Elon Musk named Time Magazine's Man of the Year

It's been an ugly, feckless, bloated year. It fits.

Fuck him!

Fuck Time Magazine

I love the cover photo, and how it employed dramatic lighting to accentuate the angles of his actual whey-pudding-like face.

LOL, I don't get the outrage. Musk is awful, but like it or not, he is influential.

I'm curious: why do y'all think he's awful?

You people were praising Time when they named Joe & Kamala, but now that they named Elon, you're calling them out.

[quote] You people were praising Time

"You people"

R8 Anything wrong?

Countless $tep$ forward for Time, countless steps backwards for Earthkind.

He's hideous looking, and he's clearly mentally ill. It's only a matter of time before he has a psychotic break.

I didn't realize he came back from space. That sucks.

I hate his hairline.

Very Madonna

I’m not attracted to him but I am attracted to the billionaire part

I don't know how influential he really is. He trolls about Bitcoin on Twitter.

Maybe a few years ago when Tesla was new, but otherwise, who is he inspiring? Bezos to go into space, too?

I think it was on a podcast where I heard a discussion about who from today would be remembered in 500 years. Anyway, the only person not a political leader agreed upon was Elon Musk.

I’m confused, has he even gotten his fat ass into space yet?

Horrible choice. It should have been the vaccine scientists.

[quote]I don't know how influential he really is. He trolls about Bitcoin on Twitter.

Between Tesla and SpaceX he employs over 80,000 people, making many of them very wealthy in the process.

He's pretty much single handedly revolutionized two long-established industries dominated by oligopolies, and threatening the long-term viability of a third (oil)

Does that help enlighten you R16?

Why?

Is it a Scratch'n'Sniff cover?

Ugh

Why?

Am I out of the loop? Do people really buy Tesla cars? He sounds like a borderline Trumpian asshole everytime he opens his mouth, what am I missing?

[quote] Horrible choice. It should have been the vaccine scientists.

Yeah I see them around. My father has a Tesla though he admits it can be inconvenient regarding charging stations.

This is devastating news. Has anyone asked if I'm okay?

He sho is ugly.

If you’ll recall, Trump was the Person of the Year a few years ago. As was Hitler back in the 30s.

He's all of the above AND a genius.

I wrote a goddamn book!

Could have been worse. Could have been Elliot Page.

At the very least, he is the most fuckable among the top 5 richest men in the world.

[quote]I don't know how influential he really is. He trolls about Bitcoin on Twitter

Privatizing space travel, his solar projects and putting electric cars really on the “map”, and when he trolls Bitcoin, the market often “listens”.

R5 is correct.

[quote]Musk is awful, but like it or not, he is influential

WHO IN THE HELL IS THAT?

Does he show peen?

He’s a nut but he’s done some cool stuff. And he was funny on SNL. If I had to choose 1 billionaire not to kill, I’d choose him.

You have to laugh at how people actually take this seriously, as if Time magazine just elected him POTUS or something. It’s just a stupid magazine. Who the fuck cares? Americans are weird.

With one hand Elon send spaceships into orbit that come back and land standing up like the 1950s promised us they would; and with the 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 hand he builds a coal powered car that you can drive many miles away from the coal power plant.

What's not to love?

This is how the TIME profile introduces him. Note the emphasis on money, power and ego. They're not celebrating him for his ideas but for his capitalistic ruthlessness. That's obviously what an institution like TIME or any major commercial periodical publisher values most, but it's disingenuous to pretend what they value is his vision. This first paragraph says everything about why they chose him.

[quote] Despite shattering records this year with a net worth above $300 billion, Elon Musk demurs at being described as the richest person in the history of the world. “Excluding sovereigns,” Musk says wryly, adding that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is likely richer than he. “I can’t invade countries and stuff.”

The second Aspie, after Thunberg the Tedious Cunt to receive Time's award cover. Is this a trend?

[quote] but it's disingenuous to pretend what they value is his vision.

"Vision" is not a necessary criteria to make this cover

Who cares? Fewer people than ever, it seems.

[quote] As of 2012, Time had a circulation of 3.3 million, making it the 11th-most-circulated magazine in the United States and the second-most-circulated weekly behind People. In July 2017, its circulation was 3,028,013; this was cut down to 2 million by late 2017. The print edition has a readership of 1.6 million, 1 million of whom are based in the United States.

[quote] In November 2017, Meredith Corporation announced its acquisition of Time, Inc., backed by Koch Equity Development.

[quote] In September 2018, Meredith Corporation announced that it would re-sell Time to Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne for $190 million, a transaction completed on October 31. Although Benioff is the chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce.com, Time was to remain separate from that company and Benioff would not be involved in the magazine's daily operations. The sale was completed on October 31, 2018. Time USA LLC, the parent company of the magazine, is owned by Marc Benioff.

