Elon Musk’s Transformation from Hero to Movie Supervillain

• In 2015, Elon Tesla received applause. He is booed for appearing in public in 2022.
• The end of a long weekend of Elon’s tweeting inflammatory things culminated in being booed on a Dave Chappelle show.
• His tweets and the strong response from the crowd show just how divisive Musk is.

2015 Elon Musk appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.Colbert called Musk “the real Tony Stark” and Musk received a round of applause. Colbert then asked Musk if he was truly trying to save the planet.

Musk retorted, claiming he was trying “to do useful things.”

Colbert said that you are trying to do useful things and that you are a billionaire. It’s a bit like being a superhero or supervillain. You have to choose one.

Musk’s trajectory appeared to be heading towards the latter: Tesla had already made great progress towards making electric cars cool, while SpaceX was bringing excitement and possibility back into the space race. 

Fast forward seven more years, and Musk received a totally different reception at an encore comedy legend’s show.

Elon made a surprise guest appearance at a Dave Chappelle concert at San Francisco’s Chase Center on Sunday night. Chapelle said, “Make some noise for Elon Musk,” Musk received boos quickly from the 18,000 or so people who were present.

“You weren’t expecting this, were they?” Musk asked Chapelle, as the boos continued.

Chapelle joked that it sounded like some of the people you fired are in attendance. deep, sweeping job cuts at TwitterMusk has held the company’s control for about a month.

—Chris Stokel-Walker ~ @stokel@infosec.exchange (@stokel) December 12, 2022

Twitter and Elon’s dark comedy

Musk is a great comedy nerd. Musk’s love of shows like “Rick and Morty” is well known. He hosted Saturday Night LiveThis is something that it’s impossible for any other tech CEO to do.

It’s hard for me to imagine any San Francisco crowd reacting with anything other than boos when asked to “make some sound for the richest men in the world.”

It is still difficult to watch the footage. Musk’s discomfort on stage can make it seem like Musk is feeling sorry for the world’s richest man.

The booing came at the end of a weekend that saw Musk take a lot of flack, even by recent standards: On Saturday, he was tweeting insinuations that Yoel Roth, his former head of Twitter’s Trust & Safety division, approved of “children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis.” It was an awfully bad-faith reading Roth’s 2016 dissertation. one that quickly made Roth the target of death threats.

Then, on Sunday, Musk posted: “My pronouns were Prosecute/Fauci.” It’s a groaner, designed to troll transgender persons, reiterate his long-standing opposition to anti COVID measures such as the lockdowns in 2020, and feed red meat to the “anti woke” users Musk seems he views as his true fans. (Dave Chapelle, naturally, has a history of). antagonizing the transgender community.) 

After his tweet got 1 million likes, he followed it up with another post: “Truth resonates …”

Musk quickly reacted on Twitter to the reply of a person with less than 700 followers, saying “So does a crowd full boos,” and blaming the booing for angering “SF’s unhinged leftists.”

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022

It is risky to extrapolate public sentiment towards Musk based on one San Francisco comedy event. Musk still has many admirers and fans, especially at the top levels of Silicon Valley power. And yet, it remains an extraordinary turn of events given that Tesla’s cars are one of San Francisco’s most ubiqiuitous status symbols — making it likely that some significant percentage of the audience in attendance had, in not-so-distant memory, contributed directly to Musk’s wealth and power.

Tesla may be concerned about the changing perceptions surrounding Musk. California is one Tesla’s largest and most historically strong markets. electric vehicles accounting for almost 18% of new car sales in the stateAccording to official data,. The original headquarters of the company was in San Francisco Bay Area. Musk may lose his hometown hero status, which could result in some of Tesla’s most loyal and wealthy customers being alienated.

On November 10, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote, “In what has been an dark comedy show on Twitter, Musk has basically tarnished Tesla stock and is starting potentially to impact the Tesla brand through this ongoing Twitter train wreck disaster.” 

Ives announced that Wedbush would take Tesla off Wedbush’s “Best Ideas” list. Ives wrote that Tesla stock was being sold again and again, as well as the PR nightmare that Twitter has become. He also mentioned that Musk’s attention is shifting from Tesla to Twitter and, ultimately, the fear that this Twitter lightning rod of controversy on an almost hourly basis will negatively impact the Tesla brand globally.

Ives said it best: “Tesla, Musk.” It’s becoming less clear every day who Elon Musk really is.