Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Elon Musk

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

The New York Times described him as “at once a capitalist hero, a glossy magazine celebrity and a bomb-throwing troll.” Multi-billionaire tech tycoon Elon Musk, best known for his high-stakes investments in companies from PayPal to Tesla to SpaceX to Neurolink, is seen as not just a businessman to his nearly 90 million Twitter followers, but as a rockstar, influencer, and Christlike savior sent from the heavens to save the world. On the heels of his fancy new purchase of Twitter, Amanda and Isa discuss Musk’s cult charisma, his army of Musketeers, and what his rise to cult-leader-ish power says about our culture at large. Thanks to all our loyal culties who called in to lend their insight to this episode! Sign up for your free two-week trial at Monday.com/podcast.  Go to HelloFresh.com/cult16 and use code cult16 for up to 16 free meals AND 3 free gifts!

Hey, what's up? It's Sam in Denver and I think that the cultiest thing about Elon Musk is leaning into a misinterpreted fear of the actual purpose of the First Amendment in order to gain public approval to purchase a thought platform. Hi, I'm Emma from Melbourne, Australia. I think the cultiest thing about Elon Musk is how men just absolutely worship him. I know so many people in their 20s and 30s that love everything he does on Twitter and or the podcast appearances he makes and they don't even necessarily agree with all of his views but they just love him as like a cult icon. I think the cultiest thing about Elon Musk is the ways in which he's exalted as this sort of inevitability of positive capitalism when in reality he's little more than the product of nepotism

due to his family's participation in blood and minds. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina and I'm a comedian. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. Every week here on our show we discuss a different fanatical fringe group that hosts the cult in culture from theater kids to flat earthers to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult but is it really? To join our cult follow us on Instagram at Sounds Like a Cult pod. I'm on Instagram at Issa Medina and I'm over there on the cult of Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell and feel free to hit us up on Patreon at patreon.com sounds like a cult where our episodes

are available at free. We are both pretty expressive people I would say. Yeah we are I'm I'm glad we have camera footage of this but also then I have to like wear makeup and like that's true I know it was nice back in the good old days the simple days of season one where we both looked like a toe every day and like last week we recorded the cult of theater kids and we did it on my bedroom floor the good old days throwback yeah no no we like the good new days oh no we love the good new days we love the good new days I love it there are snacks at the studio I just ate us some string cheese yeah the other day there was a jelly donut oh my my remember I was like tearing it apart that's right that's right there was a cupcake in there I saw I made

brownies yesterday so I'm good on sweets for now I see I see but you know who isn't I don't know smooth transition like let's talk about the most gluttonous person alive our friend Elon Musk if that's even his real name yeah it is a silly ass name right Elon Musk it sounds like an alien it sounds like a Pixar villain yeah I wonder if anyone has looked into that is that his real name the name is the least of his problems I'm afraid the least of his offenses uh we decided to record this episode last minute in light of the news of Elon Musk buying twitter for 44 billion dollars yeah this is like we are recording this like as the news came out is breaking and 44 billion dollars like no no no regular human

can even fathom how much money I was trying to fathom how much money it is and I was like okay 44 dollars I can imagine I've held 44 dollars in my hand 44 thousand dollars is about how much money I made uh when I was like 25 now think of if every one of those 44 thousand dollars was a million dollars that's 44 billion dollars yeah I can I can wrap my head around 44 million not like realistically like I don't know what I would do with that money but I watch selling sunset me too I've seen a 20 million dollar house yeah I mean no 44 billion dollars I mean people have really bad instincts about what that amount of money looks like because ancient humans didn't didn't survey things that were in the billions it is illegal for him to have this much money like he's not paying

taxes that's for sure you know all those articles of like self-made billionaires like those people have one billion dollars right he just spent 44 yeah he doesn't have 44 billion dollars that's the price of something that he bought yeah you know like after you go like shopping and you spend a lot of money you spend money you shouldn't have yeah they're like oh shit I'm gonna be eating eggs for the rest of the week yeah after Musk needs to be eating eggs for the rest of his life after shopping on for Twitter I hope his cholesterol skyrocket but that's the thing is that Elon Musk sort of ironically or something like lives in a tiny house right or he used to and now he's couch surfing like a bohemian bullshit I'm gonna call bullshit on that one well he's always trying to