[quote] Marc Russell Benioff (born September 25, 1964) is an American internet entrepreneur, with a net worth of $10.4 billion as of October 2021. He is the founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, an enterprise cloud computing company. As of June 2021, Benioff had an estimated net worth of US$9.53 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the 266th wealthiest person in the world.

Of course he's going to idolize billionaires on his covers.

He reminds me of howard hughes who is also crazy.

[quote]He's pretty much single handedly revolutionized two long-established industries dominated by oligopolies, and threatening the long-term viability of a third (oil)

What I'm saying r20 is that there are a lot of people who are doing the same thing he is doing, they're just in companies rather than working as individuals, and it's only because he's one of a very very few individuals with that much money that he's even competing with corporations in the first place. He's not impressive simply because he's rich.

The only way he could be considered influential or revolutionary is if you think a crazed billionaire who does things like interfere in rescue operations he has no business being involved in is somehow more ethical and moral than the corporations he's supposedly undermined. I've seen no proof that he is.

[quote]when he trolls Bitcoin, the market often “listens”.

Trump did the same, r34. He was also influential in that way, affecting markets by trolling or having a hissy fit on Twitter.

I'm asking people to explain why Musk doing it is somehow laudatory, and why it makes him morally superior. All I'm getting is that he can influence people on Twitter by trolling or in the real world by spending some of his billions. Sure, but so what?

Never forget Elon Musk’s first wife’s (pre hair plugs) article about being a millionaire starter wife. S c a t h i n g.

[quote]As we danced at our wedding reception, Elon told me, "I am the alpha in this relationship."

Oh wow

Well, if it's in Time magazine it must be true!

R48 She should have whispered into his ear, "only until I kill you in your sleep."

R47 Lesbian! I can't not see it. Not that it matters. Elon certainly seems like the biggest game playing douche tool on Earth, of course he had some bizarre power marriage. His marriage with Grimes was likely the same thing.

I'll translate:

[quote] Elon wasn't like that. A fellow student a year ahead of me, he was a clean-cut, upper-class boy with a South African accent who appeared in front of me one afternoon as I was leaping up the steps to my dorm. He said we'd met at a party I knew I hadn't been to. (Years later, he would confess that he had noticed me from across the common room and decided he wanted to meet me.) He invited me out for ice cream. I said yes, but then blew him off with a note on my dorm-room door. Several hours later, my head bent over my Spanish text in an overheated room in the student center, I heard a polite cough behind me. Elon was smiling awkwardly, two chocolate-chip ice cream cones dripping down his hands. He's not a man who takes no for an answer.

He was a college boy with earning potential, not an exciting fuckboy. Someone to keep my eye on for the long term, for my post-college days when I knew I'd need help paying the rent.

He was a bit of a stalker, which made him interesting and compensated for a lack of personality. Girls secretly love a stalker until it gets violent.

[quote] He was a scientific type, at home with numbers, commerce, and logic. I was not the only woman he pursued, but even after he transferred to Wharton he kept sending roses. When he'd return to Queen's to visit friends, I found myself agreeing to have dinner with him. Once, in the bookstore together, I pointed to a shelf and said, "One day I want my own books to go right there." I had said this before to a girlfriend, who laughed and spun on her heel. But Elon not only took me seriously, he seemed impressed. It was the first time that a boy found my sense of ambition — instead of my long hair or narrow waist — attractive. Previous boyfriends complained that I was "competitive," but Elon said I had "a fire in my soul." When he told me, "I see myself in you," I knew what he meant.

Eventually, I realized that this dork could make a shitload of money and subsidize my writing career. Also, I was beginning to tire of the physical upkeep and he seemed like the type of schlump I might be able to get fat with and live out the American Dream. Unfortunately, I didn't realize how rich he would get, and of course that would mean that he would buy a young trophy wife and ditch the chunky wannabe author. Mea culpa.

[quote] After graduation, he'd moved to Silicon Valley. He was sharing an apartment in Mountain View with three roommates and building his first dot-com company, Zip2. I soon flew out for the first of many visits. One night, over dinner, he asked me how many kids I wanted to have. "One or two," I said immediately, "although if I could afford nannies, I'd like to have four."

Silicon Valley. I smelled money. I put him to the test.

[quote] He laughed. "That's the difference between you and me," he said. "I just assume that there will be nannies." He made a rocking motion with his arms and said, happily, "Baby." Then he took me to a bookstore and handed me his credit card. "Buy as many books as you want," he said. No man could have said anything sweeter.

Dude got fucked SO hard that night. I told him he could do anything to me. So he did everything. I wiped it off, and then we had five disgusting little boys.

Then he dumped me for a trophy wife. I should have seen it coming, being a wannabe writer, but as it turns out, I am a stupid golddigger.

Did you know that Elon Musk is the wealthiest African-American?