He once played Bowie while launching a Tesla into space. Now, it’s more like Wagner on a descent into madness…
Part 1: I Don’t Do Heroes — But Elon? He Was One
I’ve never had many heroes. Most people aren’t worth the cleanup when they fall off the pedestal — and I’ve spent enough of my life watching people trip over their own egos to know that “visionary” usually just means “gets away with being an asshole.” But for a long time, Elon Musk was the exception.
Here was this nerdy little fellow Canadian — awkward, intense, absolutely uncharming — out there actually doing something. He didn’t just dream big, he executed. SpaceX made NASA look like it was running on dial-up. Tesla shook the auto industry out of its century-long coma. And yeah, the guy was weird as hell, but that kind of came with the territory. For a while, I saw him as one of the few people who understood the future was something you had to build, not just tweet about.
I’d followed his story since the (original) X.com days — way before the rockets and the memes and the desperate need to be the center of attention. Back when PayPal was this sketchy little dot-com experiment people weren’t sure would work. And to be honest, I didn’t think much of him back then. Creating a way for strangers to shoot money across the internet? What could possibly go wrong?
Turns out: everything.
I got mugged in 1998 — not in some sketchy alley downtown, but in my own goddamn house, with a dial-up modem screaming in the background. I’d saved for months and sent $400 to some eBay seller in Washington state for a piece of vintage computer gear, plus another $200 for shipping and brokerage. That was basically eighty grand Canadian at the time (give or take a moose). Know what I got? Ghosted. No package, no tracking, nada. Just radio silence and a growing sense of dread. eBay? Not their problem; take it up with PayPal. When I contacted PayPal for help, they shrugged. Told me there was nothing they could do. Seller still had an active account. No refund. No penalty. Just me, sitting in my basement, realizing I’d been robbed… At least I got to leave negative feedback for the thief.
And Elon? He just moved on to the next big thing. No apologies, no course corrections. Just another business built on user trust he didn’t bother earning.
I didn’t put it together then, not fully. But in hindsight, the signs were all there: a guy who builds, but doesn’t stick around to sweep up the sawdust. The sort of person who talks about humanity like a species he’s been hired to improve, not one he belongs to.
Fast forward a couple decades, and there he is again — but this time it’s not my money. It’s his employees, forced back into the office during a global pandemic. The same cold indifference. The same “my mission matters more than your life” energy. And just like that, all the old feelings came flooding back.
That’s when the hero worship cracked. Not all at once — more like a slow, quiet crumble. But once you start seeing the pattern, it’s hard to unsee it.
Part 2: Humanity for Mars, Not for Earth
It didn’t happen all at once. The unraveling. The quiet realization that Elon Musk, this once-promising genius — this fellow Canadian nerd I’d actually rooted for — wasn’t building a better world for people like me. Or you. Or anyone, really.
He was building a throne.
There was a time when his ambitions felt wild, yes, but somehow noble. Making humanity a multi-planetary species? Lofty, sure — but also kind of beautiful. Bold. Like maybe there was still a future out there for us, somewhere beyond all the greed, cruelty, and shortsightedness we’d come to accept as leadership.
But that dream started to sour the longer he talked. The more companies he swallowed, the more tweets he fired off at 2 a.m., the more employees he burned through like matches in a windstorm. That early glimmer of optimism began to feel less like vision and more like distraction — the smoke and mirrors of a man who wanted to save humanity in theory, but not in practice.
He doesn’t see people. That’s the problem. He sees systems. Processes. Units of productivity. He wants to solve civilization like it’s an equation — efficient, elegant, and unburdened by things like empathy or lived experience. But people don’t run on code, and they sure as hell don’t orbit him like planets around the sun.
He talks about expanding the reach of humanity to Mars, but let’s be honest — he treats humanity like a problem to be solved, not a miracle worth protecting. He builds rockets, sure. But he also strips workers of job security, mocks mental health, and actively contributes to the erosion of social trust. He’s not a steward. He’s an emperor cosplaying as an engineer.
