Elon is a Fraud

Okay, I’m just gonna say it.

I think Elon Musk is a fraud.

Not in the legal sense where I’m accusing him of some specific crime.

I mean the public character.

The whole:

genius engineer
real-life Tony Stark
humanity's greatest inventor
guy personally building rockets at 3 AM

thing.

I’ve never bought it.

Even years ago when everyone around me was treating this guy like some once-in-a-century genius, I kept telling my friends:

bro this guy is a con man 😭

And they’d look at me like I was insane.

"But Tesla bro."

"But SpaceX."

"But Mars."

"He’s literally changing humanity."

Okay.

Let’s actually look at the pattern.

Because once you notice it, it becomes really hard to unsee.

First of all, he did not start Tesla

This is probably the easiest piece of Musk mythology to kill.

Tesla was incorporated in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

Elon Musk came in later, in 2004, as the largest investor in Tesla’s Series A funding round and became chairman.

Later, after a legal dispute, a settlement allowed Musk, Eberhard, Tarpenning, Ian Wright and J.B. Straubel to all use the title "co-founder."

So whenever people tell the story like:

"Elon Musk founded Tesla and invented the electric car company from nothing."

No.

That is just not what happened.

He invested heavily.

He absolutely played a massive role in what Tesla later became.

I’m not denying that.

But there is a VERY big difference between:

"I joined a young company, funded it and eventually became CEO"

and

"I created Tesla."

And I think this rewriting of the story tells you a lot about the Elon brand.

The myth always has to make him the inventor.

The genius.

The main character.

And this is kind of his superpower

This is the part where I’ll actually give him credit.

Elon Musk is unbelievably good at selling a future that doesn’t exist yet.

Maybe one of the best ever.

He doesn’t say:

"We're working on autonomous driving."

He says autonomous Teslas are basically right around the corner.

He doesn't say:

"Mars is an extremely difficult multidecade engineering problem."

He gives you a date.

He doesn't say:

"We're experimenting with underground transport."

He basically presents it as though traffic is about to be solved.

And people eat it up.

Because the story is always amazing.

The delivery?

Well...

We'll get to that.

Mars has been "almost here" forever

This might be my favorite Musk thing.

Mars is ALWAYS coming.

Just wait a few more years.

Musk has repeatedly pushed extremely aggressive timelines for Mars missions. SpaceX previously talked about human Mars missions potentially beginning in the 2020s; by May 2025, Musk was targeting an uncrewed Starship attempt in the 2026 launch window, with crewed missions later if those flights succeeded. By 2026, attention had also shifted toward building on the Moon first, while Mars remained the longer-term destination.

This is what makes me laugh.

The date moves.

Then moves again.

Then moves again.

But somehow every new announcement is treated like a brand-new prophecy.

At what point do we stop calling these "timelines" and start calling them marketing material?

And before someone says:

"Space is hard bro."

YES.

Exactly.

Space IS hard.

That’s why maybe you shouldn’t repeatedly give ridiculous dates as though the engineering is basically solved.

Tesla was supposed to drive itself years ago

This one is even worse because people actually paid for the promise.

In 2019 Musk said Tesla's Full Self-Driving system would be "feature complete" that year and suggested that by the end of 2020 the technology could become capable enough for drivers to sleep during trips.

He also said Tesla would have one million robotaxis in operation in 2020.

That did not happen.

Reuters has documented a long history of missed autonomy deadlines. Even years later, Tesla was still rolling out limited robotaxi operations rather than anything remotely resembling the million-car autonomous network Musk had confidently predicted.

One million robotaxis.

Just think about how insane that prediction looks now.

And yet people still react to the latest autonomous-driving deadline like:

"This time bro."

How many times can someone say "next year" before we're allowed to stop taking "next year" seriously?

The Boring Company might be the funniest one

Remember the original idea?

Traffic is horrible.

So Elon is going to reinvent transportation.

Underground tunnels.

High-speed vehicles.