like put on what I interpret to be performance art these stunts where it's it's a performative poverty like tech people do that exactly it's what I call fuck you money because I've been working on that crypto doc for a while now and it's like the founder of Ethereum a cryptocurrency he actually lives out of his backpack Vitalik Buterin he flies economy yeah he's like the simplest man in the world but Elon Musk is like trying to be that yeah it reminds me of those tech bros who will like party and abandon warehouses outside of San Francisco just to like experience the earth and to like experience what it feels like to live outside the spaceship of Silicon Valley it's fake yeah it's almost as fake as 44 billion dollars 100 percent it's all so uncanny and

apocalyptic I just feel like back in the good old days of cults if you didn't like a powerful institution the government or what have you you'd create this sort of like quaint fringy little offshoot on a compound somewhere and now in the uncanny world of the internet and late stage capitalism if you don't like a powerful institution in this case twitter you fucking buy it yeah it's iconic it's like the shift of physical communities to online communities that's right and that's what shows that like he's such a cult of personality because he doesn't give a fuck about free speech no he cares about his version of free speech that's right and he wants to buy it where everyone's already at and there are so many examples to show that he fired a Tesla employee John Bernal

six days after he posted a youtube video of a Tesla accident there was another Tesla employee a technician Martin Tripp in Nevada who blew the whistle on the company and Musk allegedly hired people to hack and spy on him after he cast doubt on Tesla's environmental credentials there was also the time that Tesla literally asked China to censor comments that were critical of the company he's even tried to use twitter itself to suppress worker speech and organizing which was literally deemed illegal by the national labor relations board there's just so many times where like he literally has not cared about free speech and now he cares BS totally it's like what is a cult leader it's somebody who is taking their interpretation of the bible or some scripture some

ancient document and saying no no no everyone else has interpreted this wrong i'm the first person to interpret this yes i will save you with my interpretation and now i'm moving to this remote compound where we can all assemble around it Elon musk's assembly ground is twitter and that ancient document is the constitution yes we should have seen the red flags when he got his first hair transplant that he was like trying to be jesus because he was too bald to begin with it's like i don't have enough hair to lead a cult let's go into a little bit of background about who the fuck Elon musk is he's the world's richest man we know that he's this south african-born multi-billionaire who's known for these sort of high-profile risky investments not just one but you

know tesla is the one he's most famous for the electric cars a company worth over one trillion dollars dr evil finger look on youtube to see it yeah the new york times once described him as at once a capitalist anti-hero a glossy magazine celebrity and a bomb throwing troll which i think is pretty pretty accurate sometimes the new york times just like hits it on the head they hit it on the head but like six months after the thing happened i know after he founded tesla he founded spacex which is a private space travel company because what are we gonna do here on earth to clarify he very much did not found most of the companies that he's famous for like tesla and paypal he just bought them from other people and he's literally allowed everyone to think that

he's a genius serial inventor instead of just a savvy rich tech bro and then the boring company which is like such an obnoxious name totally why didn't anyone give this kid attention when he was a child it's so cocky yes wait do you watch succession of course we're both in love with nicolas brawn if you're listening to this podcast hit us up um but start a cult will be your sister wives yeah but it reminds me of kendall when he threw his birthday party in season three yes that is elon musk it's like give me attention i'm so sad but also i'm gonna pretend that i'm i'm like the most popular man on the planet totally totally i mean colonizing mars classic 70s era millenarian cult leader imagery has to do with sci-fi space fantasy yes and also

something that really upsets me with the idea of colonizing mars is that i can't believe this is a conversation we're having right now i know but like you know when like people colonize the west they weren't thinking like of the environmental consequences obviously or like societal or any consequences at all elon musk is like going out there into space polluting space like totally we've polluted earth and now we're polluting space i know it's like let's focus on remedying our little mote of dust suspended in a sand beam for 44 billion dollars he could have gotten everyone in the world two teslas i don't know if that math adds up to teslas per person oh i completely believed you but i did but i feel like he could have i bought it yeah well and and not only that

he could probably single-handedly solve climate change world hunger yeah and he claims to have environmental motivations um by creating tesla but he puts his money where his mouth is or where his ass is my name is elivia and i'm from colorado i think the coldest thing about elon musk is the fact that he's had like three wives and like seven kids two of his kids are named x and y i'm charlie from chicago um the coldest thing about elon musk is that if you point out that he um has hair plugs his fanboys will like fight you on the internet the proof is in the pudding babe look at the before and after hi sounds like a cult pod this is emma from australia i think the coldest thing

