Elon Musk Embraces The Dark Side Of Fake News
May 24, 2018 2:26 PM   Subscribe

Faced with reporting on labor troubles and shoddy workmanship, Tesla founder Elon Musk lashed out at journalists on Twitter, all but outright claiming that they are corrupt pawns of the extraction industry, and saying that he intends to create a "Yelp for journalism", where outlets would be publicly ranked. He even gave a name for it - Pravda.

However, this may not be as idle a comment as one might think.

Bloomberg reports that Musk had applied for the Pravda business registration months prior:
If state filings are any guide, Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk wasn’t joking about setting up a site that would enable news consumers to evaluate the veracity of media reports.
Pravda means “truth” in Russian and was the name of the official newspaper of the former Soviet Union. The California Secretary of State’s website shows a Pravda Corp. was registered in October in Delaware. The filing agent and the address listed -- 216 Park Road, Burlingame, California -- are identical to the name and location used for at least two other Musk entities: brain-computer interface startup Neuralink Corp. and tunnel-digging company Boring Co.
posted by NoxAeternum (143 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm convinced. Elon Musk is exactly right about everything and we should all try our best to reward him by fulfilling his most cherished desire, namely sending him to Mars.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:29 PM on May 24, 2018 [99 favorites]


We will be checking for recycled Verrit jokes, so don't think you can get away with being lazy.
posted by The Gaffer at 2:30 PM on May 24, 2018 [12 favorites]


Does this make Grimes Nadezhda Krupskaya or Svetlana Alliluyeva?
posted by octobersurprise at 2:36 PM on May 24, 2018 [9 favorites]


So, did Grimes break up with him, or?
posted by SansPoint at 2:36 PM on May 24, 2018 [5 favorites]


where outlets would be publicly ranked

Hi Elon. You've done pretty well at the industrialist thing for a while now partly because you've picked problems which are tractable with engineering approaches. I'm even kindof a fan, tbh, though I didn't buy a flamethrower. Sorry.

Anyway, FYI: ranking news outlets might not be a problem like that.

Perhaps you've heard of engineer's disease. Perhaps you've even wondered about the problem of spotting signs it might be taking hold in oneself. That sounds like a really interesting problem, don't you think?
posted by wildblueyonder at 2:40 PM on May 24, 2018 [36 favorites]


Peter Thiel something Gawker something something
posted by farlukar at 2:42 PM on May 24, 2018 [10 favorites]


We will be checking for recycled Verrit jokes, so don't think you can get away with being lazy.

Will you?
*searches for Verrit code*
Yeah, didn't think so.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:46 PM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


Too bad he won't embrace labor unions.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 2:49 PM on May 24, 2018 [12 favorites]


My new musical project is called Dark Grimes
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:51 PM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


What a clown.
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:56 PM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


In recent comparison test of Tesla Model 3 versus BMW X3, the Tesla wins second place. The BMW finished next to last.
posted by sfenders at 2:58 PM on May 24, 2018 [24 favorites]


I just cancelled my Tesla 3 reservation to get my deposit back.
posted by PhineasGage at 2:59 PM on May 24, 2018 [17 favorites]


Pravda means “truth” in Russian and was the name of the official newspaper of the former Soviet Union

Um...
posted by windykites at 3:01 PM on May 24, 2018 [17 favorites]


I'm not sure what my Facebook friends think of Elon Musk (aside from a few who fawn over every single SpaceX launch) and I'm kind of afraid to post this to find out.
posted by invokeuse at 3:02 PM on May 24, 2018


In recent comparison test of Tesla Model 3 versus BMW X3, the Tesla wins second place. The BMW finished next to last.

Who cares? This is incredibly vague.
posted by dilaudid at 3:04 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


When I say "who cares" I mean I don't really give a shit how bad or good his cars are. He's still an idiot with a ridiculous cult of personality. And now he wants his own news company?
posted by dilaudid at 3:05 PM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


Eventually, wolves crawl out from under the sheep’s clothing.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:06 PM on May 24, 2018 [11 favorites]


Is it possible that this is some sort of elaborate marketing ploy - by creating this bizarre, idiotic story, he has deftly demonstrated the need for some sort of service that can rate its credibility!
I mean, he couldn't possibly think this is a good idea otherwise, right?
Right?
posted by Berreggnog at 3:08 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


the Tesla wins second place. The BMW finished next to last.