Crazy capacity.

Futuristic city transportation.

Sounds incredible.

Then you look at the actual Vegas Loop.

And it's basically Teslas driving through tunnels.

With human drivers.

At ordinary-ish speeds.

😭

The Boring Company spent years pitching underground transportation as a major solution to traffic. Several proposed projects elsewhere stalled or disappeared, while the Las Vegas system became the company's main operating showcase. Reporting on the actual system has noted how far it differs from the grander high-speed, highly automated vision originally marketed.

We invented...

a road underground.

Congratulations everyone.

Humanity has been saved.

This is exactly why I loved Thunderf00t's videos

Thunderf00t was one of the people who kept looking at these announcements and basically going:

hold on, does the physics/economics/engineering actually make sense?

And that's what I liked.

Not the Elon mythology.

Not the cinematic presentation.

Not the cool render.

Actually take the claim.

Take the numbers.

Do some basic calculations.

Then ask:

Does this even remotely add up?

That's the thing Musk's biggest fans often don't do.

They fall in love with the vision first.

Then any criticism becomes:

"You just don't understand innovation."

No bro.

Sometimes a bad idea is just a bad idea.

Hyperloop was another perfect Elon idea

Hyperloop sounded AMAZING.

People traveling through near-vacuum tubes at aircraft-like speeds.

Cities suddenly becoming dramatically closer.

The future of transportation.

And again, the concept generates headlines, renders, conferences, student competitions, startups and massive amounts of excitement.

But the boring engineering questions are brutal.

Vacuum infrastructure.

Thermal expansion.

Emergency evacuation.

Switching.

Passenger capacity.

Tube construction.

Maintaining enormous lengths of low-pressure infrastructure.

Earthquakes.

Failure modes.

Economics.

Once you stop looking at the futuristic pod render and start thinking about the actual system, things get much less magical very quickly.

This is the Elon formula in its purest form:

Take an extremely complicated infrastructure problem and make it sound like everyone before you was simply too stupid to notice the obvious solution.

The gaming thing might be the funniest evidence of his personality

This isn't important compared with Tesla or SpaceX.

But I think it's extremely revealing.

Musk had presented himself as a very high-level gamer, including rankings in games such as Path of Exile 2.

Then actual experienced players watched him play.

And they basically went:

uhhh... this guy does not look like someone who earned this character.

The controversy escalated, and Musk acknowledged that other people had played on his accounts — account boosting — in Path of Exile 2 and Diablo IV.

And this is where I'm like:

BRO 😭

YOU'RE ONE OF THE RICHEST PEOPLE ON EARTH.

You have Tesla.

SpaceX.

Starlink.

You literally don't need additional achievements.

And you're still apparently worried about people thinking you're an elite gamer?

Why?

This is one of the reasons I don't buy the humble engineer character.

The guy seems absolutely obsessed with appearing exceptional at everything.

Business.

Engineering.

AI.

Physics.

Gaming.

Politics.

Memes.

Whatever room he's in, somehow Elon needs to be the smartest guy in it.

Tesla Solar Roof

Another incredible presentation.

Remember those beautiful solar roof tiles?

The idea was that instead of ugly solar panels, your actual roof would generate electricity.

Very cool concept.

Musk unveiled the product with enormous confidence.

Then production ran into significant delays and manufacturing problems. Reuters reported problems at Tesla's Buffalo solar factory and delays getting the roof tiles into production. Years later, solar roofs remained much more niche and expensive than the mass-market revolution originally implied.

Again:

Amazing announcement.

Beautiful presentation.

Massive headlines.

Reality arrives later and is much more boring.

The Roadster is another classic

The new Tesla Roadster was unveiled in 2017.

The car was originally supposed to arrive around 2020.

Then 2021.

Then later.

Then later.

Then later.

Reuters was still listing the Roadster among Musk's repeatedly delayed Tesla projects years afterward.

At some point the product itself almost becomes secondary.

The announcement already did its job.