about elon musk is that he has a charismatic personality that a lot of people are drawn to just because he posts anime pictures and memes most of his technological solutions really only benefit him and increase his wealth rather than solving systemic problems so the cars weren't enough and the spaceships weren't enough uh he also has this business neuro link which is neuro technology he's trying to put brain ships in our brains he's not just an entrepreneur we should know very yeah that's very important to note because there was a shift in his position as like a ceo where he like has a twitter he has social media and he has an online presence that a lot of business men just don't have and i feel like the peak of that was when

he hosted saturday night live that's right so there's this cult of personality that has formed around him in a way that feels a little unprecedented he's not just this business leader he's also this rock star yeah and his snl hosting gig what was that even about i really don't know how much money yeah he must have paid snl because yeah because snl historically does not put people on as hosts unless they're there to promote something and what was he promoting his own platform and he sucked he was bad he wasn't funny but it got everyone talking it did it got everyone talking and i would not be surprised because here's the thing with public figures they are always putting down crumbs they're like everything you think might be natural it's not it's strategic

it's all strategic so i wouldn't be surprised that he's been wanting to buy twitter and saturday night live was like his first step into like the foray of like is that the right word yeah yeah his first like step into like a larger foray of like public figurehood where he was like okay i'm gonna start getting my name in the zeitgeist even more than it already was and then later started being like hmm i kind of want to buy twitter he did the same thing with cryptocurrencies like where he like talked about dogecoin after he bought it and then it skyrocketed and obviously he made millions of dollars so like everything he does is strategic and i fucking hate him i don't know yeah that's how i should summarize that sentence and in conclusion in summary i hate him

he has totally occupied this cult leader space that we've described before where a cult leader it's not just enough to them to you know stay in their lane to become massively wealthy as a business leader or to you know just be a pastor or to just be a self-help mentor they want to occupy every corner of your life and so yes he is this entrepreneur and he has become this celebrity but also an influencer and also a spiritual leader of sorts because he claims to have these answers that will save humanity and he's a person that people singularly trust that his most rabid fans get on this high horse morally to think like elon musk and only elon musk will catapult humanity into the future yeah have you ever had a conversation with an elon musk fan before thank god no yeah you are

in a great world because let me tell you i have um it was with a male friend and of course i keep those to a minimum yeah no we were literally on a ski lift so i was stuck i was like i cannot physically get out of this conversation you know how like evangelical missionaries they'll become like nail technicians so that they can force people who cannot move because they're getting their nails done don't listen about the gospel of jesus it's like elon musk stands um they're told like you got to get someone on a ski lift yeah i bet you that was like his strategy because i was like trying to like argue all the things that like elon musk is like obnoxious for and problematic for i really don't know what took over me i think it was like the fresh mountain air

made me high and i was like this this and that and my friend just came back with like excuse after excuse and it's these it's these men that follow him that are often libertarian yeah they are so let's talk about his cult of personality and his fanatical following which he feeds into a little bit more so he has over 80 million twitter followers which like it's no accident that he wanted to buy twitter because that's where his following is that's where he has the most power and his most fanatical fans fit this description that you're mentioning there are largely these like white millennial political centrists or libertarian types who harbor this grave mistrust of the media that he feeds into yeah they're these men who like don't stand for anything other than elon musk

and by not standing for anything they essentially stand for chaos it's like those people who are like when you're having an argument with them they're like and so what so what they want to push your buttons to push your buttons they are that classic devil's advocate stereotype people think of elon musk stands or even fans in general as people who attack whatever they see as a threat to him they'll harass people who criticize him and there is that faction of fans but i actually think that what connects all elon musk stands is not harassment it's this inherent mistrust of everything but elon yeah it is not feeling beholden to any given ideology and it is this like adherence to some vague idea of logic and truth while at the same time profoundly mistrusting

every source of information and truth yeah it honestly like it makes my mind want to explode yeah they don't believe anything like you're just saying they don't believe anything unless elon musk says it yeah but then even the things that elon musk says like when he was like kind of anti-covid vibes like they believe that they'll just change their mind about anything as soon as elon musk agrees with it that's right it's like they start with the conclusion they work backwards to find an argument and the conclusion is always elon musk is right there was a moment where elon musk reached out to the un and was like if you guys give me a budget of how much money it would cost to solve world hunger i'll give it to you and the united nations gave him that budget breakdown