Who cares? This is incredibly vague


In a comparison of two things, second place is also last place, and next to last place is first place.
posted by nicebookrack at 3:08 PM on May 24, 2018 [15 favorites]


It's a recycled old Soviet Pravda joke.
posted by sfenders at 3:09 PM on May 24, 2018 [18 favorites]


Pravda?? Is this some kind of joke, or does he really intend to threaten to create a propaganda machine? I cannot believe that he could be oblivious to the connotations of that name.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:14 PM on May 24, 2018 [15 favorites]


Also, a reminder that Mr. Musk has a history of feeling personally insulted and launching legal action when someone gives one of his cars a bad review.
posted by sfenders at 3:17 PM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


Even Jordan Peterson decided against launching "Rate My Cultural Marxist Professors", so Musk is showing less common sense than a guy who thinks we're lobsters.
posted by scruss at 3:19 PM on May 24, 2018 [26 favorites]


So, did Grimes break up with him, or?

no, she thinks that anything anyone says about his union busting is "fake news"
posted by poffin boffin at 3:19 PM on May 24, 2018 [24 favorites]


" ... and I will name my new meal replacement slurry ... Soylent."
posted by user92371 at 3:21 PM on May 24, 2018 [9 favorites]


He has a fiduciary responsibility to Tesla shareholders, which at this point means he has to jump around saying "fake news" while hoping for a fucking miracle.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 3:21 PM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


I get that Musk is everyone's favorite whipping boy these days. I'm genuinely curious why he thinks his solution might be better than the N other proposed solutions for rating news sources.
posted by simra at 3:36 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Just a guess but it's probably because wealthy white men always think their idea is better than anyone else's.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:37 PM on May 24, 2018 [66 favorites]


It is my opinion that Elon Musk is not actually especially intelligent or creative. He's not dumb, mind you, but he's not a transcendent genius. None of his breakthrough ideas have been breakthroughs, so much as enhancements to existing products.

Internet payment systems. Well, X.com was an FDIC-insured bank and a partner with Barclays. PayPal launched in 1999, X.com merged with Cofinity in 2000. Musk didn't found PayPal. He just started a bank.

Electric cars? Been done. Selling the luxury one first was a good idea, but let's not pretend he made the whole thing up. They did them pretty well, and picked a name that resonated with their demographic. Good business plan, pretty good marketing, not groundbreaking tech.

Rockets have been around for a long time. Re-usable first stage? Great idea, but people have been chasing reusable launch vehicles since Musk was born. SpaceX did it, and good for him, but he didn't invent commercial spaceflight and reusable vehicles.

The Boring Company? Tunnel boring machines have been around since the 1800s. His big breakthrough here seems to be choosing to just drill shit without waiting for things like permits and approvals. This is especially a good idea in a seismically active area like the Los Angeles Basin.

He's not Jesus, he's not Tony Stark. He's a bro with a lot of money who thinks everything he does is magic and gold.

(All that said, if he and Grimes make each other happy, good for them, and I still like her music.)
posted by curiousgene at 3:49 PM on May 24, 2018 [33 favorites]


I'm still having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Grimes is evil.
posted by JamesBay at 3:52 PM on May 24, 2018 [9 favorites]


Yes, in a country where half the population is already living in a different reality, let’s leave it up to the general population to rate “the core truth of any article”, since that worked so well during the election 🙄
posted by gucci mane at 3:56 PM on May 24, 2018 [27 favorites]


I'm genuinely curious why he thinks his solution might be better than the N other proposed solutions for rating news sources.

Probably because since he'll be in control of it, news that's critical of him will be rated as bad and news that's praiseworthy will be rated as good.

It is actually a little shocking (and, at the same time, not shocking at all) to realize precisely how a lot of billionaire Silicon Valley CEO-types view journalism. Many truly, truly do not seem to understand that journalism is not PR. I recall from some other Metafilter thread where some tech company CEO was quite angry about a press interview with one of his employees. Now, if he was upset that one of his employees had talked to the press without getting approval for it internally, that's totally normal. But, I seem to recall that his actual objection was that the journalist should have cleared the interview with him. Which doesn't really make sense unless you think a tech journalist is basically the same as a PR person that you've hired.
posted by mhum at 4:06 PM on May 24, 2018 [21 favorites]


Remember when Google said their motto was "don't be evil," and people believed them?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... can't get fooled again.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:10 PM on May 24, 2018 [8 favorites]


Pravda means “truth” in Russian and was the name of the official newspaper of the former Soviet Union

No, you see, this is all, like, post-weird Twitter, where we're all super ironic and jk about everything - like the tankies on twitter who are all "won't it be great when we can murder the liberals and anarchists like Stalin, jk lol" with a picture of, like, Beria and pink bubble hearts*....except they actually mean it. Back when I used to get on people's lawns, we called it "kidding on the square".

Musk is all "lol of course I'd call it Pravda, aren't I kind of ironic also the Soviet Union is hip now" but what he means is "I would like to have the ability to control the news".

*An actual example, lightly disguised!
posted by Frowner at 4:13 PM on May 24, 2018 [31 favorites]


Remember when Google said their motto was "don't be evil," and people believed them?

Well, their motto was "Don't Be Evil". It's just not any more. Because of reasons.

I'm still not sure how to interpret Elon's use of Mind names for his platforms. I feel like he's missing the point of the Culture books, in a really big way. It's not a hyper-capitalist world, Elon, and it's not Libertarian, either. Musk is basically Joiler Veppers.
posted by curiousgene at 4:16 PM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


So our choices for planning the future are supposed be to down to either starry-eyed engineer-naïf billionaires who want to work above the law, or regular old evil greedy billionaires who subvert the law?

Do we have a reliable test for distinguishing the two?

