Tesla (TSLA) shares were lower in early trading, following a report from the Wall Street Journal claiming executives at both Tesla and SpaceX are concerned about Elon Musk’s illegal drug use. Musk denied the report, saying he is subjected to random drug testing by NASA. Yahoo Finance’s Seana Smith and Brad Smith weigh in on what the report means for shareholders. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live. Editor's note: This article was written by Eyek Ntekim
  • @rsuri@lemmy.world
    57•11 months ago

    It’s interesting to look back at his AMA on reddit in 2015. Every response was so to the point and on topic, even friendly. Clearly something changed since then.

    • @ExLisper@linux.communityEnglish
      74•11 months ago

      I like John Oliver’s take that he really didn’t like the orders to shut down factories during pandemic and got a lot of support from ‘mah freedom’ nutjobs over this causing not-so-slow fall into the extreme right rabbit hole. It actually makes a lot of sense. He clearly craves attention and approval. He used to get it from the left because electric cars are green and SpaceX is cool technology but eventually the left began demanding more regulation and he started getting some criticism (which he doesn’t like that much…). At the same time he noticed that the right is ready to accept him as the ‘free speech savior’ and love him unconditionally as long as he will help them ‘own the libs’ so he switched sides.

    • @butterflyattack@lemmy.world
      50•11 months ago

      I am guessing he had good publicists, probably decided he could do the job better and got rid of them just before the pedo thing.

      • @dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6•11 months ago

        Pretty much. After fucking up PayPal and getting kicked out for being an insufferable POS, he hired a PR firm who constructed the real life Tony Stark image for him on the public. Writing and getting press around his person. They also unfortunately had to tell him to not say or do certain stuff that would damage his image, there’s nothing a narcissist hates more than being told no. They also allowed him to position Tesla as the futuristic libertarian ideal and the overpriced manufacturers they are now, and SpaceX as the renaissance of US space exploration. In my opinion not entirely undeserved perceptions but immensely amplified by a marketing machinery. Then he had a meltdown, fired every single PR, marketing person from every single one of his companies. Declared himself the only marketing that his companies needed. He essentially bought into the crap that his own PR wrote for him.

      • Billiam
        6•11 months ago

        In his recent “interview” with Alex Jones, Musk called all PR firms “propagandists.”. So that tracks.

    • @skyspydude1@lemmy.world
      15•11 months ago

      I can tell you that nothing has changed about him. I personally know people who worked with him at that time, and he was just as much an arrogant and insufferable egoist as he is now. Legendary screaming matches and him talking completely out of his ass about absolutely everything were the norm and expected in every meeting.

      Do any research on his tenure at Zip2/PayPal or any relationship he’s ever had, and you’ll see Musk has always been a petulant child, he just had a lot of people around him to try and hide it, but it seems like he’s scared basically all of them away.