and he said that he actually changed his mind and he didn't want to spend the money on solving world hunger and instead he bought twitter for 44 billion dollars and that is classic cult leader red flag is when like the ideology is not really what people are after it's it's that sense of community it's that sense of faith in this leader who is going to see us toward salvation and so they like don't feel beholden to any ideology or any belief system at all they just reject everything except for musk yeah and that line of thinking becomes super problematic in this sort of post truth post trump era that's so full of conspiracy theories because whatever elon musk says goes yeah and i think he's done such a good job of being relatable even though he's the least relatable

person on the planet which reminds me of trump too yeah it's all these people who follow him online in this like different online internet universe they think that elon is their friend yes they think that he would do anything for them and that he would let them in their secret club if there was one totally and so that's like so cult leader vibes it's especially upsetting because it's parasocial you know like in uh in the people's temple jones town for example yes like jim jones only stood for jim jones jim jones only cared about jim jones but you did have an in-person relationship with him these 80 million people don't each have a personal relationship with elon musk they're creating it in their head they are and i think elon feeds into it by responding every one

so in a while to a random person yes he'll every once in a while like a random person's tweet and so everyone's like oh my god he's just like us yeah he's reading our tweets yep he's engaging with us yeah he cares about us before you know it you're in fucking mars with elon musk and you don't know how to get back and i gotta tell you i watch a lot of space videos on youtube in my free time mars not a lot of oxygen it's not great up there i found this like amazing article in the verge that was uh analyzing his following and i love a lot of the points that it made one of them a language point of course i always gravitate toward those his super fans were very vehement about communicating that they were not fans they're followers yeah they thought that that

sounded more level-headed but i was just like no you're just telling on yourself as a member of a cult yeah by saying that you're a follower not a fan yeah that literally means that you would follow him anywhere that means like you would walk behind him and it is true that like the fact that social media participants on twitter and instagram are called followers that's what the app labeled us like we are followers yeah and that sort of blurs the boundaries between it's like are we following casually or are we following an occult leader way yeah that's such an important distinction to make between like facebook and twitter and instagram is that that was i feel like the big transition between influential figures becoming a thing is that on facebook you add

someone as a friend your mutuals they're called your friend and on apps like twitter and instagram they are your followers yeah but um elan musk stands have another name too they're called musketeers okay that's kind of cute but only because like musketeers are cute i know like the three musketeers bar if i met someone out and they were like and i'm assuming it would be a dude because if a if a woman stood for elan musketeer i'd be like what what are you okay i know like what an incredible violation yeah what a betrayal it would be a betrayal but i would hear her out they do she deserves it they do exist um we're gonna tell a story a little bit later of a female elan musk extreme musketeer but yeah i mean these musketeers are these zealots who can be found all over the

world and their passion is more on the level of megachurch members than you know fans of a tech mogul yeah and they come to his defense with no one asking them to like there was a tweet from this i think female musketeer r.i.p saying if elan musk wants to spend 44 billion dollars on twitter that's up to him if you want him to spend his 44 billion on something else go make 44 billion yourself and spend it on that thing oh y'all let me just really quickly go make 44 freaking billion such such good advice like thank you so much yeah uh my only problem is i don't have the hutzpah or the tenacity to go off and make 44 billion dollars thank you for that it's psychotic hi my name is alice and i'm calling from indianapolis indiana and i would say the

coldest thing about elan musk is how he controls the stock market the second he tweets about some stock everyone buys it and it's you know price skyrockets and it's maddening how he can just say one thing and suddenly everyone wants that stock what's culty about elan musk so so much i lived in south africa for years and he's put on an absolute pedestal of a prodigal son but he left when he was 17 so if you think the hype is bad in the us in south africa it's on steroids these elan musk stands are up on a moral high horse but they're married to some concept of ground truth that they can't even define i think the reason a lot of them are so self-righteous

is because elan musk started as a business man and he started as a businessman in like tech and science in like a stem field right then people think that by relating to him they're attached to like logic yes by association that's right and they're not because elan musk didn't do the science he wasn't in the lab making the tesla totally he himself is not a genius and this is something that i have seen uh it's a through line with cult leaders is that they will use science and scientific terminology and sort of bastardize it and co-opt it to suggest that they're actually tapped into a power higher than science yeah it reminds me of like when people online make like really beautiful graphics and just because the graphics are pretty like all of a sudden you're an authority on that

