this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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Enough Musk Spam

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For those that have had enough of the Elon Musk worship online.

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Elon Musk, who was offered a chance to end world hunger and turned it down (ponder.cat)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I have no love for Musk, but I remember this not being as clear cut at the time. Unicef was tweeting at Musk to stir up some drama (I assume) not really expecting him to reply (I think the head Unicef guy later said something to the effect of "its a big deal they even got a reply"). So when he did reply and everyone started going crazy asking for details....they kind of floundered for a bit. When they eventually shared some details, It was basically just more of what Unicef was already doing. Not that's a bad thing, but it was far cry from 'solving' world hunger (at least it was compared to twitters interpretation of was solved meant). Unicef looked a bit silly for claiming that they could 'solve' world hunger and Musk walked away looking like an ass for being dismissive towards charity in general.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is pretty much entirely factually incorrect.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/04/26/elon-musk-hunger/

Unicef was tweeting at Musk

Incorrect. CNN noted that it would only take a fraction of Musk's wealth to "solve" world hunger.

Musk then took it to Twitter, which started the Twitter conversation.

to stir up some drama (I assume)

Yeah, because Unicef is known for being childish and liking to "stir up drama" on Twitter. It's practically synonymous with their mission, and they have a habit of

You get the idea. I don't think I need to continue point by point.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Incorrect. CNN noted that it would only take a fraction of Musk’s wealth to “solve” world hunger. Musk then took it to Twitter, which started the Twitter conversation.

fair enough.

Yeah, because Unicef is known for being childish and liking to “stir up drama” on Twitter. It’s practically synonymous with their mission, and they have a habit of

You kind of split up my comment, but the 'I assume' was for the whole statement. When I first encountered this story, it was very much centered around a twitter thread. But you have point, this did unfairly frame Unicef in my comment.

Thank you for the snoops link. TIL

That said, I dont think the rest of my comment was to far off what people took away from the story at the time. The CNN page has a correction at the bottom for what the headline was at the time. It did say 'solve' (not 'help solve') at the time which would have fed into peoples opinion of Unicefs follow up and really driven the narative (which is unfortunate).

But your post (or wolf840's post?) definitly frames this as there was a defacto solution to end world hunger and Musk bought twitter instead. Which is also not a fair representation of what happend. Even the snoops page you linked says that.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

I might not be good for much. But bringing this up whenever he is mentioned is easy. Will do 🫡

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 month ago

I never forgot. I love this meme so much.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Can we please have that gravestone rather sooner than later?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Be the change you want to see.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Can still do it. For less than the price he paid to buy Trump...

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Scarcity is is essential to capitalism.

Many do die as capitalists literally destroy food to maintain scarcity.

I can only surmise that humans are largely happy with this arrangement, with vulnerable humans dying to maintain oligarch profit/metastasis expectations, because the global capital markets haven't been burned to the ground for their relentless and celebratory sociopathic inhumanity. 🤷

Friendly reminder, don't forget to shake your fist at your local homeless encampment on the way to work for lowering your local property values with their continued inconvenient existence!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

American corn is a colonization tool.

[–] [email protected] 87 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Thing is, there's multiple billionaires who could afford to do it for 6bn and they're not doing it either, so every time we talk about billionaires it should be mentioned that they have the power to end most of humanity's suffering but decide not to do it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Many of them are rich because they cause the suffering you're asking them to relieve.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Yeah. For a long time I defended Musk, for the simple reason that, yes, he's weird and seems like a sociopath, but at least he's trying. He wants electric cars. He wants Mars. That's enough. Most billionaires just want an invite to Epstein's island, or to displace a village somewhere to build a new factory.

