Elon Cleaning House

And the ultimate irony of narcissists like that, they are the ones who created that environment. They so need people to tell them how smart and right they are that they slowly eliminate all the truth tellers from their orbit and replace them with the yes-men. Because they think the yes-men must be brilliant, because they agree with them, and they are brilliant, therefore....the yes-men must be brilliant.

A great quote from HBR on narcissistic leaders:

Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons.

That quote was written 20 years ago in the wake of the tech boom. I can't imagine a better description of one of the winners of that boom today.

What is incredible to me is that people become so enamored with these narcissists for their own purposes and will back them without critical thought.

 

If anyone thought conservatives were lining up for Dave Chapelle concerts to see Elon Musk… they were misinformed.

5-6 minutes of continuous booing. This is a short version.

 

sounds like a certain governor of a southern state. Guess that is why Musk has endorsed him

 

Or a former President that he has chosen to emulate. The attraction to narcissism of a significant portion of our population (which I am only beginning to start to understand) is a big problem.

 

As a close and long time admirer of Musk, I think covid is what tipped him into the abyss. When he locked horns with California over Fremont he lost it. That sent him into a spiral he never came out of.

I'm fascinated to watch this unfold. Is he smart enough to pull out of this tail spin or will he remain "stuck" like a 10 year old and crash and burn?

 

I guess Chapelle has become so out of touch and tone deaf that he thought this was a good idea. He really doesn't understand what made him popular. It was making fun of people like himself and Musk.

 

I would find it fascinating if not for the fact Musk is now endangering people, like Fauci, and Roth, with personal attacks, lies and debunked conspiracy theories. How this is supposed to make Twitter successful is beyond me.

 

The stuff with Roth in particular just really seems unhinged, taking bits of his PhD thesis out of context to make accusations about kids and sex.
I can't imagine that Musk built his businesses and his fortune with this kind of behavior.

Report: Ex-Twitter executive flees Bay Area home as Musk attacks

 

I swore I would not post about him again but I just finished this season of this podcast. Two bizarre characters, one a billionaire. The last 20 minutes of the final episode get into the psychological needs of a billionaire for validation, what money does not provide. Highly recommend

Thread

 

What’s going on with Tesla stock? Continuing to drop with mkt going up

 

A few things:

1. There is a fear that if Twitter can't make the money to cover his loans that he will need to sell big chunks of Tesla to do it.

2. He has been treating Tesla like his personal business rather than a publicly traded company. He has brought Tesla employees over to Twitter to work on it. He has been spending very little time with Tesla and not showing that he takes his fiduciary duties to those shareholders seriously. And there is some indication that he has undersold his time and asset commitment to investors, which means that there is likely a lack of trust developing.

3. The mistakes he made in the acquisition and initial stages of running Twitter have made investors jumpy about whether he will make similar mistakes at Tesla.

4. He is alienating his own customers and trashing his personal brand on Twitter, creating substantial risks of losing customers for a business that is supposed to be in it's growth phase.

5. More specific to Tesla and not as discussed because of the massive amount of noise coming from Twitter, he is being sued for a lot of pretty sketchy claims that he made in terms of their progress on autonomous driving. While the technology is advancing, he made some very questionable claims and is now facing a potential class action. There have also been leaks of a potential criminal probe.

 

All that makes sense

 

I think all the negative publicity from the twitter situation is the main catalyst, but the competition in the space is a huge concern if you’re a Tesla investor. Here is the end of an article on yahoo that sums it up.
“concerns remain around manufacturing issues and the pace of sales for Tesla in China amid an uncertain approach to COVID-19 policies.

And lastly, competition in the EV space in the United States has only intensified this year — raising the risk of slowing growth for Tesla in 2023 and beyond.”

 

Ken White is a big loss to the value of perusing Twitter

 

Yeah competition is a major concern especially as he seems hellbent on alienating half the American populace with his twitter crap. I'm looking to purchase an EV in the next 3-5 years and all things being relatively equal, I'll likely purchase from a company that's not run by a raging dickhead. I know I can't be the only one thinking this.

 

Elon working on being Kanye

 

Yeah, this is not how the leader and figurehead of a publicly traded company should act. It's detrimental to shareholders. This is how elected officials in gerrymandered districts act.

 

Maybe, but I think more likely he (Chappelle) is just intentionally lashing out against what he feels is a current wave of pressure to be silent. It's his middle finger to critics of his last standup material regarding trans people and the Jewish jokes in his recent SNL monologue.

I'm not defending him, but from interviews and following him closely over the years, I think he's past the point in his career of just chafing around the collar when someone tries to heel him or rein him in; now he turns around and snaps at any perceived hand/leash, so to speak. And he's historically demonstrated being a pretty introspective and self-aware individual, so I have a hard time believing that he's not aware of what he's doing.

 

Looks like Twitter isn't allowing Ukraine accounts to register. Curious