Elon Musk is not a superhero

I saw my first Cybertruck in the wild the other day. It was parked under a solar charging station at a regional park where I'd gone for a hike. The thing was friggin' enormous, and even uglier and more ridiculous up close. 

The Cybertruck looks like what you'd get if a DeLorean mated with a Humvee, or The Terminator had a one-night stand with a Cylon [1]. If you asked a group of kindergarteners to build a car out of gray LEGO blocks, they'd come up with a sleeker, more aerodynamic design. 

It turns out these stainless steel beasts aren't actually stainless; they're starting to rust. Their lithium-ion batteries lose their charge in extreme cold. Some of the car's steel panels are misaligned, creating excessive wind noise. Some models developed critical steering issues seconds after being driven off the lot. And with its size, weight, and sharp angles, the Cybertruck is a pedestrian and cyclist nightmare waiting to happen.

I cannot imagine owning one; I cannot imagine knowing anyone who would want to own one. And yet, some people are peeing themselves over it. Business Insider calls it "the new status car" and has compiled a list of celebrities who've been spotted driving one. 

Why do these people love these $82,000 to $102,000 monstrosities? It can't be the vehicles themselves. It's because they're members of the Cult of Elon. More important, they want everyone else to know they're members of CoE. It's a dubious expensive douche-friendly badge of honor. [2]

Elon Musk has managed to create a reality distortion field Steve Jobs would have been proud of. He has become a mythic figure, loved and hated with equal passion. Neutrality is impossible; either you worship him and his companies' products, or you think he's a blight on humanity. 

And, unfortunately, my journalist colleagues own a lot of the blame for creating this monster. 

Zeroes, not heroes

I remember sitting in the office of the editor in chief of a magazine that shall go unnamed [3], pitching him stories I was hoping he would pay me to write. He told me that my pitches lacked one essential ingredient: A hero. I needed a human being to anchor the story, someone for the readers to root for. And if I didn't have one, I'd need to invent one. 

(I discovered later this publication had a reputation for pumping a little too much hot air into its stories. If a particular technology or scientific breakthrough was featured on the cover, the thinking went, that was a virtual guarantee it was never going to happen. If that magazine were still in print, it would have devoted an entire issue to the Cybertruck.)

This makes sense from a story-telling angle (see, every movie or TV show ever made). The problem is that most news stories — especially stories centered around businesses and the people who run them — are not especially heroic. Profit-and-loss statements and earnings calls generally do not make for gripping narratives. Most CEOs are as boring as dirt, and they prefer it that way.

So when someone brash like Elon comes along, the media leaps on it, desperate to make him larger than life. This has an unfortunate side effect: The subjects of these stories start believing they actually are superheroes, minus the spandex undies. Cheered on by their adoring fans, they become infallible experts on every topic, swooping in to solve the world's problems, like Superman but without muscles or a cape. 

Shoot rockets into orbit? Drill holes through mountains? Build a 'non-woke' AI? Turn a global information network into a raging dumpster fire of racism, antisemitism, and hucksterism? Inject your opinions into every conversation despite near-perfect ignorance of most subjects? Make the world conform to whatever Ketamine-fueled vision you woke up with this morning?

You end up with something that looks a lot like a Cybertruck: Ugly, flawed, and dangerous.

Ain't nothin' but a sandwich

PR maven Ed Zitron has done an extremely capable and thorough job of deconstructing the Elon hero myth in his blog, Where's Your Ed At?, saving me the trouble of doing it here. His conclusion:

Elon Musk's fortune was built on the Elon Musk brand, a brand that was built off of the vagueness of his legend and his assumed intelligence. That legend is collapsing under the weight of Musk's need for attention and inability to retreat at exactly the time where Tesla needs a stable, reliable and consistent executive.... And as things begin to fall apart, Musk will become more deranged, more bigoted, more cruel and more chaotic. Twitter has maybe a year left before it fully buckles under the weight of his terrible decision-making, and outside of a miracle growth-spurt, Musk's reign at Tesla is coming to a close.

Though much of what I've written here is deeply depressing, I do want to leave you with some good news: Elon Musk is absolutely miserable, and there's little good news in his future.

There's another cult out there with similar delusions that's even more destructive. They also see their guy as a superhero, despite every piece of evidence to the contrary. And the media has also played a pivotal, and regrettable, role in that process.

Hero worship is dangerous and delusional. What the world really needs is more anti-heroes. 

Who’s your favorite anti-hero? Share your thoughts in the comments below or email me: crankyolddan AT gmail DOT com.

[1] That's a Battlestar Galactica reference for the non-geeks in the audience. 

[2] Tattooing the word 'Incel' on their foreheads would have been a lot cheaper. 

[3] Hint: It was a popular magazine about science.