What if the latter learned to camouflage itself as the former?
posted by Construction Concern at 4:21 PM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


Someone needs to build an all-electric waaaambulamce
posted by armoir from antproof case at 4:24 PM on May 24, 2018 [25 favorites]


It's easy to spot the really dumb billionaires: they're the ones who spend time arguing with randos on twitter.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:26 PM on May 24, 2018 [10 favorites]


Construction Concern: So our choices for planning the future are supposed be to down to either starry-eyed engineer-naïf billionaires who want to work above the law, or regular old evil greedy billionaires who subvert the law?

Sounds like we need a website for rating billionaires. Any site name suggestions?
posted by clawsoon at 4:27 PM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


raspizdet'sya
posted by pyramid termite at 4:28 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


PhineasGage, I decided a while back that I didn't want to wait for a 3 and bought a Chevy Bolt. Couldn't be happier with it!
posted by flaterik at 4:28 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


I recall from some other Metafilter thread where some tech company CEO was quite angry about a press interview with one of his employees.

Oh wait. I remember it now. It was from when The Daily Beast ran a puff piece interview with Scott Rogowsky, the host of HQ, the trivia game.
posted by mhum at 4:32 PM on May 24, 2018


Seriously, Atom Eyes. If I had a net worth of $18.8 billion, you would never hear from me ever again. I mean, y'all are nice and all but I'm pretty sure that after using 17 of those billions to start a foundation and hire some folks to run it for me, and setting my family & friends up for life with the $800 million, I'd take the remaining billion and just go on a permanent vacation. You definitely wouldn't catch me getting involved in Twitter flame wars, Jesus Christ what a waste of time.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:32 PM on May 24, 2018 [46 favorites]


I do think that the early days of SpaceX, when he was up against actual rocket science and he couldn't just blindly iterate things because rockets are expensive was a humbling experience for him.

Unfortunately, it wore off.
posted by ckape at 4:33 PM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


How can Musk possibly plausibly claim that the extraction industry is trying to sink him? The entire fleet of vehicles his company has produced since it was founded is pretty much a rounding error in terms of reduction in overall petroleum consumption. Also, it's not as if Tesla is the only manufacturer of fuel efficient electric or hybrid vehicles. Where are all the fake news articles deriding the Prius (which by sheer sales volume have probably done far more to reduce demand of fossil fuels than his company has, even though it's not a electric-only vehicle?)
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 4:36 PM on May 24, 2018 [12 favorites]


Which doesn't really make sense unless you think a tech journalist is basically the same as a PR person that you've hired.

There is a significant overlap in population and philosophy between Silicon Valley techbros and videogaming techbros, and videogaming journalists really are treated like PR people and cut off accordingly when they merit disapproval. I expect Musk's Techgate movement to be focused on accuracy in public journalism at least as much as G*merg*te was focused on ethics in gaming journalism.
posted by nicebookrack at 4:38 PM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


Musk got on the wrong side of .....noble award winning chemists

Anyway there’s been rumors that Musk is melting down for a year now soooo
posted by The Whelk at 4:42 PM on May 24, 2018 [16 favorites]


> Going to create a site where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication.

I wouldn't trust "the public" to rate the "core truth" of the speed of light or any other physical constant, let alone the relative quality of restaurants and tourist attractions, let alone journalism.
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:43 PM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


How can Musk possibly plausibly claim that the extraction industry is trying to sink him?

But the must be trying to sink him! How else will he know he's disrupting things. Why, why, if the FOSSIL FUEL industry and BIG SPACE TRAVEL and the GIANT MEDIA aren't out to get him, it's like he's got a normal sized penis not even making a dent in the universe.
posted by curiousgene at 4:43 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Scrolling through that twitter thread, I see an impressive number of comments along the lines of "my startup is already doing this, using a blockchain!"
posted by sfenders at 4:46 PM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


A Prius isn’t always attractive to people who drive 10mpg trucks and sports cars, whether out of necessity or joy. Targeting the sports market successfully and likely the shipping market next is a direct threat to “growth” of fossil fuel extraction, and may indeed cause a sharp decline.
posted by crysflame at 4:50 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't even know how you would go about rating the "core truth" of a piece of journalism. The problem with Fox News (for example) isn't so much that they are telling lies about Hillary Clinton, it's that they are acting like Hillary Clinton is a relevant piece of news.

If the only thing your report about from the Middle East is Hamas suicide bombers, you aren't lying. If the only thing you report is Israel building settlements and demolishing Palestinian schools, you aren't lying. In both cases, however, by being selective about the truth you tell you are painting a misleading picture.

But you have to be selective about the truth you tell. It's inevitable. By reporting a story, even if you do it completely honestly and neutrally, you are implicitly saying "This story is important". That's a bias. At what point does it swing over into being dishonest.