And the cracks were visible long before the wrecking ball started swinging.
Remember “pedo guy”? A British diver — an actual expert — calls his PR-submarine stunt impractical during the Thai cave rescue, and Elon responds like a middle-schooler who just got told he’s not special. Not with an argument. Not with data. With an insult. That wasn’t leadership. That was ego having a tantrum.
Or the ventilator flex during COVID — the promise to produce thousands of life-saving machines at scale. Bold headline. Except the “ventilators” were just CPAP machines — not remotely adequate for patients in crisis. But Elon didn’t correct the record. He tweeted the PR, not the correction. Mission accomplished.
These weren’t anomalies. They were warnings, each one whispering the same message: This man isn’t building a future for you. He’s building a monument to himself.
And the irony? He’s become the very thing we used to rage against. The modern-day oil baron — only now the oil is data, the rigs are server farms, and the emissions aren’t carbon, but chaos. He doesn’t just profit from the system — he rewrites the rules mid-game and tells the rest of us to “move fast and break things,” right before he cuts off your mic and charges you for the privilege.
Musk doesn’t want to elevate the species — he wants to escape it. He wants to sit on his Martian throne and look back at Earth like it’s a failed prototype. And if he gets to swing a wrecking ball through what little dignity is left in the process? So be it. Just collateral damage on the way to his next tweet.
And we’re supposed to be grateful.
Part 3: The Wrecking Ball
By the time Elon took the stage with a chainsaw, it wasn’t surprising — just disgusting. Tone-deaf doesn’t even begin to cover it. Here was a man who had spent the better part of a year slashing jobs, torching departments, and gutting entire divisions like they were spreadsheets with typos… now striding onto a stage, grinning ear to ear, waving around a literal instrument of destruction.
He wasn’t just putting on a show — he was reenacting a massacre. The Texas Chainsaw Layoff. And the bodies weren’t metaphors. Career civil servants, engineers, and operations staff were still bleeding on the ground — many of whom would be quietly rehired just days later when the administration realized it had severed its own arteries.
But the crowd cheered anyway.
It wasn’t clever. It wasn’t theatrical genius. It was a billionaire’s idea of humor — performative dominance dressed up as entertainment. No regard for what it symbolized. No awareness — or worse, no care — for what it meant to the people still reeling from his decisions. Engineers, moderators, support teams, janitors. Whole families thrown into economic uncertainty so he could “streamline” something he barely understood.
But sure, rev the chainsaw. Smile for the camera. Pretend it’s all just disruption.
It made for great headlines. Much better than, say, a scalpel — which is what real leaders use when they need to make hard calls. But a scalpel doesn’t make for great stage presence. It doesn’t sell DOGE.
That’s the thing about power when it goes unchecked — it loses all sense of proportion. The jokes stop being funny because they’re not jokes anymore. They’re messages. And that chainsaw? It was a message. Not to us. To himself. That he could do whatever the hell he wanted — and people would still show up, clap, and beg for more.
And the salute…
I don’t care what angle you saw it from. I don’t care how many PR spins tried to explain it away. It wasn’t an accident. It was too sharp, too staged, too intentional. You don’t go from chainsaws to fascist imagery and call it coincidence. Not when you’ve spent months platforming extremists and antagonizing anyone with a conscience.
The real tragedy? People still gave him the benefit of the doubt. They still wanted to believe he was trolling. That he was being “edgy.” That deep down, he was still the same rocket man with a Bowie track on repeat. But this wasn’t “Life on Mars.” This was full-blown detachment. Moral, emotional, human.
Musk didn’t break. He evolved — into something colder, louder, and more dangerous.
This is the part where a normal person might step back, reflect, or apologize. But Elon? He brought a chainsaw to a tech show and called it innovation.
Part 4: The Cult of the Mirror
If the chainsaw was the mask slipping, the applause afterward confirmed it — the man wasn’t a genius anymore. He was a goddamn mascot. A symbol. Not for innovation, but for something uglier. A movement of people who didn’t admire Elon for his intelligence or achievements, but because he made them feel like being cruel wasn’t just acceptable — it was righteous.