subject a hundred percent elan musk is like the male tech version of that he just made like a pretty company yes and like marketed it well and so people were like oh this is like so legit it is the delivery rather than the content for sure um and you know he's been in silicon valley for a long time and he knows how to market his ideas he knows how to get people to believe in them it kind of touches on like what we were talking about with elizabeth holmes it feels like in the tech space there's so few people that have the ability to be personable that when you do find that one diamond in the rough they have so much power yes because not only are they in the tech space but they also have the ability to like connect with people on a one-on-one level that's right and that is like

what we were talking about in the elizabeth holmes episode that is kind of the definition of charisma and part of elan musk's charisma is directly tied to twitter it is this sort of internet playfulness that sets him apart from stagier authority figures you know he has like all these ridiculous irreverent tweets i mean i think we should read more of them definitely and also i would like to note that currently his profile picture is like an annoying picture of him in sunglasses where like you would never see like a ceo that casually oh my god but he's trying so hard to be like memeable yes and he knows just how i mean just look at how he's leaned into his completely false self-made narrative he's not self-made actually his mom uh i've met her she's one of the

poshest people i've ever met in my life i once interviewed her about her beauty routine for my old magazine job may musk think about interviewing the mother of a tech ceo about her beauty routine that is cult followed celebrity status he tweeted in october of 2021 i'm thinking of starting a new university texas institute of technology and science it will have epic merch universally admired tuition is in dogecoin and you get a discount if you have a dog that's so annoying because obviously he's like being sarcastic but as a public figure and ceo and billionaire like he is capable of doing those things so he might not be kidding literally like last week on april 27th right after he bought twitter he tweeted next time buying coca-cola to put the cocaine back in

like that's first of all not funny and if it was it would be funny because it's impossible but he can literally buy coca-cola if he wanted to like is it ironic it's unfiltered and people mistake sort of like unfiltered brazenness with truth telling yeah that happened with trump too like he would just seem yeah so filterless yeah and so like tell it like it is but he wasn't telling it like it is he was just telling it boldly and unafraid of consequences exactly in may of 2020 when tesla stock was like peaking he tweeted tesla stock price is too high imo like in my opinion which is like not funny or whatever but it's like for a ceo to say something like that like he's trying so hard to be relatable totally it's this casualness i mean the fact that he like

smoked weed on joe rogan it all it's strategic like you were saying it all just contributes to this cult like status and i think that's something that like not just his followers but anyone who like follows like public figures we need to keep in mind like public figures there's like no organic moment like i mentioned that like there really isn't and so people like need to ingrain that in their head that like if you're gonna play into this like fallacy that like this person is perfect and like you're idolizing them for just being themselves then you need to understand that you don't know you're just buying into the narrative that they've crafted on purpose and that might sound a little conspiratorial but at least the most sort of successful public icons are as famous and

cult followed as they are because of their ability to manipulate and sometimes that manipulation is mostly harmless and sometimes it's not exactly you're believing them for the caricature that they are playing of themselves you don't actually know them and i feel like sometimes stands need to be reminded of that can we tell the story of this extreme fan yes because it's pretty telling to me in in this verge article i read about a woman named Selena Marie Gomez who actually attempted to take her own life and as she was sitting in the hospital she told this publication that watching Elon musk interviews and reading his tweets was the only thing that brought her hope she said that was the only thing that was giving me hope you know to keep going i realized this is

why i haven't made a whole lot of progress with my own career my own endeavors because i haven't been seeing the whole picture i've just been seeing what humanity has done wrong and not what we've been doing right so she was sort of seeing him as this christ-like savior that sounds like someone who is in a cult dude that literally sounds like a quote from nixxiom like it sounds like someone who is blaming the world for their problems and now only sees this one person or this one avenue as their solution yep a hundred percent which i wonder did it say in the article how she became a fan of him because i think that like through the cult of youtube a lot of people fall down these like rabbit holes of watching a personality and like speak or public events or

