While he’s definitely not the genius he makes himself out to be, he would be still in the tech space, qualified in IT or at the very least basic programming. Try to make a quick buck with some crypto stuff and be that guy you hear about with all the ideas but none of the skills to do anything about it.
And depending on his luck of who he can fool he has a chance to make it and be rich still. Its just not as rich as he is now with a head start on life.
Look at the way he behaves.
People who behave like he behaves without money don’t go anywhere in life because no one wants them to be around. He’d be working at a packing plant somewhere. Or a fast food counter. I say that because the guy isn’t actually intelligent. He isn’t some engineer that designs cars or rockets. He just bought the companies with the people who actually do that. And it doesn’t take a genius to have a lot of money and invest it in safe bets. Look at Donald Trump. Guy is a moron but it’s pretty easy to take daddy’s money and buy/sell real estate. Musk would still look like the Gollum he looked like before he got REALLY rich and paid to make himself look different. He’d be alone, poor, and sad. I mean, he’s clearly sad now because no one who’s happy behaves the way he behaves. He’s lonely because the only people who interact with him are people that want something out of him. He ain’t poor though, so he’s got that going for him.
Of course, if he wasn’t born wealthy he wouldn’t be who he is, so this is all assuming that his personality is the same without the lifelong money, which it wouldn’t be. In a way, the born rich thing was kind of a curse for him because he never got to become a real boy or a real man.
Of course, if he wasn’t born wealthy he wouldn’t be who he is,
Musk wasn’t always as completely off his hinges as he is right now, and I feel like at least half of the reason he got as bad as he did, is because he is constantly, 24/7/365, surrounded by yes men who do nothing but say how great and smart he is (and he has the money and power to ensure this always remains the case)
Like he was always a bigot and kind of a dumbshit, but he didn’t become unhinged until a few years back.
Which is why I think a hypothetical middle-or-lower-class Elon Musk would be just.
… A mediocre internet user. Holds some bigoted opinions. Gets into fights on webforums and social media. Has a low-level job in tech doing something no one cares about for a company everyone hates.
The seed money he got from his father for his first business - split between him and his brother Kimbal, whom his father liked much better than him - was $28,000. After Elon and Kimbal had already raised some funds from other investors, too. Everyone seems to think Musk was born in a vast emerald-encrusted mansion. His family were by no means poor but he’s not “old money.”
Hate Elon Musk for real reasons, not made up ones.
Prove it
This article on the company describes his funding sources, with citations for each claim.
Can you prove the contrary, that he was “born into wealth?”
I don’t feel the need to prove musk was born into wealth. Just look up his family and his education. The advantages of being able to take risk with other people’s money is insurmountable. Of the millions in America only fractions get access to the education musk had, connections he made, and contacts he most likely inherented. $28,000 doesn’t sound like much compared to the billions he now hoards but that is a pipe dream for most Americans and the ability to bet that on a business without fear of losing it all is the definition of privilege. Say Zip2 failed, do you honestly think he would never recover and go on to make another bet elsewhere? That’s privilage.
I agree that people tend to overstate his income due to misunderstanding his relationship with his father. And the story about him keeping emeralds in his pockets is murky at best.
But his wealth compared to the average income of any black person in South Africa in 1971, still makes him vastly better off than any ‘colored’ child born in the same country, making him institutionally old money by grace of being born white.
In his mom’s basement, in cum-stained sweatpants, sitting hunched over in front of a cheap oversized monitor hooked up to an underpowered desktop PC with lots of LED, trolling on /b/ and /pol/ and jerking off to pokeporn.
“Mooom, get me my CHEESY POOFS!”
So, no difference then?
As a matter of fact, yes.
I didn’t make all that up on the spot. I already had the visual image in mind because that really is how I visualize him.
And I didn’t even try to do it. When he first bought Twitter and started trolling professionally, I just found myself visualizing him doing it, and before I knew it, I had this crystal clear image of him sitting in front of a desktop PC on a rickety particle board desk in a dank basement room with white paint over concrete and green shag carpeting, lit only by the glow from a cheap monitor, wearing gross stained sweats and a hoodie, hunched over a grimey keyboard and occasionally giggling to himself.
I keep trying to visualize the more likely reality for a billionaire of some sort of extremely custom multi-monitor setup in the center of a purpose-built room, but it just won’t stick.
That’s some vivid and disturbing imagery! :-)
Of a vividly disturbing person.
Indeed 👍
This is the correct answer.
Statistically?
Here. Not this very thread, but the fediverse in general.
He’s very autistic, but if he weren’t a billionaire the material conditions that made him a fascist wouldn’t be there. (Although being from South Africa, he’d probably still be a massive Racist)
This means there’s a 93.4% chance he’d be a smarmy Linux guy. Nowhere near as intelligent as he thinks he is and honestly pretty obnoxious, but harmless.
He doesn’t seem like a furry trans girl though.
Eh. There’s plenty of cis bigoted dudes in the Furry fandom (and Musk would absolutely be a furry if he’d been given unlimited internet access without also being a public figure).
And on the fediverse for that matter, you just don’t run into them as often here because most major instances ban (at least the more egregious) bigoted talk, and are also defederated from all the far-right instances.
Isn’t he a furry already? Didn’t he share a ratboy meme or something?
web dev, still unsure of the difference between var and let
He’s practically got ‘clueless middle-manager’ stamped on his forehead. He has he confidence to fake it through an interview and the animal cunning to blame others for his mistakes.
I wouldn’t hire him.
/r9k/
Drug Overdose
Laying in a gutter in Johannesburg with a needle in his arm
One of those restaurateur dolts who think they are god’s gift to cuisine on Kitchen Nightmares.
Ha! I don’t get the connection, but I’m watching KN reruns as I type this.
He’s an idiot who thinks he’s the pinnacle of knowledge.
Sounds like every bible thumper and MAGAt.
A medium ranked officer in the NSA, deeply hurt by what Snowden has achieved, and wishing death for him every day.
probably south africa
An incel stuck in a dead end job
Who?
