He's no Steve Jobs, but sometimes when you don't say something people fill-in context themselves. For example when he makes a long dramatic pause, so he seems deeply contemplative. Or when he stops himself midway through a sentence and corrects himself, he seems earnest.
We're ready to forgive a lot if we suspect behind the awkwardness hides a genius. The trope of the distracted professor, the autistic savant is at least centuries old. He leans into every such trope, and he's very careful in cultivating an image of a "founder", of an "inventor" of an "engineer". Most people by now know he hasn't founded Tesla, or PayPal (was fired from it in fact), he hasn't engineered the SpaceX rockets (although he had a hand in those that blew up), and he in fact has no engineering degree despite claiming otherwise.
So I'd say all this means he's building this image very intentionally, and he's trying to turn his weaknesses into strengths. The more he stutters and repeats, the less we notice how much of what he says is kinda... vapid. Trump has some similar patterns by the way, you can ask him a specific question and he'll say he has great ways of answering that, some of the best people told him he has the best answers, his history of a businessman speaks about long experience providing great answers to all kinds of questions... and he won't answer your question in the end.
Trump and Musk are very different in some ways, but very similar in others.
>He's no Steve Jobs, but sometimes when you don't say something people fill-in context themselves.
Exactly. A significant number of people want to see "Iron Man" in him or that he is playing 5D chess and they will fill the gaps to rationalize that image they have made of him.
My personal belief was after 2016 there was a Trump effect. Once everyone saw you could say WHAT!? and still become the president of the United States. I think that made a lot of people bolder in what they could think, say and do from business people to sports athletes.
It's complex. On one hand, some people feel emboldened to reveal their "true side". On the other hand, we realize the guardrails we thought protect society from illogical or immoral behavior... aren't really there.
From that point on we have a choice. Accept increasing chaos and corruption, or build up the missing guardrails we thought were there. However, from what I see, things aren't going strongly in the right direction as I see it, so far...
We're ready to forgive a lot if we suspect behind the awkwardness hides a genius. The trope of the distracted professor, the autistic savant is at least centuries old. He leans into every such trope, and he's very careful in cultivating an image of a "founder", of an "inventor" of an "engineer". Most people by now know he hasn't founded Tesla, or PayPal (was fired from it in fact), he hasn't engineered the SpaceX rockets (although he had a hand in those that blew up), and he in fact has no engineering degree despite claiming otherwise.
So I'd say all this means he's building this image very intentionally, and he's trying to turn his weaknesses into strengths. The more he stutters and repeats, the less we notice how much of what he says is kinda... vapid. Trump has some similar patterns by the way, you can ask him a specific question and he'll say he has great ways of answering that, some of the best people told him he has the best answers, his history of a businessman speaks about long experience providing great answers to all kinds of questions... and he won't answer your question in the end.
Trump and Musk are very different in some ways, but very similar in others.