just like these fan videos even and then you get into this like black hole of only seeing that person well right because the algorithm is feeding you what you're engaging with most i don't remember exactly how she discovered Elon musk where became a fan but at one point she did turn on notifications for his tweets so she was almost like signing up for the next level of cult affiliation she was like i'm ready to be served his gospel whenever he says it that's insane and also she could probably turn on like google alerts you know and then just fall even further and then she was kind of imbued with this sense of elitism and purpose she described musk fans as unafraid of what's going on with the world she believes musk is making our planet a better place that his

detractors are just consumers who don't want to be inconvenienced and that journalists cherry pick stories expressly to piss him off and then of course as we were saying like convincing your followers to mistrust journalists is a classic cult through line that we've seen yeah from jim jones to everyone else i think the scary thing about the cult of elon musk is how easy it is to do things like turn on your notifications yes how accessible it is totally so she didn't even know she was being indoctrinated at the time you know it's like you just turn on one more level of notification that's right and before you know it you're being pinged three five times a day yep then a week has gone by and then you're like six months into being pinged on a man's thoughts

consistently and you're like i'm not shaving my head i'm not moving anywhere i'm just sitting at home on my couch yeah but that's how cults like q anon are able to radicalize and cause material violence i mean elon musk has caused harm i mean we should talk about some of his controversies that whenever anyone brings them up his most extreme followers will like completely dismiss yeah let's get into those hi this is rachel from philadelphia and the coolest thing about elon musk is his followers and how quick they are to defend their idealized version of him regardless of how fascist his actions are becoming my name is katelin and i'm calling from chicago i think the coldest thing about elon musk is his ability as the leader of a technology company

to extract money from consumers without a tangible product or even a finite promise of ever receiving that product my name is desrey and i'm from michigan and i think the most culty thing about elon musk is the fact that it's you're either 100 with him or you're 100 without him like you either love him or you hate him and if you can't be halfway in between because people will tear you up for it it's scary because these people are slowly being indoctrinated but then what comes next like what what are they believing that's problematic a lot of people don't talk about how problematic elon musk is i mean he didn't believe in covet he tweeted about it he was very dismissive of it he was very dismissive of covet and so all of a sudden his 80 million followers

could be dismissive of it as well totally that's a public health issue yes it's been reported that he has poor treatment of his factory workers there's been injuries in tesla factories there's also been issues with autopilot on a lot of teslas i know a couple people personally whose autopilots just kind of like spasmed and they got into accidents oh wow but they were like paid out by the company and you don't see that a lot in the public yeah he doesn't fulfill a lot of his promises he's also extremely anti-unit i mean these are the things that people will bring up by way of valid criticism only to be shot down by his most rabid followers who do so behind a screen who do so anonymously who don't want anyone to know exactly who they are and you know like literally by definition

by the nature of this fandom you you couldn't meet them or have a dialogue face to face with them even if you tried and that's an enemy to dialogue that is a breeding ground for cultishness when you're not even open to showing your face and connecting to outsiders genuinely yeah it's like when you're trying to have a conversation with someone about something and they just shut you down shut you down shut you down yes a lot of what i hear when i've talked to friends that are fans of elon musk is that when you say oh like why is he going into space and saving space instead of saving the planet we need to say like what that's one of my biggest arguments i'm like why is he spending so much time and money on all these other things when we still have like

hunger and injustices on our earth yeah and a lot of their arguments is he doesn't know you anything right he doesn't know anyone anything okay yeah like you still didn't answer my conversation ends there and i talk about this in my work but that's called a thought terminating cliche yeah it's like a sort of catchy stock expression that ends independent thinking or questioning that ends a conversation from moving forward that ends scrutiny and it's a classic cult leader tactic would you say that now that he bought an application that is used by so many people he kind of does owe people something because like yeah they're using his app which is like supporting his now new business right so it's kind of like an online democracy in a way and

it's like once you get into the public space so deeply the way he has you kind of do owe people something he totally does i think it's a public responsibility yeah to think of the humans who are being affected by your lofty grandiose selfish business endeavors um and i'm not confident that he's going to keep those people in mind my fear if the twitter deal goes through which it still might not by the way is that twitter is just gonna become this cesspool echo chamber reflected in his image and i'm not even on twitter like i have no dog in this fight except i do because it is a platform where so much important information false and otherwise is spread and i think another question is like the word oh i feel like that's a word that like we shouldn't