Everyone talked about Tesla.

Everyone shared the acceleration figures.

Everyone discussed how petrol supercars were dead.

Mission accomplished.

Actual production can come whenever apparently.

Cybertruck

Same thing.

Ridiculous presentation.

Futuristic renders.

Massive promises.

Cybertruck was announced in 2019 and ultimately began deliveries in 2023 after delays.

Now, delays by themselves don't make someone fraudulent.

Manufacturing is hard.

Developing new technology is hard.

Things go wrong.

I completely understand that.

My issue is the pattern of confidence.

It's rarely:

"We're attempting something incredibly difficult and we think there's maybe a decent chance we can ship around X."

It's presented like:

THIS IS HAPPENING.

Then it doesn't.

Then we move onto the next announcement.

And then there's the whole Twitter/X circus

Honestly, Twitter might be the clearest example of why I don't buy the Elon genius mythology.

He bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022.

Then immediately everything became chaos.

Executives fired.

Huge layoffs.

Policies changing constantly.

Verification changing.

People impersonating companies because suddenly a blue check could basically be bought.

Twitter literally had to pause the new verification system after fake verified accounts started appearing.

This was supposed to be the guy who was going to come in and show everyone how badly Twitter had been run.

Instead it felt like watching someone edit production directly on Friday evening.

No staging.

No rollback plan.

Just vibes 😭

The blue check thing was so obviously going to go wrong

Old Twitter verification was basically:

This account is actually the person/company it claims to be.

Was the system perfect?

No.

But at least the checkmark had a specific purpose.

Then Elon came in and basically went:

Why not just charge people for it?

And immediately you had fake "verified" accounts impersonating brands and public figures. Reuters reported fake accounts posing as companies including Nintendo and BP before Twitter suspended them.

Like...

WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS???

Everyone.

Everyone predicted this.

That's what I mean when people automatically assume:

"Elon must know something we don't."

Sometimes he doesn't.

Sometimes an obviously bad idea produces the extremely obvious bad outcome everyone said it would produce.

Then he renamed Twitter to X

Twitter had one of the strongest brands on the internet.

Tweet became a verb.

People said:

"Tweet this."

"Did you see that tweet?"

"What's your Twitter?"

Do you understand how insanely difficult it is for a company to get its product name into everyday language?

Google did it.

Photoshop did it.

Twitter did it.

And Elon basically went:

nah I like the letter X.

😭

Twitter became X.

Tweets became... posts.

One of the most recognizable birds and brands on Earth disappeared.

Maybe there is some gigantic 20-year strategy here and I'm simply too stupid to understand it.

But from the outside this still looks like one of the strangest pieces of brand destruction I've ever seen.

The funniest part is how personal everything became

This is another reason X feels so different from his other companies.

Elon is constantly fighting with people on his own platform.

Journalists.

Politicians.

CEOs.

Advertisers.

Random accounts.

Critics.

People who disagree with him.

It sometimes feels less like:

CEO operating a massive communication platform

and more like:

dude who bought the group chat and became admin.

The advertiser drama might be the best example.

Major advertisers stopped or paused spending on X amid concerns about content on the platform.

Elon's response at the 2023 DealBook Summit?

Basically:

"Go fuck yourself."

Repeatedly.

He even specifically called out Disney CEO Bob Iger.

Now, emotionally?

Hilarious.

As a business strategy for a company heavily dependent on advertising?

Bro 😭

Imagine your customers leave and your sales strategy is:

fuck you, leave then.

Maybe don't put this guy in charge of client retention.

The "free speech absolutist" thing also got complicated very quickly

Elon positioned the Twitter acquisition heavily around free speech.

And to be clear, I actually think concerns about centralized platforms controlling speech are worth discussing.

But the implementation became much messier than the slogan.

People were still suspended.

Rules still existed.

Policies changed.

Accounts impersonating Musk were suspended unless clearly labelled parody.

Which is understandable!

A platform needs rules.

That's literally the point.