Better yet, none of that matters. A lot of people who think Fox News is honest aren't going to be swayed by someone telling them that it's dishonest and vice versa with CNN.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 4:53 PM on May 24, 2018 [13 favorites]


You definitely wouldn't catch me getting involved in Twitter flame wars, Jesus Christ what a waste of time.
@elonmusk: For some reason, this is the best I’ve felt in a while. Hope you’re feeling good too 🚀♥️🌏
5:42 PM - 23 May 2018
Ah, so you see: He's not mad online at all. Not one bit. Actually, he thinks it's funny. In fact, perhaps it is all of you who are mad. But certainly not Elon. Nope.
posted by mhum at 4:54 PM on May 24, 2018 [9 favorites]



So, did Grimes break up with him, or?

no, she thinks that anything anyone says about his union busting is "fake news"

Alex Hern has probably encapsulated it best:
"My boyfriend's not a cyberpunk villain and I'll prove it during the promotional tour for my next album" is, to be fair, incredibly 2018
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 4:59 PM on May 24, 2018 [20 favorites]


it's weird and creepy to me that this billionaire who puts cars into space is so emotionally dependent on attention from strangers on twitter. he can literally buy countries and change their names to musktopia and put his face on the flag.
posted by poffin boffin at 5:00 PM on May 24, 2018 [24 favorites]


and honestly that would be less embarrassing.
posted by poffin boffin at 5:02 PM on May 24, 2018 [24 favorites]


You know what they say, В «Пра́вде» нет изве́стий, а в «Изве́стиях» нет пра́вды.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:04 PM on May 24, 2018 [8 favorites]


For some reason, this is the best I’ve felt in a while.

Twitter is giving him a feeling of human connection.
posted by clawsoon at 5:05 PM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


I had such hopes for this guy back in the day.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:05 PM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


Honestly the more I think about it the more I feel like you pretty much have to be a fundamentally insecure person in order to amass that much wealth. Especially if you're someone who shoots for rich and famous, instead of just rich. Presumably there are any number of hyper-wealthy people out there who are just quietly enjoying lives of unimaginable luxury and comfort. The Elons of the world, who also want the world to love them, are a very strange breed.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:06 PM on May 24, 2018 [12 favorites]


I dunno, last I watched on the intertubes, Space X figured out away to land and reuse booster rockets, which no one had ever done before, and they are delivering payloads into space more regularly than the U.S. or USSR ever did.

Musk has typical ultra-rich man's distaste for less-than-fawning media attention ('twas ever thus, even before our tech era), and on a personal level he seems a bit of an odd dude (have you met any self-made billionaires who aren't?), but he has led a few kinda successful tech developments, which I bet is more than any of us on this thread can say.
posted by PhineasGage at 5:09 PM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


I don't think rating journalists is the way forward, what we need is a foundation which pays for 24he surveillance of the editor of the Daily Mail. Whenever he goes, whatever he does, whoever he's with. In the public interest.
posted by biffa at 5:10 PM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


Yes, well, I haven't hoarded three hundred thirty-two thousand and fifty two times the mean human net worth all to myself, so let's call it even shall we?
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:13 PM on May 24, 2018 [16 favorites]


Sounds like we need a website for rating billionaires. Any site name suggestions?

http://www.guillotine.com
posted by Saxon Kane at 5:16 PM on May 24, 2018 [50 favorites]


he has led a few kinda successful tech developments, which I bet is more than any of us on this thread can say

I generally don't care for this phrasing. I mean, being the leader of a country that stretches across a continent is very difficult and often you have to make tough decisions as a leader, so who among us can really criticise Stalin for running death squads?

He's being criticised for hubris and social ineptitude, which aren't things that really intersect with his company's achievements. (The hubris might, but it's almost always in the context of engineer's disease or being extremely thin-skinned about criticism, not about the hubris of the company's goals.)
posted by Merus at 5:17 PM on May 24, 2018 [11 favorites]


Doesn't he have some more labor laws to violate by threatening stock options? His whining about journalism is cutting into his valuable candy and flamethrower time, too.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 5:24 PM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


Also, keep in mind that this latest Pravda scheme appears to have been set off by a recent set of articles from a non-profit journalism outfit, Reveal News (part of The Center for Investigative Reporting), about sketchy working conditions at Musk's plants:

Tesla says its factory is safer. But it left injuries off the books (April 16, 2018)
Tesla hit by government investigation after Reveal story (April 18, 2018)
Injury at Tesla solar business draws company’s biggest safety fine (May 7, 2018)
Severely injured worker sues Tesla: ‘I’m not who I used to be’ (May 21, 2018)
Tesla left injuries off the books, but it might not face penalties (May 24, 2018)

And here's a Twitter thread from Will Evans, the reporter for those stories defending his work from Musk's denunciations.
posted by mhum at 5:28 PM on May 24, 2018 [28 favorites]


He's still an idiot with a ridiculous cult of personality. And now he wants his own news company?

Sounds like he's a bit overqualified for that in fact.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:52 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


I wonder if any of the Onion staffers who signed on with Musk are having second thoughts now.
posted by Iridic at 5:57 PM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


Haters gonna hate.
posted by yoga at 6:01 PM on May 24, 2018


*An actual example, lightly disguised!

excuse me but are you referring to hot young stalin
posted by poffin boffin at 6:19 PM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


Now that I think about it more, I think it's been a bit of a rough year to date for ol' Elon on the Tesla front.

