• paintbucketholder@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think his base has shifted, though. Used to be people who were interested in technology, in space exploration, in green and sustainable technology, etc.

    Now a significant part of his fan base are people that decided he’s their hero after he purchased Twitter and then unblocked white supremacists, Nazis, racists, white nationalists, fascists, conspiracy theorists, xenophobes, etc. and decided to harass, block, and mock middle-of-the-road journalists, national public media, and use all the far right dog whistles and megaphones.

    So yeah, he still has a lot of support - but it’s not the same support he had 10 years ago.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I was never a fanboy of his but I am still a spacex fanboy. Lucky everything I read he really was only involved in the beginning. Asked me say five years ago I would have said something like “yeah he does some cool projects”.

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        “yeah he does owns some cool projects”

        FTFY He only owns those things. There’s interviews around about how at the beginning the only way SpaceX could get anything off the ground was by gaslighting the Muskrat into hyper-focusing on something irrelevant while actual engineers solved the hard problems. Management had what they called Elon’s “handlers”, whose job was to keep him off critical things and whose motto was “just let him take credit for it”.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I didn’t know that 5 years ago :/

          Look, I really was never a fanboy of his. I am an engineer and I have seen his type enough. The good version of his type does their job which is sell sell sell, smooth things over, and cheerlead a bit. The bad version, well you get to see that on the news every day.

          Yes we have a good type of version of him at my job. He dresses well, binges Ted Talks, and got me a new laptop when mine was running slow. He can have all the credit, I get all the glory.