way he was treated in Russia, so he said, fine, I’ll make my own rocket program, with blackjack and hookers… But he didn’t actually do any of the lifting, other than lifting the pen to sign the checks. Other, brilliant, people did the real work.

        • adhdplantdev@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I mean having money and connections to cut through red tape is helpful even if it’s only from his privileged life.

          • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Sure, I don’t deny that, but I don’t think he has ever done something great on purpose. It’s like if I give all of my friends 5 bucks and one of them saves a child from getting hit by a car on their way to 7-11 to buy a Slurpee with that fiver, I don’t get to take credit. Elon has enough money that he can throw a lot of shit at the wall. Some of it sticks. If the Boring company had taken off, he’d still be the same small dick white supremacist he is today, he’d just have exchanged one phallic symbol for another.

          • laurelraven
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            1 year ago

            I’d say that, other than the money, those companies succeeded in spite of musk rather than because of him. If your only positive contribution is to sign the checkbook to keep it running, that’s not much to give praise over.

    • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I can tell you right now, personally knowing people who worked with him way back on the first Model S, he has always been an absolutely unhinged shithead of the highest degree. He loved going into an absolute berserk rage dropping tons of F-bombs in conference calls, all because someone gave him an answer he didn’t like.

      otherwise your initial employees and partners are going to walk out the door and leave you with nothing.

      Yeah, there’s a reason the original people at Tesla all left, and he was kicked out of PayPal. Literally the only reason anyone tolerates him in any way is for the financial incentive, and that’s the only way he’s kept people around.

    • emogu@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not saying you’re wrong. There certainly could have been mental degradation over the years. Or he could have gotten investors lined up by being a really rich kid from a rich family. Money can do a lot of heavy lifting for a piece of shit.

      I think it’s a bit of both. To me the coolest thing he ever did was make Tesla tech open source. I have a hard time seeing that Musk in this dude anymore. I used to think he did it altruistically but lately I’m thinking it was probably an ego thing after all. And now that all his ventures are starting to sink he probably regrets the move.

      • skyspydude1@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        FYI, he didn’t make it “open source”. It was a joke of a sharing agreement that basically said they could use your patents if you used theirs. It was purely so they could steal IP from anyone dumb enough to think that Tesla had some magic “secret sauce”, and took them up on the agreement.