In addition to Consumer Reports's negative evaluation of the Tesla 3 (validating some anecdotes from early buyers), they're still apparently having production difficulties on the line and will in all likelihood miss their production targets. These production difficulties combined with questions about their financials have made Tesla a relatively large target for shorting (i.e.: people betting that their stock will go down). These factors may or may not have prodded Musk to jump in on the earnings call and behave in a bit of an unconventional manner.

So, maybe some of the negative press surrounding Tesla can be attributed to the fact that, well, the actual situation surrounding Tesla is a tad negative rather than, say, a grand conspiracy between Exxon Mobil and Tronc or whatever.
posted by mhum at 6:24 PM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


I have been aware of the source photo for that meme for years, am not even gay, and am still astounded by how dreamy Young Stalin was.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:24 PM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


By the way, if we want to go by median net worth, i.e. what a person in the "middle of the pack" worldwide owns, Musk has 5,248,465 times as much wealth. That's more than the number of people who live in Ireland.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:53 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Pravda?? Is this some kind of joke, or does he really intend to threaten to create a propaganda machine? I cannot believe that he could be oblivious to the connotations of that name.

Like Frowner says, it's an irony. He thinks he's very cute with the names - see the Boring Company - but seems to think that makes him seem down to earth, instead of playing right into the villainous industrialist thing.
posted by atoxyl at 6:56 PM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


Musk is on twitter right now assuring readers that he’s “cranking super hard at the Tesla factory” tonight so he’s either working late or rubbing one out.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:58 PM on May 24, 2018 [9 favorites]


excuse me but are you referring to hot young stalin

Sadly I am not referring to Hot Young Stalin. Or as I always think of him, Grad Program Asshole Stalin, since he looks like the overindulged white dude who takes up all the space in a comp lit seminar to me.

My life has been Make Way For Marxists for many years, and I've had enough no-foolin' conversations with young white men about how some people just have to be murdered en masse in cold blood to secure the coming revolution to feel pretty confident that at least some of them mean it. I don't think most of them would be capable of it, either physically or emotionally, but realizing that you're in the room with people who think that Kronstadt was good, right and salutary does create a chill. I recognize that this makes me squaresville, but OTOH at least I'm not making jokes about killing people in my extended social circle.
posted by Frowner at 6:59 PM on May 24, 2018 [13 favorites]


I just farted in a tupperware container and labeled it "Elon Musk," so from now on whenever I read an idiotic story about that rich asshole I'll just assume it's about my pet fart instead
posted by duffell at 7:10 PM on May 24, 2018 [16 favorites]


There does seem to be a concentrated effort to shit on Tesla lately, perhaps because it is the most shorted stock in the US. That being said, Elon is acting like a jackass. Wish he would just stop acting like a petulant wanker. The Pravda joke makes him look weak.
posted by pleem at 7:21 PM on May 24, 2018


He should just buy a Tesla like any normal person having a mid-life crisis.
posted by fullerine at 7:29 PM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


Any normal rich person, you mean. A Model S starts at $75,000. Normal people are nowhere close to being able to afford such things.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:37 PM on May 24, 2018


@ElonBachman: [replying to Musk's tweet about Pravda]

There is a crowd-sourced, anonymous, voting system called the "bond market", and it currently agrees that $TSLA has a substantial risk of bankruptcy. Thoughts?
posted by salvia at 8:28 PM on May 24, 2018 [15 favorites]


Sounds like we need a website for rating billionaires. Any site name suggestions?

RottenTruffles.com
posted by fairmettle at 9:04 PM on May 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


Musk is on twitter right now assuring readers that he’s “cranking super hard at the Tesla factory” tonight so he’s either working late or rubbing one out.

Every single person who has ever had a job knows that when the owner gets directly involved, everything goes straight to shit. I consider this evidence that Elon has never had a job.
posted by klanawa at 9:05 PM on May 24, 2018 [13 favorites]


There does seem to be a concentrated effort to shit on Tesla lately, perhaps because it is the most shorted stock in the US.

Okay, but what those two things related, but in a different way. Like maybe the company just isn't hitting their targets, and their QC hasn't been so good, so the shitting and the shorting are less a conspiracy than a sign that their outlook, as the Magic 8 Ball says, is Not So Good?
posted by curiousgene at 9:26 PM on May 24, 2018 [7 favorites]


Remember when Google said their motto was "don't be evil," and people believed them?

Well, their motto was "Don't Be Evil". It's just not any more. Because of reasons.


To be fair, Google probably actually believed it at the time. The disappearance of said motto probably tells you all you need to know.

Anyone else think that Musk will end up crashing (if not totally burning) within the next five years or so?
posted by gtrwolf at 10:05 PM on May 24, 2018


Normal people are nowhere close to being able to afford such things.

yeah my midlife crisis is about to involve a case of girl scout cookies on ebay and i feel p good about it
posted by poffin boffin at 10:21 PM on May 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


is musk making an "ironic" pravda reference the same as the alt right dudes ironically making nazi jokes in 2016?
posted by wibari at 10:22 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Anyone else think that Musk will end up crashing (if not totally burning) within the next five years or so?