But then maybe don't sell yourself as some simplistic:

FREE SPEECH. ABSOLUTE.

hero.

Running a global social network involves moderation.

There isn't a magic button where you turn "free speech" on and suddenly every complicated tradeoff disappears.

And X somehow became part of Elon's personality

This is probably what bothers me most about it.

SpaceX feels like a company with a mission.

Tesla feels like a company making cars and energy products.

Twitter/X increasingly feels like Elon's personal internet kingdom.

His opinions.

His arguments.

His memes.

His enemies.

His politics.

His favorite accounts.

His current obsession.

And maybe that's what he wanted.

He bought the platform.

He's allowed to run it however he wants within the law.

Fine.

But again, I don't have to pretend every decision is 4D chess just because Elon made it.

Sometimes chaos is just chaos.

Twitter really summarizes the whole thing for me

Make enormous claim.

Present yourself as the guy who's finally going to fix what all the idiots before you couldn't.

Move insanely fast.

Ignore everyone telling you there might be obvious problems.

Problem happens.

Change direction.

Pretend that was basically the plan.

Start fighting critics.

Announce something else.

Everyone moves on.

Repeat.

That's basically the Elon cycle.

And weirdly, I think Twitter/X showed more of the actual person than Tesla or SpaceX ever did.

When you're running a rocket company, thousands of engineers and physical reality constrain what you can do.

A rocket either works or explodes.

You can't argue with physics on Twitter.

But when Elon actually bought Twitter and had almost complete control over the product?

We got to see what Elon-management-without-many-guardrails looks like.

And holy shit.

It was entertaining.

I'll give him that.

And then somehow Elon entered the government too

As if Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, AI, tunnels, robots, Mars and pretending to be a pro gamer weren't enough...

Elon somehow ended up helping overhaul the United States federal government.

😭

You genuinely cannot make this man's timeline up.

Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency.

DOGE.

Yes.

DOGE.

The same acronym as Dogecoin.

The cryptocurrency Elon had spent years posting about.

You have to appreciate how absurd this timeline is.

And no, Elon didn't create Dogecoin

I should clarify this because people mix these things up.

Elon did not create Dogecoin.

Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer created it years before Musk became associated with it.

But Musk became probably the most famous person promoting it.

He tweeted about Dogecoin constantly.

Called it the "people's crypto."

Posted memes about it.

Talked about it publicly.

Went on Saturday Night Live while everyone was watching Dogecoin.

Tesla eventually accepted Dogecoin for some merchandise.

At one point Twitter/X even temporarily replaced its bird logo with the Dogecoin dog.

And every time Elon sneezed in Dogecoin's general direction, people would start trading it.

There was eventually a lawsuit accusing Musk and Tesla of manipulating Dogecoin, including claims that Musk's public statements and publicity stunts moved the market.

Important detail though:

the lawsuit was dismissed.

The judge found the allegations weren't enough to establish securities fraud and manipulation.

So I'm not going to sit here and claim Elon was legally found to have manipulated Dogecoin.

He wasn't.

But the whole situation still perfectly demonstrates something I've been saying throughout this article:

Elon understands attention ridiculously well.

Think about how insane the Dogecoin story actually is

Dogecoin literally started as a joke.

It's a meme coin.

Dog.

Internet joke.

Crypto.

And then the richest guy in the world starts tweeting about it.

Millions of people pay attention.

The price moves.

News channels start covering his tweets.

Then he goes on SNL.

Then years later he gets involved with a government cost-cutting project...

called...

DOGE.

😭😭😭

We live in a simulation.

And then DOGE itself became another classic Elon story

The pitch was incredible.

The U.S. government is bloated.

There's massive waste.

Elon is going to come in.

Run government like a startup.

Cut bureaucracy.

Delete unnecessary spending.

Make everything efficient.

At various points Musk talked about finding absolutely enormous savings.

Initially the ambition was around $2 trillion.

Think about that number.

Two.

TRILLION.

