Viewpoint: Elon Musk is not someone people should be idolizing

Jose Romero
editor-in-chief

Elon Musk is not your friend. 

Musk is one of the top five richest people in the world, and he’s also a manipulative, unfunny douchebag that has managed to convince way too many people otherwise. 

It seems as if Musk is in a new scandal each week. Recently, he replied to a post Bernie Sanders made on Twitter calling for the wealthy to “pay their fair share.” In his reply, Musk wrote, “I keep forgetting that you’re still alive.” Hilarious, right? Rather than offering constructive criticism, he goes for a playground insult instead of reflecting on his low tax rate. 

Somebody needs to take Twitter away from him because that’s where he does most of his damage. He’s made tweets that have manipulated the stock market and posts that were anti-union. The anti-union post even got him in legal trouble with the National Labor Relations Board. The tweet says “But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?” He was ordered to delete the post, but as the old song and dance go, it was more so a suggestion rather than an order since it can still be found on his Twitter account. 

Once COVID started taking off, he tweeted “The coronavirus panic is dumb.” By the time he wrote that thousands of people had already died from it. When a Tesla assembly line was forced to shut down in California last year, he wrote on Twitter that it would restart production, violating protocols in place. But, it’s OK, he said to arrest him instead of anybody else. 

There is a lot of proof of his misdoings, yet he still has a lot of supporters. How did he manage that?

Well, he’s an internet funny guy.

Photo courtesy of Win McNamee/Getty Image

He has managed to represent himself as the charismatic, relatable billionaire. He posts memes, makes companies as a joke and smokes weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He’s the whole package. 

Taking on this “not like other billionaires” attitude has proven to be effective for him. It makes people believe that he’s not entirely separated from reality. How people manage to believe that when he has a child named “X Æ A-Xii” is beyond me.     Idolizing people like Musk is toxic. It leads people to accept his wrongdoings, and even go as far as defending him. The same energy that’s put against the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, should be put toward Musk. 

These billionaires don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves. All the garbage about helping the world that comes out of Musk’s mouth is only said so outlets can write headlines about him. 

I get it. I should pull up my bootstraps and stop complaining about a man that worked so hard to get to where he is. I should also ignore that he was raised in a wealthy family. 

Bezos could learn something from Musk. People would ignore the awful working conditions at Amazon as long as Bezos starts posting funny video game memes.