Well, I hope he does it sooner rather than later, so I can stop losing respect for otherwise-decent college friends who like the cars but don't think too much about the rest of him.

Grimes, Musk, and the Royal Wedding all in one month has made me re-appreciate keeping my tumblr feed curated for mostly animals, memes, and Marvel.
posted by lesser weasel at 10:28 PM on May 24, 2018


Electric cars? Been done. Selling the luxury one first was a good idea, but let's not pretend he made the whole thing up. They did them pretty well, and picked a name that resonated with their demographic. Good business plan, pretty good marketing, not groundbreaking tech.

Elon Musk wasn't even involved with Tesla from the start. He was an early investor who ended up taking control later on. The ideas behind Tesla were not Elon Musk's ideas.

I agree, though: thinking Elon is some kind of real-life Tony Stark is falling for his cult of personality. The real "Tony Starks" (if any) are all the people doing the real work, running simulations, building rocket engines, and so on—people who we'll never hear about, since Elon likes us thinking he's the real brains behind everything.
posted by panic at 10:34 PM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


I don't know if Elon would like me very much. This very second I'm at a conference hotel in Norway (his relatively speaking) biggest market, doing training as a newly elected representative of my trade union (I'm a software developer). I got here in my new Renault Zoe EV, which I'm pretty happy with (it's even got mechanical door handles and bonnet release).
posted by Harald74 at 10:57 PM on May 24, 2018 [3 favorites]


I wonder if any of the Onion staffers who signed on with Musk are having second thoughts now.

Y'know, this is actually more Meta than, well, our Meta.

I've been waiting for years for a new satire and irony to evolve, a Satire 2.0, if you will. A humor that subsumes all previous humor and makes it obsolete, and now this Musk fella, a guy I don't know personally, have had no contact with, etc., has taken my inchoate, plebeian notions and, with a Midas (not the muffler maker) touch, and a spark of audacious genius, is going to bring them forth, sprung from the brow, as it were, from some Greek god or something!
posted by Chitownfats at 11:27 PM on May 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


but he has led a few kinda successful tech developments, which I bet is more than any of us on this thread can say

Yes, perhaps we are indeed all just jealous. Like, we talk shit about trump, but how many of us are the leader of the most powerful country in the Western world? I mean, who the fuck are we to criticize the rich and powerful?
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:45 PM on May 24, 2018 [11 favorites]


NoxAeternum: "Faced with reporting on labor troubles and shoddy workmanship,"

Bringing a mass market automobile to the US market in the post WWII period is an extremely hard nut to crack. No-one without the backing of a federal level government has done it and even some attempts with that sort of backing have failed. Heck established car companies with dealer networks and a century of experience have failed or almost failed to even maintain their presence in the market. And expectations are incredibly high on the reliability and feature front. I've always wish Musk good luck on this while giving him about a .1% chance of succeeding. His only realistic option was always a buy out by one of the big players in the market and it's looking more and more like they all already have internal projects.
posted by Mitheral at 12:04 AM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Does Elon understand how the Inernet works? This would become the most trolled site ever.

Why would he name a supposedly anti-fake news site after a Soviet propaganda organ?
posted by Docrailgun at 12:16 AM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


Does this make Grimes Nadezhda Krupskaya or Svetlana Alliluyeva?

Laura Mnuchin
posted by acb at 2:00 AM on May 25, 2018 [7 favorites]


browsing through his Twitter, he has become more and more Trump-like - nasty and defensive
posted by thelonius at 2:44 AM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


people who we'll never hear about
I dunno about that. Off the top of my head, Straubel, Mueller, and Shotwell all get a fair bit of media coverage.

And since it looks like I've just reflexively defended him, I'll note that the last time Musk got this stroppy (suing the Beeb, etc) was when Tesla and SpaceX were very near bankruptcy, so...
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 4:33 AM on May 25, 2018


The last few years have been nothing but non-stop evidence for the deleterious effects of concentrated wealth not just for society but also for the wealthy themselves.
posted by srboisvert at 4:42 AM on May 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


Space X Is cool and all, but just imagine what a well funded and supported NASA could do. Send someone to the moon, probably.
posted by tofu_crouton at 5:44 AM on May 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Wow, can’t believe the guy who gave his wife a performance review, said he would fire her if he could, and berated her for not getting over their stillborn child fast enough turned out to be just another Randian man baby who thinks the world should be destroyed and then redesigned to coddle his feelings while his employees are put at risk of death and disfigurement because of his dumb "futuristic" color preferences.

what are the odds!!!

(100%. The odds were 100% with total mathematical certainty. Men who don't think women are people ALWAYS end up deciding other people are also not people.)
posted by a fiendish thingy at 6:25 AM on May 25, 2018 [33 favorites]


Oh man I forgot about that and now I regret not dragging him harder.
posted by poffin boffin at 8:07 AM on May 25, 2018


Slate has a good piece on the whole matter whose lede really sums everything up - Elon Musk Is Gaslighting Us. Because in the end, that is exactly what he's trying to do - instead of addressing all the issues that are being uncovered, he's trying to convince us that the real problem is the "perfidy" of the press. And the sad part is that people are buying in. But the good part is that a lot of people are rejecting it.

