In Which I Dunk on Elon Musk for a While

Exactly what it says on the tin.

Elon Musk is one of the mediocre-est of mediocre white dudes. He came from a wealthy family whose money is the result of some sort of dubious background that may or may not be related to Apartheid. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics and physics from the University of Pennsylvania, making him at least the second rich narcissistic mediocre white dude to graduate from the Wharton School thanks to their parents’ money and connections only to go on to be an alt-right troll on Twitter. More on that in a minute.

When given the opportunity to attend Stanford University for his graduate degree, he chose instead to drop out after two days, making him yet another tech billionaire to get into a prestigious university thanks mostly to their family connections and wealth only to decide that it just wasn’t their vibe, man. To buck the trend, he at least had his Bachelor’s degree at that point.

Instead, he used his money and influence to found or invest in several internet-based companies in the late 90s, when dropping out of college and founding a tech startup was the cool thing to do. This included, among others, PayPal, one of the first and also one of the worst internet-based money transfer companies.

Then, when his multiple millions of dollars in investment returns weren’t enough for him to properly swim in Scrooge McDuck-style, he invested in Tesla, fired its original founders, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, and put his name all over everything there. Thus began his rise to notoriety as a pretty chill dude with a bunch of good ideas, like:

• Building a three-mile-long tunnel in which an electric car drives you a bit faster than a bicycle.
• Naming his child something incredibly common but spelling it like a lunatic, and
• Committing fraud in the form of a tweet while he was high.

Also, he sold flamethrowers once, that was kinda neat I guess, but he probably came up with that one while he was high as well, so minus points there.

In addition to all of that, he also formed SpaceX, an aerospace company that fires penis-shaped rockets into space and suckles at the teat of the American military-industrial complex, so you know that’s some honest money right there. Later in his career and smack dab in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, SpaceX would be a crucial element of a competition between him and several other mediocre rich white dudes to get other mediocre white dudes into space on increasingly phallic-shaped spacecraft. It was like the Space Race in the 60s, but far, far less interesting.

There have been many dick-waving contest jokes made to this effect, so I will summarize by saying that, in an incredibly scientific reader poll from TechRound, a UK tech publication that I’ve never heard of, Musk did not come out ahead as the leading space entrepreneur, instead coming in second behind some other rich old white dude. While he may not have been voted “biggest dick-shaped rocket,” he will always be the biggest dick to so many of us.

(Don’t worry, Elon, I won’t make a joke about you compensating for something — among the woke left, it’s considered body shaming to make fun of someone’s tiny penis, and we don’t do that here.)

Most recently, and in a move that was described as “shocking,” “typical billionaire man-child behavior,” and “probably done while high,” Musk bought Twitter. Well, he made an offer, that offer was accepted, and then he probably realized that this was a terrible idea and tried to back out repeatedly before eventually being forced to do it by, among other things, the SEC. You know, the government agency that leveled massive fines against him for the whole “committing fraud while high” thing? That one.

There are rumors that Musk may have tried to back out of the Twitter deal because he realized that he is not capable of successfully running a business by himself, but that would illustrate a level of basic self-awareness that Musk may actually be incapable of and can thus be safely ignored. Based on his previous actions and tweets, Elon Musk may only be capable of three basic things:

• Being so self-absorbed that he convinces people that he’s actually as smart as he thinks he is despite having the emotional capacity of a five-year-old with half as much self-awareness;
• Throwing enough of the money he earned on the backs of other, more capable people that he essentially has infinite money at this point; and
• Trolling.

At this point, I feel like Elon Musk no longer needs to eat, instead subsisting entirely on self-delusion, copious amounts of weed, the mindless adoration of his dwindling fan base, and the abhorrence of the other 99.95% of the world that knows about him. He’s like one of those single-cell bacteria that hangs out near deep-sea thermal vents, surviving on the copious nutrients that are expelled from them.

Unlike those single-cell bacteria, however, he does not contribute to the surrounding environment in any way, instead spewing out entirely unhelpful waste in the form of shitty hot takes and worker exploitation. If given the choice, I feel like a colony of bacteria hanging around an ocean thermal vent would be better at running Twitter if for no other reason than they’re actually contributing something useful to the world.

In the end, Elon Musk is like the worst Bond villain. He’s got all the money, confidence, and evil intentions, but he lacks the charm, wit, candor, and general sense of style that any good Bond villain possesses. Additionally, there isn’t a charming, debonair, and horribly misogynistic British guy trying to thwart him at every turn, and the world is worse off because of that void.

If Elon Musk died tomorrow, the world would be a little bit better because of it. Honestly, best case scenario, he hops into one of his dick-rockets, blasts off to Mars, and spends the rest of his life “terraforming” it, far away from Earth where he can’t do any more damage to humanity.