Dollars.

And again, everyone reacts the same way:

"Finally, someone is going to run government like a business."

Okay.

Let's see what actually happened.

The numbers started getting... interesting

DOGE created a website showing the money it claimed to have saved taxpayers.

And then people started checking the receipts.

Uh oh.

Reuters found major errors in DOGE's published accounting.

One contract was initially presented as producing $8 billion in savings.

The contract was actually worth $8 million.

That's not a typo you want to make when your entire brand is:

WE ARE THE SMART PEOPLE FIXING GOVERNMENT WASTE.

That's a thousand-fold difference 😭

Reuters also found examples of savings being triple-counted, expired contracts being counted, entries disappearing and estimates repeatedly being revised.

At one point DOGE claimed $105 billion in savings, but only a fraction had detailed public receipts behind it and those receipts themselves kept changing.

Does this sound familiar yet?

Huge number.

Huge promise.

Amazing headline.

Then someone starts checking the details.

The $2 trillion dream became considerably smaller

By the time Musk stepped away from his full-time government role in May 2025, Reuters looked at Treasury spending for agencies DOGE had targeted.

The reduction they found compared with the same period a year earlier?

About $19 billion.

That's real money.

Obviously.

I would very happily accept $19 billion.

But the federal government spends trillions.

Reuters calculated that reduction at roughly half of one percent of total federal spending, dramatically below Musk's initial $2 trillion ambition.

Again...

This is EXACTLY what I've been talking about.

Elon announcement:

$2 TRILLION. WE'RE TAKING A CHAINSAW TO GOVERNMENT WASTE.

Reality:

Well...

It's complicated.

And cutting things isn't automatically efficiency

This is something that annoyed me about the whole DOGE conversation.

Firing people is easy.

Cancelling contracts is easy.

Deleting departments is easy.

That doesn't automatically mean you've made something more efficient.

If I fire 80% of my company tomorrow, my payroll goes down.

Amazing.

Did I make my company more efficient?

Maybe.

Or maybe I just destroyed it.

You have to look at what happens afterward.

Reuters found cases where DOGE-related staffing and funding cuts contributed to bottlenecks, longer waits, expensive employees having to cover lower-level work and loss of experienced scientific and technical staff.

That's the boring part.

And Elon stories always become much less exciting when you reach the boring part.

Government isn't Twitter

This is another thing.

I understand why the idea sounds appealing.

Government bureaucracy can be unbelievably inefficient.

Absolutely go after waste.

Modernize ancient software.

Automate repetitive work.

Simplify processes.

Kill genuinely useless spending.

PLEASE.

But government isn't a SaaS startup.

You can't just go:

rm -rf department

and see what happens 😭

Government agencies handle pensions.

Taxes.

National security.

Healthcare.

Scientific research.

Air traffic.

Nuclear material.

Food safety.

Disaster response.

Millions of people's personal information.

There are absolutely stupid processes that should be deleted.

But there are also processes that look annoying because they're designed to prevent catastrophic mistakes.

Move fast and break things becomes considerably less cute when the "thing" is someone's Social Security payment.

And this is basically the same Elon pattern AGAIN

This is why I wanted DOGE in this article.

Not because I want this to become a political essay.

I don't care whether the politician standing next to Elon has an R or D beside their name.

I'm interested in the pattern.

And the pattern is hilarious.

Step 1: Identify a genuinely real problem.

Traffic sucks.

Government wastes money.

Cars pollute.

Spaceflight is expensive.

Step 2: Announce an insanely ambitious solution.

Underground transportation revolution.

$2 trillion in savings.

Full self-driving next year.

Mars soon.

Step 3: Put Elon in the middle of the story.

Only this group of outsiders is crazy enough to fix it.

Step 4: Everyone loses their mind.

🤯🤯🤯

Step 5: Reality arrives.

Turns out the problem was complicated.

Step 6: Quietly reduce expectations.

Step 7: Announce the next insane thing.

Repeat.