even like use because like yeah obviously no one owes anyone anything but it's like when you said oh i thought i thought you were saying oh oh like oh the word oh i thought you were saying like someone would question you and Elon musk stan or musketeer whatever and they would just be like oh that would actually be the perfect way of arguing with an with an elon musketeer that is such a trolly shit posty thing to do is just be like oh oh i hate you no but like he yeah no one owes anyone anything so my thing is like let's move beyond that and think like what can we do for each other what's the moral thing to do exactly okay like maybe we're not bringing any laws here but what is the ethical thing today yeah and i think he is ethically sketchy at best and here's the thing

too is that like we're living in a time of information overflow of constant apocalyptic seeming news and so of course people are going to want to and be eager to blindly trust someone who is as singular and charismatic as elon musk and the fact that he just bought twitter is only like fueling that charismatic all-knowing leader role yeah twitter's original co-founder jack dorsi is a public figure only because he became famous when he co-founded twitter right but even he only has like 6.3 million followers and i don't know that name exactly you don't know that name you don't hear about that name because he isn't trying to become to take over the world exactly and the solar system actually i know and like i guess there's not much more to say

other than like he also just elon also just like looks evil i don't know if that's like a i don't think that i can't say that's like a scientific point but like he looks evil he does they're i mean instincts are valid and uh if you look at someone and think they look evil i'm not going to invalidate that yeah and like i don't know if we can like put up a little picture go on our youtube to see this graphic pre hair transplant post hair transplant i can't tell what looks more evil yeah before we sign off i want to mention that there are people who have defected from the elon cult who've sort of like seen the light and decided to distance themselves from him there was this former fan named andrew sanders who said when i first learned about him he was

building a future that i'd only ever read about and like that was inspiring now he's self-evidently a thin-skinned racist buffoon who's high on his own farts his behavior is such that not only do i no longer like him i'm ashamed forever having liked him in the first place he's constantly name searching himself and replying to everyone with even the most casual criticism of him blocking people and not appearing to care when his followers start to dog pile people so at least someone saw the light yeah so i think it is possible to sort of like come to your senses and engage with this person's work to maybe even admire some of his work but not be in the full blown cult yeah completely i mean i think that tesla is a great company i think that like they

have normalized like electric cars which is so important for the environment and glamorized them and glamorized them because then before there was just a fucking piece of shit they were so ugly that i drive which is like how i feel about like ugly furniture i'm like why is it ugly why can't we just make cute affordable furniture oh that's so great that's like when we talk about possibly doing the cult of ikea um people are just like but my question is why is it also ugly yeah i'm like let's move on okay so isa out of the three cult categories live your life watch your back and get the fuck out what do you think about the cult of elan musk well we touched a little bit on elan musk in the episode of celebrity stan that's true go back and

listen that was our like what third episode yeah we talked about Beyonce taylor swift and elan musk and a little bit of ariana and a little bit of ariana a little bit of demi yeah and i remember that one of the key points was that that kept ariana and taylor and beyond say kind of like out of the get the fuck out level was that they didn't feed into their fans especially their toxic ones yeah but it feels like elan musk is literally only doing that especially as of late he's feeding into this toxicity and this like follow me culture follow me to the freaking moon and beyond and beyond and once he got on snl i thought it was a game over yeah i mean taylor swift no doubt also like feeds into her fana but the stakes are just a million times lower yeah taylor swift isn't

going to space no the stakes are just so much lower and i think the stakes are so high here that it's gotta be a get the fuck out yeah if you love when we agree we're really connected yeah and all of what we discussed today didn't even touch on his personal life he has what eight kids actually on the books it's like he's trying to secretly overpopulate the earth with his offspring and name them all after robots of course god it's just no matter what angle you look at him from the dude truly is not of this planet if you're listening to this and you're an elan musk stan please get the fuck out yeah like we don't have to fucking banish the guy to syberia but if you stan elan get the fuck out yeah like we don't want to be saying i told you so in five years when

you're on mars like that's not a win win although my favorite emotion is smugness yeah but it's like it's sad we'll be sad for you totally just get the fuck out get the fuck out uh that's our show thank you so much for listening we'll be back with a new cult next week but in the meantime stay culty but not too culty sounds like a cult is created hosted and produced by amanda montel and isa medina kate elizabeth is our editor our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by case of colm thank you to our intern slash production assistant noemi griffin subscribe to sounds like a cult wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode and if you like our

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