Just to pointlessly clarify, this is article is a paraphrasing of tweets by a journalist who calls himself a Musk biographer. The quoted journalist is not, as the possessive apostrophe in the headline implies, a biographer hired by Musk.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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I didn't realize it was the guy behind the Proof series, but I like his work. His book on Elon is apparently upcoming.
Some zippy quotes from that article include:
Musk “was sued for stealing the idea for Zip2—which fired him as soon as investors got involved” and “was going to run PayPal into the ground after his company merged with it—again he was fired.” He then “invested in Tesla when it was distressed and quickly began running it into the ground.”
Musk founded Zip2, described as “a sort of digital Yellowpages” by Belmont Hill School’s The Panel Online, with his brother. The outlet reported that in an attempt to impress investors in the company, Musk “created a large, fake casing around the Zip2 computer to make it seem like an extremely advanced supercomputer” — a move that worked, but investors who put $3 million into the company did so only after Musk agreed to step down so “someone more experienced to take his place.”
The code used by the program, which Musk taught himself, “was soon exposed to be so scrambled that a majority of the program had to be rewritten by more advanced programmers.”
Musk ultimately returned to the company as CEO and benefitted financially when it was sold to COMPAQ in 1999. He used the $22 million his 7% share brought in to an “internet bank” at X.com — the same company he merged with the founders of Paypal. He was named CEO after the merger in April 2000 but was removed from the position six months later.
SpaceX, Abramson continued, is Musk’s only “truly successful and novel company” and a chunk of its success was owed to President Obama, who Musk “successfully lobbied” after “Russians had laughed Musk out of Moscow.”
What a trajectory, failing upwards at each step.
Good thing he's a white man! Or that plan would have never worked.
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biographers are not always and more clearly rarely "hired" by their subjects.
So he a Musk biographer, not Musk's biographer.
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Sorry Seth.
Pretty sure no actually cares about him anymore. He is just like Trump, a vessel to 'win'.
It's not the most important reason by a long shot, but it's yet another reason why extreme wealth hoarding, aka billionaires and centimillionaires, should have been taxed out of existence and legislated from existing going forward:
Even they aren't happy, even sitting in the complete victory of their coup. They could have a dozen space station mansions each and they still wouldn't be satiated or satisfied. They can't be satisfied. That is their defining character deficit. Literally everybody loses so long as the avarice diseased capitalists remain in charge, even them. The intensity of their cringeworthy attempts at social media flexes betrays their intent and blasts us all with their screaming insecurities day in and day out.
They're mentally ill with an obsession/compulsion related disorder that they've manipulated civilization into enabling at literally every possible expense, including mass human murder and seriously risking human extinction for short term private profit.
They should be in mental health facilities receiving inpatient treatment for their extremely destructive antisocial behaviors for both their and everyone else's safety and wellbeing, too bad at least in the US they defunded mental healthcare into utter ruin (and education, and common infrastructure, etc) to cut their own taxes through their captured government.
The inmates are truly running ~~the asylum~~ our society.
I've read a load of academic articles on psychopaths recently. Narcissism is linked to all sorts of terrible behaviours, and cos they don't accept they're wrong, they don't tend to change their behaviour even when they're hurting themselves
I’m sure there are some that are happy but you never hear about them. A secure, well-adjusted individual with boat-loads of money doesn’t need to stir shit up. They can relax.
The insecure, maladjusted individuals will constantly be defending themselves against perceived threats despite having the means to offload all of that to paid professionals.
The best evidence of this is the creator of Tumblr. He sold it and got a payout of like a hundred million dollars or something and completely disappeared from public life. He only ever appears in the news when he makes some big donation to a charity.
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Good. I hope he spirals out quickly and with minimal damage to anyone but himself.
I hope it all progresses faster
Thats why power and management of a country should be spread thin, to avoid that corruption from a single point to affect the life of many
Nailed it! Just like in nature and agriculture, monocultures are vulnerable. One disease can wipe out an entire population. Same principal can be applied to almost anything.
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Good. I hope it puts him in a grave
Something that gets me giddy is the knowledge that I'll be able to live through the deaths of Trump and Musk - they're two insane, incredibly unhealthy wackos that will either kill themselves with addiction or be killed by a hero with a gun.
Either way, I'm going out and celebrating when they kick the bucket 🎉🎉🎉
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Do em like the soundcloud rappers.. whoops how that get in his ket
That guy's mental health reached rock bottom years ago. He has been digging ever since.
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So exactly like Hitler was. Great. This isn't alarming at all.