And then he leaves

Musk stepped back from his government role after only a few months.

His special-government-employee period was limited, and by late May 2025 he announced he was leaving while saying DOGE's work would continue.

A former DOGE staffer told Reuters he thought the effort would probably lose momentum without Musk.

So after all that...

Elon enters Washington.

Chainsaw memes.

Massive promises.

Thousands of headlines.

Government departments thrown into chaos.

Huge claimed savings.

Arguments over whether the savings are even accurate.

Then:

alright guys I'm heading back to my companies 👍

😭

Classic Elon.

Dogecoin → Twitter → DOGE is an unbelievable character arc

This might be my favorite sequence in the entire Elon story.

Become billionaire.

Start posting memes.

Become obsessed with Dogecoin.

Move Dogecoin markets with tweets.

Buy Twitter.

Rename Twitter X.

Replace Twitter's logo with the Dogecoin dog for a few days.

Get sued over alleged Dogecoin manipulation.

Win dismissal of that lawsuit.

Then join a U.S. government efficiency project literally called DOGE.

If I wrote this into a fictional billionaire character, people would tell me the writing was too unrealistic.

And that's kind of why I can't stop watching Elon.

I think the genius-inventor worship around him is ridiculous.

I think his timelines are borderline comedy at this point.

I think he overpromises constantly.

I think the Tony Stark image is mostly marketing.

But holy shit...

the guy generates lore.

I'll give him that.

And somehow nobody remembers the previous promise

This is honestly fascinating to me.

Musk has what feels like an infinite hype reset button.

He says:

Full autonomy next year.

Doesn't happen.

Next announcement:

Humanoid robots!

People:

🤯🤯🤯

He says:

Million robotaxis.

Doesn't happen.

Next announcement:

Cybercab!

People:

🤯🤯🤯

Mars timeline slips.

Next Mars presentation:

THIS IS IT.

People:

🤯🤯🤯

How does this keep working???

Do people have no memory?

Optimus gives me the exact same feeling

Now apparently humanoid robots are going to transform Tesla.

And maybe they will.

Robotics is genuinely progressing extremely quickly.

I'm not saying humanoid robots are impossible.

I'm saying that after watching the same guy give absurdly optimistic timelines again and again, I no longer treat a Tesla stage presentation as evidence.

Show me the actual thing.

At scale.

Working.

Economically.

Then I'll care.

I don't care about a robot dancing on stage.

I don't care about a render.

I don't care about projected future revenue.

Ship it.

That's basically my entire Elon problem

I don't hate ambitious people.

Quite the opposite.

I LOVE ambitious people.

I love insane projects.

Reusable rockets?

Amazing.

Electric cars?

Amazing.

Making humanity multiplanetary?

Amazing.

Humanoid robots?

Amazing.

I want people attempting crazy things.

My problem is the gap between:

attempting something difficult

and

repeatedly presenting extremely optimistic outcomes as though they're basically inevitable.

Those are different things.

And yes, SpaceX has done genuinely incredible things

This is where people usually think they've caught me.

"But SpaceX lands rockets!! Checkmate!"

Guys.

I'm not saying every company Elon touches is fake.

That would be stupid.

SpaceX has done genuinely impressive engineering.

Tesla played an enormous role in making electric cars mainstream.

Starlink is real.

Falcon 9 is real.

Reusable orbital-class rocket boosters are real.

Those are legitimate achievements.

And Musk deserves some credit for funding, pushing and managing companies that accomplished them.

You can acknowledge all of that...

and still think the personality cult around him is ridiculous.

These aren't contradictory positions.

Thousands of brilliant engineers work at these companies.

SpaceX isn't Elon sitting in his garage welding Falcon 9 together himself.

Tesla isn't Elon personally designing every battery cell.

The hero narrative turns enormous teams of extremely talented people into background characters in The Elon Musk Show.

That's what annoys me.

He's a salesman first

This is probably my actual view of Musk.

I don't think his greatest skill is engineering.

