from Hacker News

Elon Musk: Why all the hate?

by shaunrussell on 5/12/15, 3:21 PM with 2 comments

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/elon-musk-clear-things/story?id=30978448

The comment threads on articles like this are unbelievable. Every time I read a news article about anything "green" related (electric cars, thorium power, solar energy, progressive policies, etc) I see that the comments are dominated by hate, fear, and ignorance.

Is this real? or are they paid trolls? Is this a channel for opposing interests trying to (attempt to) sway public opinion?

Has anyone conducted a study on this?

  • by Red_Tarsius on 5/12/15, 4:42 PM

    The Internet mob has only one rule: "Guilty until proven innocent".

    I suspect that the turmoil has been caused by the upcoming book http://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/0... and its dubious marketing strategy: http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-email-tesla-employee...

    As you can see from a recent thread, It's easy to fall into the clichè of drama and hubris https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526362 Some users even imply he may be a sociopath.

    We are not quite able to cope with the success of other people. We MUST find some kind of weakness, or tradeoff: this is why media love troubled geniuses. "Sure, Einstein was a great physicist, but did you know that [insert meaningless gossip]". It gives us the illusion of being morally superior, because of the false dichotomy between love/affection/community and money/mastery/fame.

  • by higherpurpose on 5/12/15, 3:38 PM

    I wonder if most of those people are also iPhone users - because guess what, their idol Steve Jobs was treating people like that on a daily basis, in order to have them make the iPhones these people have today.

    Musk, like all hard-core leaders demand extreme performance out of an employee, because it's the only way to have extremely high quality products and without delays. Whether it's because your wife is having a baby, or you forgot to put the alarm in the morning or got stuck in traffic, those are ultimately just "excuses" to him.