I think before you could kind of miss the crazy if you didn’t look into it (I typically don’t look into the owner of a company before buying a product) but for the last year or two it’s basically front page news all the time.
Yes he was always crazy but you could be unaware before.
I think Tesla did a better job of hiding that, especially early on. He was sort of vaguely around, but they have (possibly that should now be ‘had’) reasonably good people actually getting work done in spite of him. It’s been the last couple years with SpaceX where he really seems to have started making noise.
He used to be tech bro crazy like “it’s healthy for my employees to work 80-160 hr weeks that’s how you get shit done” and “employees can’t have lives, you must commit to my mission!” bullshit. But the ideas he originally attached himself to were pretty progressive and pro human. Electric cars and batteries to make home solar viable. “Occupy Mars”. Hyperloop was never viable but it was a high speed public transit idea. I always found his personality/“leadership” quite repulsive but I could respect what he was trying to, and what his companies did accomplish under his pressure.
IMO a year or two before he bought Twitter (which may have been during Covid?) that facade really started crumbling and of course since buying Twitter it has just been… straight fascism, really.
(it’s also very possible I just didn’t care enough to look closely and see the earlier signs, but I still think there was a transition/radicalization at some point, at least of the public persona, even if my timing is wrong)
I think your memories match mine. We started to see stickers/magnets on Teslas after the X mess
I’ve been telling my dad for years that Musk was a horrible human being, but somehow my center-liberal father still thinks the man is a genius even if he’s a dangerous one.
I’m like. No. No he’s not even that smart. He’s just very rich. And people including my dad apparently fall for that. He just bought companies that already had smart people working in them and then SOMETIMES managed to not destroy those companies.
/Soap box.
as far as I understand, he bought companies, got people to sign a paper saying that he founded the company, and then everyone kept writing fawning thought pieces that said he founded them
I’d trace it back at least as far as calling the Thai cave rescuer a “pedo guy” in 2018. 
I’d forgotten about that SMH
Some great Canadian humor in this one:
Any Canadians interested in adopting me? Or marrying me? OK thx bye…
if you don’t know, this is a followup on an iconic beer commercial from decades ago
oh, another one in that series
I only heard about that recently because in Australia our media never mentioned it, too busy focusing on the actual people that were doing the rescue. Or i would have twigged how vile he was so much earlier, instead of asshole techbro.
Too late… Ok maybe not a month but the peppers are maybe like 2 weeks too early.
Hahaha!
relatedly…
Users “nearly daily” post images and videos capturing notes left saying things like “WHAT’S ELON’S §$% TASTE LIKE?” or “NAZI CAR,” people kicking the vehicles or throwing slices of cheese at them, which is a novel form of peaceful protest we can get behind.
I love that cheese-ing is becoming a thing