Those days have ended, now that it's become clear that Musk wants an entire Epstein's-Island enclave just for himself and his "family," and actively works to destroy people who are working on electric cars if they interfere with his quest to get all the credit for everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeRjVH66vdQ

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm in a similar boat. Seems like there was a big marketing / branding push for him to be seen that way in those years, or maybe it was just media doing media stuff (regurgitating and iterating on successful content). And then I stopped paying attention to him, and then he made weird ass comments during that cave rescue situation, and then it's been just rapid fire incidents ranging from embarrassingly childish to shockingly brazen leading to today. Apologies if I've misremembered the timeline, but I seem to remember that as my "wait wtf" turning point with him.

Went from thinking "huh, smart driven guy working on difficult problems few others will" to realizing he's among the most threatening forces working against humanity today, while also a thin-skinned man-baby. Pretty crazy swing. If he'd have kept his crazy under wraps...like...just literally didn't spew it on social media constantly, that one change alone...we'd probably never have realized.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I do believe that he changed. He was always a narcissistic sociopath, but he was also invested in advancing humanity.

And then came his hate for the US government when they tried to tell him what to do, repeatedly, and his obsession with Twitter.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I do believe that he changed. He was always a narcissistic sociopath, but he was also invested in advancing humanity.

Watch the video I posted. I used to think that, but I now think that it was always just a shtick he was doing for self-aggrandizement. You'll notice that he totally abandoned it, with prejudice, as soon as he could become more self-aggrandized by being a super-MAGA guy than he could be being a super-climate guy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Ketamine is also a hell of a drug

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

That was him not talking. Media guys can paint a unicorn from everyone when they are static. Or, in Bezos's case, he just have no media coverage like many other rich people.

Musk being Musk publicly is what switched him from the Iron Man type figure to a deranged aged imbecile on drugs talking in zoomer slang. If you want to cringe a lot, watch a meme review with him: https://youtu.be/oJHb5a3ggzE He's that stupid and vocal no one can save him.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

You're not wrong, I just don't think it's the whole story. I really do think there was a media campaign of different kinds (podcasts and other "intellectual" media) for a period to create an intentional public image. I mean maybe his rise in the public awareness was organic, I just don't think so anymore.

I am fairly sure a campaign like that was used to elevate JD Vance, there was also this Eric Weinstein guy that was appearing a lot in stuff I saw for a while, those two both closely associated with Peter Thiel. I can probably come up with other examples. I think Musk had a similar "look how smart and great this guy is, everyone!" campaign, and I think the difference is Musk had enough money that he could afford not to rely solely on that image, and he had enough ego that he could never not be himself online for long.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"he wants Mars"

All experts agree that being interested in Mars because we want to put boots on the ground is moronic.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

I'm not even saying the specific details of what he wants are good (and, in fact, it's now clear that they are not, and he likes saying super-ambitious stuff that is unrealistic because he thinks it makes him sound more visionary than the people who are trying to explain why it all won't work.)

I'm just saying that wanting Mars used to put him a leg up in my mind over people who just wanted their stock price to go up and did not want Mars. I'm okay with my heroes being unrealistic, all other things being equal.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ending World Hunger is SOCIALISM!

-Americans trying to Save The Children!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

The Children:

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Did this happen? I find it believable, but seek confirmation.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Post this in the op or as a comment. It's not exactly as portrayed, but still didn't change the fact that he could help 42 million people with hunger and he basically brushed it off

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's very much as portrayed. If he'd been at all serious, he would have at least answered them after they spent weeks putting together a detailed plan for him about what could be done with the money and making one of the biggest humanitarian strides the world has ever seen. I don't think any kind of theoretical distance between the plan and "ending world hunger" excuses that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

can't tell if this is better or worse than Scott's tots

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I have a plan to end world hunger, though I don't know if there's enough elon to go around.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

That’s okay. If we run out, we can then use his billions to feed the rest.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 month ago (3 children)

why just 'end world hunger' when you can 'end the world', instead?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Build a man a fire and he's warm for the night, set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Technically, ending the world DOES end world hunger.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

It’s simple! Feed a man for a day and he’ll just be hungry tomorrow… Starve a man to death and he’ll never need to eat again!