(Slate also published this excretable piece by Felix Salmon saying that journalists shouldn't fight back. The fact that this piece was written by a man, while the piece calling out Musk's bullshit for what it is was written by a woman is unsurprising and saddening.)
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:11 AM on May 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


is musk making an "ironic" pravda reference the same as the alt right dudes ironically making nazi jokes in 2016?

As Frowner also pointed out there are already online communist dudes who love Stalin memes. For Musk the joke is that he's the furthest thing from a communist, but then the result is it sorta ends up making him sound like a fascist instead.
posted by atoxyl at 9:13 AM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


(In fairness, I should say that online communist dudes - absent some behavior worse than an unrealistic and unconscious-desire-driven understanding of Stalin's policies and contributions to Marxism - are infinitely to be preferred over Elon Musk. I thought of them because they're the most common example of kidding-on-the-square in my online life.)
posted by Frowner at 9:24 AM on May 25, 2018


the last time Musk got this stroppy (suing the Beeb, etc) was when Tesla and SpaceX were very near bankruptcy, so...

That opinion is in plenty of company: Tesla overtakes Apple as most-shorted US stock (April 2018)
posted by salvia at 9:27 AM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


are infinitely to be preferred over Elon Musk

Well it's comparatively hard to take Soviet fantasy shit as a credible danger because most of those folks are nowhere near political power.
posted by atoxyl at 9:48 AM on May 25, 2018


boy the simpsons must be embarrassed about their fawning musk cameos now
posted by klangklangston at 3:51 PM on May 25, 2018


If they had any notion of embarrassment, they would have quit some time ago.
posted by lmfsilva at 10:29 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


For Musk the joke is that he's the furthest thing from a communist

no, yeah, i get that. the soviets were authoritarians more than they were communists too.
posted by wibari at 10:43 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


The gaslighting article gave me a lightbulb that I'm sure other people had a long time ago: The whole point of Tesla is to be the toxic masculinity electric car.

It's the only electric car that your toxic friends won't smirk at and ridicule. It's the only electric car that says you're a fucker who dominates the earth instead of a fuckee who cares about the earth. It's the only electric car with no taint of girliness.

That's what Tesla is selling, along with a side of techno-futurism. Toxic masculinity is its unique selling proposition.

Someone who wanted to be the CEO of that is bound to have some messed-up, probably unexamined ideas about women, about power, and about responsibility. In that light, it's not surprising that Musk has ended up on the "Why do you think Trump got elected in the first place?" train.
posted by clawsoon at 4:43 AM on May 26, 2018 [9 favorites]


So Grimes is like a big KLF fan - you know the burn a million quid guys - may be she's just taking it to the next level and turning a billionaire nuts.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:07 AM on May 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Whoops

If he’s not a full on incel/alt-right nutjob by the end of the year I’ll eat a MAGA hat.
posted by Artw at 6:44 PM on May 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Oh man there are so many happy Nazis in Elon’s replies now, if he didn’t mean the anti-Semitic trope they’re all super jazzed about it and think he did.

Also

“Elon Musk arguing with a nanotech researcher that nanotechnology is bullshit and then linking to an uncyclopedia page as proof is, like, the most fuckin' 2018 shit I've seen in the past, uh, 30 minutes“ @Revolverunit
posted by The Whelk at 9:42 PM on May 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


More from Slate: Elon Musk’s Crusade for Media Accountability Lasted Three Whole Days Before He Recommended a News Site Affiliated With a Suspected Sex Cult

Musk linked to a complimentary article on a site connected to Nxivm. Nxivm's leaders, founder/guru Keith Raniere and former Smallville actress Allison Mack, "have been charged with sex trafficking, sex-trafficking conspiracy, and forced-labor conspiracy."
posted by nicebookrack at 6:11 AM on May 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


May have to move up the timeline, he’s openly courting antisemitic conspiracy theories now.
posted by Artw at 6:48 AM on May 27, 2018


From Slate:
Arguing that The Knife is affiliated with a suspected sex cult whose leaders are facing criminal charges rather than objectively answering the site’s objective analysis on its objective merits is the kind of fallacy that will doubtless earn this article a very high “Faulty Logic Rating.” But look more closely at the raw numbers: Elon Musk’s Twitter blunder has a 93% Objective Hilarity rating, while Slate will only incur a 27 Credibility Point penalty for writing about it, assuming we roll a 10 or higher on the wisdom check. This yields a Publication Quotient of 7.32 against a Clickbait Measure of only 2.5000009 and an astonishing People Love It When You Tell Them Something They Already Believe but Dress It Up in Scientific-Sounding Lingo Ratio of 100:1. Objectively speaking, we had no choice but to point and laugh.
damn you, nicebookrack, damn you
posted by y2karl at 6:51 AM on May 27, 2018 [4 favorites]


Oh no:

@williamturton:
congrats to Elon for starting rich people gamergate

(In fairness it is uncertain whether the quoted support for Elon Musk in that tweet is actually Stan Lee, who may or may not be in control of his twitter account, mental facilities etc... right now)
posted by Artw at 9:31 AM on May 27, 2018


What's the over/under on how long it will take to receive the refund on my Tesla 3 deposit that I requested on Thursday...?
posted by PhineasGage at 11:48 AM on May 27, 2018




Elon Musk was HYDRA all along
posted by nicebookrack at 1:56 PM on May 27, 2018 [1 favorite]




What's the over/under on how long it will take to receive the refund on my Tesla 3 deposit that I requested on Thursday...?