You could see it in the way they swarmed. Twitter rebranded, moderation gutted, communities burned to the ground. And what rose in the ashes? Guys with dog avatars screaming about free speech while chasing dissenters out of the room. People who didn’t care what Elon built — only that he gave them permission to be mean, loud, and wrong without consequence.
That’s not fandom. That’s a cult. And every cult needs a prophet… or at least someone who’s convinced the mirror is a window.
Enter Trump.
I don’t think Elon sees it, not really. The way Trump flatters him, nods at him, echoes just enough praise to make it feel earned. Elon drinks it in like it’s holy water, never noticing that it’s all part of the con. Because here’s the thing: Trump isn’t his friend. He’s not his mentor. He’s not his “daddy.” He’s a manipulator. Always has been.
He used Elon — to win, to rally his base, to signal to the terminally online that even the “smartest man on Earth” was onboard. And Elon, desperate to be seen as important, brilliant, chosen, played right into it. Because that’s the tradeoff when you need validation more than clarity — you mistake the hand on your shoulder for support, not a shove into the fire.
And it shows. In everything he posts, in every half-baked stunt, every inflammatory boost of something he should know better than to touch. He’s not trolling. He’s projecting. Looking out at a world that doesn’t love him the way he needs it to — and choosing to burn it down, one platform, one policy, one livelihood at a time.
Then, like something out of a sitcom that forgot when to end, came the tweet.
Not from Elon…from his mother.
“Please be kind. He is brilliant.”
I had to read it twice. Not because I didn’t believe it — but because I did; that’s what made it tragic.
Maye… he’s not a 9-year-old boy being bullied at school. He’s a grown man with unimaginable power who’s chosen — chosen — to act like a tyrant. Who’s surrounded himself with yes-men, silenced critics, tanked companies, and stoked cultural fires just to feel something close to control.
I get that you want to protect your son. I really do. But maybe someone should’ve taught him that kindness isn’t a shield against criticism.
And brilliance?
Brilliance without empathy is just entropy wearing a lab coat.
Part 5: The Age of Anti-Accountability
Somewhere along the way — and I couldn’t tell you the exact moment — Elon Musk stopped being accountable to anyone. Not the public. Not his employees. Not the investors or engineers or taxpayers who helped make him what he is. And sure as hell not the truth.
There was a time when he’d at least pretend to walk something back. Toss out a half-hearted clarification or let a PR flack do cleanup. But now? He screws up loudly, smirks through the fallout, and struts off like he just made the cover of Fast Company.
Rocket explodes? That’s part of the process.
Car crashes? You weren’t paying attention.
Platform implodes? “That’s just the free market, baby.”
No matter what happens, it’s someone else’s fault. The media. The deep state. The interns. The woke mob. Pick a scapegoat. There’s always another one waiting in the wings.
And here’s the worst part: people eat it up.
We’ve reached this weird moment where the more chaotic and unaccountable he becomes, the more people treat it like strategy. Like he’s playing some next-level game we’re all too dumb to understand. “He’s trolling!” they say. “It’s 4D chess!” they insist, while the board’s on fire and half the pieces are unemployed.
He’s not strategizing. He’s improvising. And the rest of us are just collateral damage.
Let’s be clear — this isn’t about hurt feelings or ruffled feathers. Real people lose jobs. Real projects get torched. Real trust goes up in smoke. And Elon? He just shrugs and hits send on his next tweet like none of it matters.
Because for him, it doesn’t.
That’s what happens when no one holds you to the ground anymore. You start floating. You start believing your own mythology. You confuse charisma with competence, clout with character. And soon, you’re not leading — you’re just broadcasting, waiting for the applause that tells you you’re still a god.
I don’t need perfection from anyone — not in life, not in leadership. But I do expect some sense of responsibility. The willingness to look at the damage and say, “Yeah, I did that. Let’s fix it.”
