5 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Elon Musk misleadingly suggests other celebrities made controversial 'Nazi' gesture
How is this good for his brand? I was not an Elon hater before, nor would I care about celebrities apology video for a joke, nor even the joke in the first place, but this just seemed like intrusive thoughts taking over and an ugly one. I can't imagine this was thought out.
Comment by veryreasonable at 23/01/2025 at 22:18 UTC
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I can't imagine this was thought out.
Well, see the parallel discussion[1] I'm having here with, ah, /u/ANAL_TOOTHBRUSH.
In short: I don't think being a troll, or "intrusive thoughts taking over," is mutually exclusive to having some idea of how your actions as a public figure will play out. Many online trolls or even schoolyard bullies take into account how their shit-disturbing will come across to others: who will think they're "cool," "edgy," "powerful," "maverick," what have you. And Musk clearly cares a whole lot what other people think about him. So I'd argue it's pretty safe to assume he at least considered how people might talk about this.
How is this good for his brand?
It's surely not great with everyone. But he's not trying to play to "everyone"! It's great for his fans, and the people who have stuck with him this far. It's great for fellow trolls. And it's great for people who say, "gosh, can these annoying woke idiots stop calling everyone a Nazi?" - which, if you've been paying attention, is a lot of people right now, and is the mainstream viewpoint everywhere from Fox News to popular podcasts.
Or, in Musk's own words, from the article: “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired."
This resonates with a lot of people, at least if discussion among the terminally online on reddit is representative. Now, in the future, almost every time someone invokes Hitler or Nazis in comparison to modern politics, there's a chance someone will bring up, "the Elon thing," instead of "Godwin's law." He's actually made himself a torchbearer for people who believe they are being called "Nazi," or whatever, unfairly. Of these torchbearers, he's surely the most famous and powerful by far.
And, at the end of the day, he'd probably rather deflect criticism about his trolling than anything substantive he does with his companies - or, indeed, in Trump's administration, depending on how that plays out.