Ha ha, yeah, let us know how that goes! There's a lot of stories out there of multi-month delays but also a lot of people saying it happened within days.

Then from the WSJ, there's this:
Over the weekend, Chief Executive Elon Musk announced a new, $78,000 version of Tesla’s car for the people, the Model 3. More important was his admission that his promised $35,000 version would cause the company to “lose money and die” if built right away....

Then there are the nearly 500,000 Tesla die-hards who put down $1,000 deposits for what they thought was a car that started at $35,000. How many can afford, or would be willing to pay for the higher-end models? These refundable deposits account for a third of the cash on Tesla’s rickety balance sheet.

Mr. Musk said Tesla would produce a low-end Model 3 toward the end of the year, though Tesla’s forecasts are typically optimistic....

Would a shift by Tesla make potential customers ask for their money back? The company hasn’t said how many depositors were only interested in buying the cheapest version of the car. Watching those numbers will be hard, too. It can take several months for customers to get refunds processed, so a refund request issued today might not show up in financial statements until November, when Tesla reports third-quarter results.
posted by salvia at 9:41 PM on May 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


Over the weekend, Chief Executive Elon Musk announced a new, $78,000 version of Tesla’s car for the people, the Model 3.

Huh. But the current sticker price for a base Tesla Model S is around $75k. I mean, sure, it makes some kind of sense to sell a souped-up, high-end version of your model in order to fund production of the regular, medium-end version; but, does it still make sense when the price range for the high-end version of the Model 3 overlaps with the price range of the Model S? Maybe the $1,000 deposit is preying on a sunk cost fallacy from die-hard Telsa fans? I'm not exactly sure what's going on here.
posted by mhum at 9:53 AM on May 29, 2018




Oh, he has a response for that as well, which is that harassment is a default state of the Internet.

I wonder what his PR team is drinking now.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:11 AM on May 29, 2018


I mean, yes? People are aware of it? People who stoke that are fucking garbage and have an have, not so coincidentally, a fuckton of nazis amongst their ranks?
posted by Artw at 11:27 AM on May 29, 2018


I wonder what his PR team is drinking now.

Whatever you can buy on the salary of Elon Musk's PR team, which is probably pretty good stuff.
posted by duffell at 12:26 PM on May 29, 2018


Whatever you can buy on the salary of Elon Musk's PR team, which is probably pretty good stuff.

Remember that we're talking about a man who fired his long time personal assistant for having the temerity to ask for a raise.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:48 PM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]


In that case, Carlo Rossi.
posted by duffell at 12:59 PM on May 29, 2018 [2 favorites]




Tesla shareholders had a vote to oust Musk but didn't have the numbers needed so he's staying for now. Wapo article.
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:16 AM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]




And a dog ate his brilliant idea that would put the company back on track.
posted by lmfsilva at 5:13 AM on June 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Still haven't received the refund of my Tesla 3 deposit I requested almost 4 weeks ago...
posted by PhineasGage at 8:56 AM on June 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


Quite enjoying Musk's slow realisation that he's accidentally named his drone ships after heavily-armed communists. What did he think VFP stood for?
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 10:24 AM on June 19, 2018


I’m beginning to get the impression that this guy is actually very dumb.
posted by Artw at 10:43 AM on June 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


@elonmusk: Should prob articulate philosophy underlying my actions.
It's pretty simple & mostly influenced by Douglas Adams & Isaac Asimov.

@pixelatedboat: Capitalism is good because it gives unimaginable power to a guy who has never read a book that didn’t have a spaceship on the cover

posted by Atom Eyes at 12:32 PM on June 19, 2018 [5 favorites]


I bring you the latest Musk innovation: the tent factory.

That's not a joke.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:42 PM on June 19, 2018


The Germans did that for the Me262 when their stuff kept blowing up too.
posted by Artw at 3:56 PM on June 19, 2018


@elonmusk: Not sure we actually need a building. This tent is pretty sweet. Tesla Grohmann line is in place at Giga & spooling up now. They super kicked ass too. Heiliger Strohsack!

God, what an insufferable nerdbro.
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:15 PM on June 19, 2018


Elon Musk saying he's a socialist unlike that famous libertarian Iain M Banks has put some real fire in my belly I can tell you
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:37 AM on June 20, 2018 [6 favorites]


At this point, I'm convinced that Musk is actually the human form of one of those crappy "science rules god drools" style facebook pages that eventually start posting libertarian memes and uh, isn't this -ist? content.
posted by lmfsilva at 10:35 AM on June 20, 2018 [3 favorites]


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