A24 bought the film rights to Musk's biopic and signed Darren Aronofsky to direct the film. Given the type of movies A24 is known for, one can only hope Aronofsky will turn it into a horror movie. At the very least, pull no punches like he did in The Wrestler.
I've covered Musk way too much in my posts. It was refreshing to see John Oliver take a turn at him this past weekend, but he did seem to pull a few punches. Maybe HBO was worried Musk might go "nuclear" on them, so John was asked to do a "net positive" piece on the tech billionaire. But, John did point out some glaring red flags like Musk now controlling 50% of the telecommunications satellites orbiting the earth. If anyone saw Moonraker that is not a good thing. What I'm more worried about is how this man has come to insinuate himself into our lives to the point he is probably the most talked about person in the multimedia universe next to Trump.
According to John, much of the problem stems from the pandemic and its lockdowns. Musk was fit to be tied when California ordered him to suspend operations at his gigafactory in the Bay area for the duration of the lockdown. As has long been the case with Elon, he was behind in production and couldn't afford to lose any time to meet the insatiable demand for his Teslas. These were the hottest cars on the market. A frustrated Elon turned to Twitter to vent his rage and a new star was born among the anti-government movement that saw these lockdowns as some kind of woke conspiracy.
He's been a big hit in the alt-right ever since. After buying Twitter in 2022 the amount of white nationationalist or "white identity" posts shot up, with guys like Nick Fuentes lauding Musk for lifting his ban. Elon further encouraged this inflammatory rhetoric by often liking and responding to these posts, which were viewed as antisemitic and racist. Media Matters did an in-depth study into all the hate speech on Twitter that resulted in many companies pulling their ads from X, as he now calls it, leading him to snipe at Disney much in the same vein as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for having gone woke.
This frustrated a lot of Tesla owners, notably AOC who wants to trade her Model 3 as she no longer identifies with Musk. Others are frustrated with the rebates he is offering as apparently he exceeded demand in his international gigafactories and has a lot of extra Teslas. This has resulted in a substantial drop in resale value so that AOC is not going to get a comparable EV in exchange.
Still, there are alot of people on the Left who see what Elon is doing as a "net positive," with the good outweighing the bad. A liberal friend of mine on facebook continues to think he is the Da Vinci of our times. However, he had to pause when he saw Elon giving Gov. Abbott the "hook 'em Horns" sign after opening his gigafactory in Austin, having fled oppressive California.
The Texas gambler lost a shitload of money in 2022 with all his bold moves but has since recouped it in 2023 to once again be the richest man in the world. With it comes an extraordinary amount of influence. He is a regular at Davos, catered to by world leaders and even the US Defense Dept. is cautious to say anything negative about Musk as it has come to rely on his Starlink system for much of its communication. This is truly a scary thing as we saw last Fall when Musk decided to block Ukraine's link to his satellite system when it pushed its offensive toward Crimea. Even still the Pentagon awarded Starlink another contract in Ukraine.
Elon now makes Trump truly look like a clown as he has far greater access to not just the US government but governments all around the world, including Russia and China. One of the probable reasons the US Defense Dept. is afraid to say anything negative about Elon is that he could just as easily take his operations to Russia or China as he did to Texas when he became disenchanted with California.
This is a problem that has long been in the making. Successive conservative administrations have undermined anti-monopoly laws so that a handful of robber barons essentially control the entire country's communication, and in the process greatly influence the way we think.
All that AI research wasn't for nothing. Guys like Musk use these algorithms to tap into our subconscious and essentially bend our thoughts in the direction they want us to turn. The pandemic was perfect for them. As there was a lot of frustration with government as a result of the lockdowns and vaccine requirements. This was viewed as "Big Brother" controlling our lives with Musk presenting himself as our Libertarian savior.
Now it is about "free speech." He sees X as a universal space where anyone can vent regardless of the fallout. He doubled down after the advertising exodus, and chose to reinstate Alex Jones, who has since launched a new show on the social media network that immediately gained 800,000 followers. I suppose on the bright side Alex might be able to cover some of that $1.1 billion in damages owed to the families who lost their children in the Sandy Hook shooting, which he long insisted was a government false flag designed to take guns away from Americans. Mostly I get the sense Elon is stirring chaos and discord ahead of the elections hoping to get an iconoclast like himself in the White House, even if he has said he no longer supports Trump.
Musk is not alone in this mission. Virtually all the tech billionaires are anti-government hoping to find someone that will greatly reduce its authority so that they are free to go about their business unfettered. Jack Dorsey, who formerly owned twitter, supports RFK Jr. Larry Ellison was funding Tim Scott before he dropped out of the GOP primaries. Musk seems to have given his support to Ron DeSantis by having him launch his bid earlier this year on Twitter before the name change. None of them stand behind Trump but I suppose that will change when he is the last man standing in opposition to the "woke" administration of Biden.
They all seem to fear that more regulations will come in due time as we learn more about the covert nature of their operations. The massive push toward AI has everyone concerned and rightly so. Even some conservative stalwarts have expressed their worries. Those who aren't using AI to generate ads in the 2024 election anyway. You can bend virtually anything toward your message with these mendacious tools, even turn Grok into a woke messenger if you know how to taunt Musk's AI monster with misleading questions. It seems that Elon still has some tweaking to do.
I really hope that Aronofsky has fun with this movie and isn't bound by any contractual agreement to play nice, like Walter Isaacson was when he wrote the book.
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