How did Elon Musk succeed

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his father invested in an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa

By watching him talk and interact with journalists in tv interviews I get the impression Elon Musk most likely is autistic. Besides that, why would he lie about it? It's not exactly a badge of honour.

Having a rich daddy helped.

Does this count?

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/mu ... r-syndrome

https://www.totalcareaba.com/autism/doe ... ave-autism

I didn’t get a diagnosis for Autism until after 50. Does that mean I wasn’t Autistic until then?

Autistics vary a lot. One can struggle to make it to the local shop, book a hotel room, get insurance and so on but another can happily run a massive corporation, control others around them or even be thoroughly nasty criminals.

Interesting point actually. He's gone nuts with Twitter and has become a personality of his own because of it. He's hardly like Jeff Bezos who has no personality or interesting quirks other than how shiny his head is.

Related?

"The road ahead gets bumpier for Tesla as DOJ deepens scrutiny"

I genuinely do not care how true it is whether he is autistic or not, but let's say he is correct about it, I did read about an interview where he briefly talked about his problems with social life which he attributed to autism, and many have observed him having difficulty with eye contact in interviews.

Most notably though, Elon Musk is obsessed with certain words and patterns, especially with the letter X. He initially wanted to call PayPal "X.com", he calls his own tech company SpaceX and the only reason he named Tesla into Tesla was because of his obsession with Nicolas Tesla and science fiction, which also inspired him to startup SpaceX. He obviously rebranded Twitter into X, another example of his obsession with the letter X. It is therefore not too far off to say that Elon Musk could have science fiction and the letter X as some of his special interests, since being obsessive about these things are traits more associated with autism. A lot of his decisions in this area do not seem to be beneficial to him in business because of the inability for these decisions to conform to normative and expected social standards e.g. rebranding Twitter into X, which could also point to autism since autistic people when being just themselves, may do unconventional things that would not be received well by the general public but feels good to the autist.

A weaker argument to the point is that his daughter his transgender, and while it is not well understood yet, gender nonconformity and transgender experiences have a very high comorbidity with autism and since autism runs in families, there's nothing that says transgender experiences could also run in these families. Also, let's be real, but the way he named his children in his second and third relationship are ludicrous and while it's not unheard of that very rich people name their children the most eccentric things, I do think Elon Musk scores quite highly on that list. Especially since most of the names seem to be related to some of Musk's personal interest in say, science fiction and comics.

With that said, who cares if he's autistic or not? Not like it's going to change the way he's just an as*hole.

I think Elon Musk might be a self-diagnoser. I think his real problems are narcissism and white supremacy. He was raised on an apartheid fortune by a disgusting father who spoiled his entitled little ass. (Oh, and BTW, Elon Musk's father fathered a child with his own stepdaughter.) When he bought Twitter, he banned people for criticizing him and restored the accounts of bigots like Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Katie Hopkins, Tommy Robinson, and Kanye West. (I also heard he's considering letting Alex Jones back on too.) He promotes racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories. He's not one of us, he's a privileged douchebag.

This is such a common canard, when someone is famous, reprehensible and autistic some portion of people try to gatekeep that person from counting as autistic because they don't like the idea of someone being autistic and sh***y.

I agree with you that white supremacy and narcissism are among his problems, but unless you've got something to support your claim that he's self-diagnosed (as though that would rule out the idea of him being actually autistic), it should be treated as baseless.

I thought self diagnosis was OK on Wrong Planet.

And, I hope the assertion that "He's not one of us" is saying that...even if he is Autistic...he would not fit in here. (Agreed!)

Seconded.

I'm not saying that sh***y people don't belong in the autistic community, but self-diagnosis is a very slippery slope. It's like those people who claim to be Native American without a shred of evidence and then abuse their claims for profit (just look at Sacheen Littlefeather and Iron Eyes Cody).

Amazing how many people say “I don’t like Elon therefore nobody likes Elon”

And really seem to believe it.

Reality check:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/130 ... elon-musk/

Is he a success? Well he is one of the richest men in the world (some days the richest) so it is not unreasonable to say he is by some measures successful. ( I wouldn’t have named my children those names. )

Is he liked? Yes by some, No by others.

Is he autistic? he seems to say so.

Can someone be both autistic and successful. Um - yes.

Elon Musk is becoming popular among the far-right because he's allowing them to post hateful comments on Twitter without worry of repercussion. So there are people who like him.

Not that you could have known, but this is a poor example to use with me.

I'm a band member. I'm also very much white-passing. I find people like those, or Buffy Sainte-Marie problematic, but I also have had to deal with being accused of not being Abenaki or not being Abenaki enough because of phenotype (exclusively by people who are not Abenaki, I should add).

But additionally (back to autism), I was self-diagnosed for years. Pursuing formal diagnosis represented an overwhelming financial burden that was only possible because I lived with my parents. I was eventually formally diagnosed, but not everyone is in a position to pursue that and I don't think it's good to treat self-diagnosis as faking when the vast majority of those people would be diagnosed if adequate resources existed and were made available.

You know who's likely to make autism enough of a special interest in order to be able to convincingly fake autism, as well as have the symptoms resonate so much with them that it becomes their new special interest? An undiagnosed autist.