Ages ago Elon Musk used to be positively regarded by most people. I missed everything that happened that changed the public opinion, I missed the changes he imposed on Twitter (though I gather it’s the same as it happened with reddit, only earlier) and yeah. I’m out of the loop. If someone can briefly recap the main events I’d be grateful.
For me, things went like this: Pre-pandemic, everybody wants to own a tesla ev, Elon is smoking pot with Joe Rogan and the world is cheering. Then the pandemic hits. Then the pandemic lifts. Then in 2023 all of a sudden everyone online saying he’s awful, a blood emerald hoarder, destroyer of twitter, tesla stinks, etc etc. Did it all happen overnight? Was there a main trigger event or was it a gradual thing? What, exactly happened to twitter after his takeover- is reddit truly a by-the-book carbon copy of his decisions with API changes?
I’ve been living under a rock.
He made some rather unsavoury remarks to a British cave diver “Vernon Unsworth” on Twitter after Unsworth criticized his proposal to rescue the trapped Thai soccer team with a mini-submarine.
(tweet above now deleted)
He has a trans daughter that applied to change her name and gender and reportedly said she wanted nothing to do with him… In my opinion, for her to have backed out of a chance of inheriting a lot of money, they must’ve had a pretty bad relationship. He’s posted stuff like “pronouns suck” on twitter and rolled back a policy protecting trans users from misgendering/deadnaming.
He mocked a disabled former Twitter employee, Haraldur Thorleifsson, who has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair, in a series of tweets on March 7, 2023 Thorleifsson had tweeted at Musk to ask if he was still employed at Twitter, after he lost access to his work computer along with 200 others. Musk accused him of doing no actual work, claiming a disability that prevented him from typing, and seeking a big payout 2 He also posted emojis and a link to a scene from Office Space to ridicule him.
Most recently he locked access to twitter unless you have an account and are logged into it and also added rate limits to the amount of posts you’re allowed to read per day.
apologies for the mix of news site sources and if my text is a bit too long/nonsensical at points, can’t guarantee the credibility of the sites and I never post stuff this long. these are just some of the things he’s done to piss people off.
Don’t forget most recently tweeted “cisgender is a slur”.
oh god how could I forget… the guy is an all round joke of a human being.
Just to add to this, Thorleifsson had sold his company to Twitter but taken the payout as a salaried job so that he paid full taxes on it. The big payout if Musk sacked him was part of the deal to buy the company. Musk is willfully ignorant for every possible meaning of the term.
Okay that’s impressive. So basically the same brand of wealth and social filters Trump has. Perhaps worse, I’m not sure. Far out