But Elon doesn’t fix.
He distracts.
He memes.
He pivots to the next thing, then blames you for not understanding the joke.
That’s not brilliance, that’s cowardice with a Twitter account, and the more we celebrate it, the more we normalize it — until leadership itself starts to look like a punchline.
Part 6: The Legacy We’re Inheriting
The real danger with Elon Musk isn’t just what he does. It’s what he teaches. What gets baked into the culture around him — not by decree, but by example.
Because when you treat a man like a genius long enough, he starts believing genius excuses anything. And worse, everyone else starts believing it too.
Once upon a time, Elon was aspirational. A brilliant outsider playing by his own rules and winning anyway. He made “impossible” look doable. And yeah, he was weird, but it was our kind of weird — the kind that said maybe there’s still a place in the world for people who think different and actually get shit done.
But somewhere along the way, the story changed.
The brilliance didn’t disappear, but it stopped being the point. Now it’s about the attitude. The immunity. The spectacle. It’s no longer about building cool stuff — it’s about getting away with things. About being the loudest guy in the room and never having to explain yourself.
He doesn’t just launch rockets. He launches narratives. And the most dangerous one is this:
You don’t need to be kind. Or ethical. Or even particularly sane. You just need money, reach, and enough people willing to clap while you burn the place down.
It’s Nero with a flame emoji — a violin traded for a meme generator.
And that story? It’s spreading. Fast.
You can see it in tech startups, in college dorms, in every smug Reddit thread where “truth” is just whatever gets the most upvotes. You can see it in the CEOs who fire half their staff and call it innovation. You can see it in the influencers who weaponize trolling and then hide behind “free speech.”
They’re not just copying the model. They’re copying the mindset. The one that says empathy is weakness, humility is for suckers, and success means never having to say you’re sorry.
That’s the real legacy Elon’s building — not through his companies, but through his conduct. Not just in boardrooms, but in the culture.
And here’s the part that keeps me up at night:
I’ve worked with brilliant people. Hell, I’ve been lucky to work with them. Some were wildly talented and wildly humble. Some were so arrogant it left burn marks on the furniture. But in the end, what mattered wasn’t how smart they were — it was how they treated people.
That’s what should be remembered.
But if Elon’s the new standard — if we let him be — we’re not just lowering the bar…we’re burying it.
Part 7: The Reckoning
I didn’t want to write this.
Not because I was afraid of the backlash — I’ve lived long enough to know that comes with the territory — but because there was a part of me that really, genuinely, wanted to believe in Elon Musk. Not the meme-lord. Not the Twitter tyrant. The other guy. The one who dreamed big, took insane risks, and seemed hell-bent on dragging the future into the present. A brilliant outsider who gave a damn about more than himself.
But that guy’s long gone.
Maybe he never existed. Maybe he was a projection, or a phase, or just a better mask. Or maybe the fame and the money and the unchecked power didn’t corrupt him — maybe they just revealed him. The ego. The neediness. The cold, transactional way he treats people. All of it was there, hidden behind rockets and press conferences and Reddit worship.
And yeah, I missed the signs. We all did. We saw him through the lens of what he could be, not who he was. We excused the red flags because the work was important — and because we needed someone to believe in. Someone to look at and say, “See? It’s possible.”
But I’ve stopped trying to make sense of it.
Maybe he never was the guy I thought he was.
Maybe the warning signs were there all along.
Either way, I’m done calling him a hero.
At least his mom still thinks he’s cool.
END
P.S. Hey Elon — Since you’re giving out million-dollar checks to strangers now, prove to me you’re not a total dick and send one my way.
I’ve worked my ass off for decades. Built real things. Paid my taxes. Raised a family. I earned a respectable living, but this government you helped buy into power? It’s turned retirement into a punchline. I’ll be working in fucking Depends while some poor nurse wipes applesauce off my chin — all thanks to you and the clowns you helped elect.
So yeah… go ahead. Be brilliant. Be benevolent. Cut me a check. I promise I’ll be your friend.