Well the short positions against Tesla that started out as small bets when Tesla was valued at ~20bn but have exploded in liability are a financial vice grip well beyond $20bn.
I noticed this pattern start in 2017 and watched how all narratives the media was peddling unfolded as untrue (Elon is a fraud, Tesla is going bankrupt). Then I noticed how the scale and scope of the anti-Elon narratives grew.
Yes, Elon did all sorts of egotistical things that didn't help. Yes, he deserves plenty of criticism. I'm not denying any of that.
But there are distinct quantitative financial dynamics here that can be traced back a long time that point at a "big problem" for some very rich and powerful people, and that's not even taking into account the potential lost future revenue of all the entrenched industries I mentioned.
So yes, I stand by my point. There is an anti Elon base effect going on and it's probably having a bigger effect on the situation than most people realize.
Your skepticism of my view without a substantive rebuttals (you aren't taking the most respectful interpretation of my point or "steel manning" it as they say), doesn't speak to me having an unbalanced perspective, if speaks to you having a narrower one, taking less scope across time and dimensions into consideration.
Have you done the math to estimate how much NPV Elon's companies threaten entrenched interests? Have you calculated the liability of the short positions against Tesla and how its grown over the last 8 years?
Do you know who pays for the media you consume? How much the publishers receive in revenue, and multiplied that over 8 years?
If Elon represents a $1tn threat to a bunch of random uncoordinated rich people, why is it so hard to believe some of them might have spent tens of billions (combined) on lobbying and "sponsored content" to fight back? No coordination is even needed on their part. Just a collective "oh man f#@k this guy" attitude.
Are you uncomfortable with the idea that your own strongly anti-Elon opinion might have been manipulated by a bunch of rich people? If you weren't constantly reading anti-Elon articles and social media posts, would you even care about it or be paying attention? All kinds of bad people do all kinds of bad things all the time and we don't hear about it. So why do we hear so much negative stuff about Elon specifically?
I have been genuinely curious about this situation for 8+ years now and I still am. I'm open to having my mind changed, but you need to bring novel facts, not just the same old "but Elon's bad and does bad things" like everyone says who has read a bunch of stuff slagging Elon. Saying something akin to "it's obviously Elon's fault because Elon is bad because everyone says Elon is bad" is not critical thinking, it's groupthink, brought to you by all the people who paid for all the stuff you read that says Elon is bad.