Genius Unmasked

The Achievement of the Year award goes to Elon Musk. Not for his many efforts to advance the plight of humanity; those are mostly fake anyway. No, he deserves this award for single-handedly ripping the mask of the meritocracy.

Since the birth of social media platforms, the way we gain access to our favorite celebrities has been transformed. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and the likes have bridged the communication gap that previously existed; no longer are our idols unreachable, gone is the distance between the idol and their fans. This makes the fans feel like they're constantly connected to the artists they love. This false sense of connection gave rise to a social phenomenon known as "standom"; obsessive or excessive fandom. Such obsessive fans are called "Stans". The word, or name "Stan" originates in Eminem's 2000 mega-hit "Stan", which chronicles the actions of a crazed, obsessed fan who imitated the rapper's every waking move until his disastrous death.

It's funny how Eminem's song is about a man who's pushed to the edge when his idol wouldn't answer his fan mail; right now, more than 20 years later, social media platforms have seemingly taken away any excuse to not answer the fans when all it takes is a few clicks or swipes and an emoji or two. That is from the fan's perspective of course, who might not always take into account the millions of clicks, swipes and emojis it would take to answer all of them. Social media has exponentially increased the number of Stans, no doubt. Extreme fandom results in all kinds of behavior that I can't understand; what does it take for an individual to tattoo the name, or even a picture of their idol onto their body? I'm lost here, for I can not even imagine the level of idolization necessary to go so far.

Okay, if it's Jesus, Buddha or Moses, maybe I can understand. I'm not religious myself, but at least these figures aren't about to change their opinions any time soon; love for Jesus is safe, because Jesus won't be in the news tomorrow announcing he's had a change of heart about camels, eyes of needles and rich men. But if you've been sufficiently enchanted by Kanye West's career to tattoo him on your body... Well, there's a London based studio that's gone viral by offering to remove Kanye West tattoos for free: 'Yeezy come, Yeezy go': Kanye West tattoos are being removed for free by a studio in London.

I would be surprised and disappointed if the same isn't true for Elon Musk. He bought one of the social platforms responsible for the explosive growth of Standom, and he has used that platform for increasing his personal army of Stans by a focused dedication to responding to said Stans over the past decade. Elon Musk is an artist, just like the artist formerly known as Kanye West. He's a performer who wears the mask of a genius. He has convinced the world that he's a gifted engineer, programmer and rocket scientist. But that image has come tumbling down since he bought Twitter. Some of us were on to his grift years ago, but with his mishandling of Twitter he very publicly destroyed his image as the one billionaire who had humanity's best interests at heart. How could he be humanity's savior if he can't even treat his own employees with dignity? How can he be a genius if he doesn't even understand why advertisers are fleeing the platform? How can he be a free-speech-absolutist when he plans to lock free speech behind a pay-wall?

Leftists like myself owe Elon Musk gratitude; he has shown the world how fake he is and how fake the meritocracy is. Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company and SpaceX don't advertise because Elon Musk is the advertisement. He's a one-man-hype-machine inflating his own stocks by being the constant focus of public attention. And he can rely on his army of Stans to keep blowing praise up his ass, to the point he imagines himself untouchable. Well, 2022 may have been the year that started the downfall of the world's most over-inflated persona at the helm of the world's most over-inflated stock. Tesla, the most over-inflated stock in question, is rapidly losing ground to the traditional auto-manufacturers who are now making better and cheaper EV's than Tesla. Elon's now profiling Tesla as a Tech-company as he tries to be the first to crack the full-self-driving problem; that's not going well either. Soon the public will understand how SpaceX is just a government-funded continuation of NASA, but privatized. I sincerely hope 2023 will be the year of Musk's downfall, and it wouldn't hurt if some other billionaires are sucked into that abyss with him.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy!