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The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

planetearthandbeyond.co

51–60 of 105 posts

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#51
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am still asking myself what the fuck happened? I think the Scott Adams piece the other day[0] described the system dynamics well: "Once you’re sufficiently prominent, politics becomes a separating equilibrium; if you lean even slightly to one side, the other will pile on you so massively and traumatically that it will force you into their opponents’ open arms just for a shred of psychological security." I think B…

Except there is nothing in musks history that suggest this. His actual behavior was always consistent with who he is now. He just became more aggressive as people pointed it out. He did not leaned a little right. He had the same political opinions, but less of narcissist rage over not being admired.

He obviously always held the normie billionaire libertarian "taxes bad, regulations bad, unions bad" right positions, enjoyed "politically incorrect" jokes and had some weird preconceptions like obsession with male heirs that might not be overtly political but line up with certain more fringe right views. Maybe he chose to hide some spicier views about the apartheid era.

But there's also definitely been a change. He publicly endorsed Democrat candidates on numerous occasions, including against normie business-friendly Republicans. Think his metamorphosis in actual unfiltered views is best shifted from the "I absolutely support trans but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare" to his current campaigns...

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#52

I mean, when you look through the site's article history and all you see is numerous negative doomer posts about every single business Musk is involved in: SpaceX, Grok, Tesla, Optimus, Musk himself, you name it, and not a single positive or even neutral post about anything, that's probably a sign that this author is not who you should be going to in order to receive objective, unbiased, rational discussion on the to…

If you look through the site's article history and you don't see a single positive or even neutral post about Musk, it's clear that the firehose of Musk-sycophancy on his own website has broken your brain.

This is a website that took Hyperloop seriously because Musk casually threw it out there...

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this important market? Norway is just 5-6 million population. Does being number 1 in Norway even mean anything? UK is near 70million. Germany 80million. What about the stats for those? How many Teslas were sold as percentage in UK?

IIRC Norway is one of the few markets where EV growth is positive rather than negative, due to their abundant electric gen and other factors

I don’t think you do recall correctly. Electrek has European EV sales at +33% in 2025 over 2024. It’s not possible for Norway to turn a negative in the rest of Europe into an overall positive. https://electrek.co/2025/12/11/global-ev-sales-jump-21-in-20...

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#54
Elon Musk is an interesting case study in that he exposes how submissive and docile most men are around other men that they consider their superiors. He has an obsessive fan base of males who hang on to his every word, no matter he says. Even those who aren't obsessed with him tend to treat him with an odd sort of reverence. This site itself contains many of them. They consider him like a king.

Is he - or any other man - deserving of this? No. But men just can't help worshipping other men. Christianity is another good example. As is the military, showing that most men are naturally drawn to placing themselves within a hierarchy of other men, with one at the top, even if it ends in their demise.

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#55
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it odd to completely disavow someone because you don’t agree 100% with their politics. I mean Werner Von Braun was a Nazi party member and knowingly used slave labor. Doesn’t make his rocketry advancements any less impressive. Or Charles Darwin’s views of superior races. Or Gandhi’s gray area views of pedophilia. I mean if you’re going to discounted every person with a view you find distasteful your list of pe…

Purity tests are extremely common in left wing politics in the USA.

And the point of the purity test isn't to establish guilt. You're already declared guilty and the purity test is an attempt at finding or creating evidence of your guilt.

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#58
post #8

I mostly agree, but I would have agreed with a similar article 10 years ago, and that would have been a fairly widely held opinion (e.g. Bill Gates was famously short Tesla). So I wouldn’t be so sure as this piece is in Tesla’s downfall, and the emotive language doesn’t help this look like an objective analysis. I also don’t like articles that take the industry consensus or expert opinion as a priori the correct opin…

What about the people that were killed because they couldn't figure out how to get out of the fucking car when it caught fire with them in the back?

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The "you're a sheep" rhetoric. Great! Pre-2018 he had already made some substantial lies, (cf. https://elonmusk.today/ )

>The "you're a sheep" rhetoric. Great!

you mean the same rhetoric I observe whenever the wrong entity wins an election anywhere in the West? have we not accepted for a fact that most people are so uncritical of the media they consume that a thousand Russian Internet Defense Force operatives can topple a Western democracy over Xitter and TikTok?

>Pre-2018 he had already made some substantial lies, (cf. https://elonmusk.today/)

I never said he was a good man before then, or that he is a good man now.

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#60
post #5

I used to really like and admire Musk. You could say I was a fanboy. I am still asking myself what the fuck happened? Was he faking his true character all this time and managed to dupe me? Did he suffer some brain damage which changed him this drastically? Was it too much social media, was it covid-related, was he poisoned? Did too much money and power get to him? I would seriously like to know. By know, knowing abou…

He had a PR team working overtime to boost his image. Remember he had a cameo in movie Iron Man 3 back in the day. He meticulously worked on his image for decades.

>screenwriter Mark Fergus told New York magazine that Musk partly inspired the modern portrayal of [Iron Man]

>According to Fergus, the character was inspired by an amalgam of real people — but none so much as Elon Musk.

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