On any given day in the life of Elon Musk, he sits in the box at the Qatar final with Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law;
he takes a selfie with Nailya Asker-Zade, a Kremlin propagandist, and uploads several videos of the goals.
Twitter, the social network he bought, prohibits mentioning its rivals Facebook, Instagram or Mastodon, but the US and European authorities warn him.
The next morning he renounces this measure (as he had canceled critical journalists a few days before) and the survey that he himself opened for the tweeters to tell him if he should continue is closed.
They tell him no, that he resign.
Tesla's stock is down so low that he is no longer the richest man in the world.
Ok, it wasn't just any day but two.
Today Elon Musk is meme meat, the object of ridicule or anger for many of the users of the networks.
Others still idolize him.
Not so long ago he was the model entrepreneur, the guy who was going to fill the world with electric cars and space with rockets.
It was like that in 2018, when the documentary
Elon Musk was made.
The Real-Life Iron Man
(on Netflix), which from the title compares him to a superhero.
It is directed by Sonia Anderson, author of other biographical documentaries (about David Bowie or Diana Spencer), who in this case is too dazzled by the tycoon's brilliance.
Presented as a genius since childhood, he recounts a harsh childhood in his native South Africa, in which he suffered bullying and his parents' contentious divorce.
It is not mentioned, that must have influenced something in his career, that those parents were already millionaires.
It is defended here that Elon made himself, that he studied asking for scholarships and doing part-time jobs like so many others.
It is insisted that anyone would have retired to an island paradise with the money he got from his first hits, that is true, but he tends to reinvest his money and his time in new projects.
Collaborators parade who praise their talent and their successes at the helm of PayPal, Tesla or SpaceX.
Managers, engineers, astronauts, journalists and management experts speak.
But we don't hear any voice, not already critical, but rather distant.
The most enthusiastic is Julie Anderson, who was his vice president at PayPal and accompanied him at SpaceX: he assures that everyone in his companies works 12 or 14 days a day, and the boss a few more, but they don't care, they even find it exciting, because they are convinced that they are “changing the world”.
Even the most daring statements of the businessman are cheered: that he is going to set up a base on Mars, that he is going to implant a chip in our brains so that we can compete with artificial intelligence (before they dominate us) or that perhaps we all live in a virtual reality,
like in a video game of much more advanced beings.
It is also said, and this is true, that Musk's personal brand has boosted his companies, because he is a magnet for investors.
Of course, this was filmed before the reputational crisis that hit him.
In 2018, Musk was already a friend of getting into trouble, such as when he announced on Twitter that he was delisting Tesla (he didn't) or when he smoked a joint of marijuana (it was already legal) while participating in the
podcast
by Joe Rogan, who later in the pandemic would be a spreader of conspiracy theories (which sparked the boycott of Spotify by artists like Neil Young).
The most recent episodes, and the most devastating for his prestige, have taken place in his erratic and capricious management of Twitter, the platform that centers the global political and media conversation.
That if he fired the majority of the staff, that if he reinstated Trump, that if he amnestied all the suspended accounts, that if he charged for verification, that if he gave the blue seal without verifying anything, that if he suspended the accounts of journalists, What if he returns them?
That there will be a new occurrence every day.
To the point that Tesla shareholders are looking forward to Musk leaving Twitter management, as he has promised, not just for him to refocus,
Elon Musk, it is stated in this documentary, is a visionary of those who only comes out one every hundred years.
So don't expect any more, or better, until the 22nd century.
Little happens to us.
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