I think his greatest skill is selling.

Selling investors.

Selling employees.

Selling customers.

Selling governments.

Selling the public.

Selling a vision of the future.

And honestly?

He's REALLY fucking good at it.

Possibly historically good.

He makes ideas feel inevitable.

Mars isn't:

"Maybe humans could establish a settlement someday."

It's:

We're going to Mars.

Robotaxis aren't:

"Autonomy is improving."

It's:

One million robotaxis next year.

That's unbelievably powerful marketing.

And I actually think people could learn a lot from him about attention and storytelling.

What I don't understand is why we have to pretend that makes every technological prediction correct.

Maybe "fraud" is exactly why his fans get angry

Again, I'm using "fraud" here as my judgment of the public persona, not making a legal allegation.

I think the image being sold is fake.

The lone genius.

The engineer who personally invented everything.

The guy whose predictions deserve default trust because he's supposedly operating ten years ahead of everyone else.

I don't buy it.

Never have.

The real Elon Musk is, in my view, much more interesting anyway:

An extremely aggressive businessman.

An incredible fundraiser.

A world-class marketer.

A huge risk taker.

Someone willing to bet enormous amounts of capital on extremely ambitious engineering projects.

Someone capable of attracting brilliant people.

Someone who has also made an almost comical number of wildly optimistic predictions.

THAT person exists.

And he's genuinely remarkable.

But Tony Stark?

Nah.

Stop listening to announcements. Watch what actually ships.

This is basically the lesson Elon taught me.

Whenever someone announces something incredible:

Ignore the render.

Ignore the charismatic CEO.

Ignore the launch event.

Ignore Twitter.

Ignore the insane projected numbers.

Ask:

Does it exist?

Does it work?

Can normal people use it?

What does it cost?

Can it scale?

Did they deliver what they originally promised?

When?

Those questions destroy hype incredibly quickly.

I knew I wasn't crazy

For years I'd tell people this guy was massively overhyped.

Everyone thought I was just being contrarian.

Then another deadline passed.

Then another.

Then another product wasn't quite what the presentation implied.

Then another absurd prediction appeared.

Then the gaming thing happened and I genuinely couldn't stop laughing.

At this point my reaction to a new Elon Musk announcement is basically:

Cool. Call me when it exists.

Not when there's a render.

Not when there's a prototype.

Not when Elon says "next year."

When it's actually here.

I don't think Elon is an idiot

This distinction matters.

Actually, I think calling him stupid misses the entire point.

You don't build his career by being stupid.

He clearly understands business, capital, recruiting, attention and risk extremely well.

You also don't build companies like Tesla and SpaceX without making some extremely good decisions.

But genius at some things doesn't mean genius at everything.

And success doesn't retroactively make every claim you make true.

The weird worship of him where every half-baked idea automatically becomes revolutionary because Elon said it is exactly what I reject.

Judge the idea.

Not the celebrity saying it.

My final take

Elon Musk isn't the person his biggest fans think he is.

He's not some magical engineer-inventor personally dragging humanity into the future.

He's something much more familiar:

an insanely talented businessman and salesman who is exceptionally good at convincing people that the future is arriving much sooner than it actually is.

And that's why I call the persona a fraud.

Tesla existed before him.

Mars keeps moving.

Full self-driving keeps moving.

Robotaxis kept moving.

The Roadster kept moving.

The Boring Company turned revolutionary underground transportation into Teslas in tunnels.

Solar Roof never became anything close to the revolution the launch suggested.

And apparently even being one of the richest men alive wasn't enough — he needed us to think he was an elite Path of Exile player too 😭

At some point, I'm allowed to notice the pattern.

So yeah.

I don't worship Elon Musk.

I don't think he's Tony Stark.

I don't automatically believe whatever year appears in his newest presentation.

And the next time he announces something that's definitely, absolutely, 100% arriving next year?

I'll use the prediction I've found considerably more reliable:

I'll believe it when I see it.