Elon's Fading Relevance...What Happened?

Not too long ago, Elon Musk had one of the largest and most impressive fan clubs of any billionaire in the world. People not only admired his accomplishments and goals, but many even saw him as a savior as he tackled problems like climate change, clean energy and space colonization. In transition to sustainable energy. Save a Elon! There was almost a culture around his personality that defended anything and everything Elon would say and do. In fact, in early 2021, a whopping 66% of American meals viewed Elon favorably, giving him a plus 45% net rating. He didn't rank as well among women, but even amongst women, he still boasts today various strong plus 10 net rating.

不久前，埃隆·马斯克拥有全世界最庞大、最令人印象深刻的粉丝团之一。人们不仅崇拜他的成就和目标，甚至有很多人认为他是拯救者，因为他正致力于解决气候变化、清洁能源和太空殖民等问题。向可持续能源转型的过程中，拯救埃隆！几乎形成了一种围绕他个性的文化，捍卫他所说和所做的一切。事实上，在2021年初，有66%的美国男性对埃隆持积极看法，给了他45%的净好评率。在女性中，他的排名虽然不如男性，但即便在女性中，他也依然保持了正10%的净好评率。

Fast forward a couple of years though, and the sentiment around Elon has fallen off a cliff. By late 2022, only 13% of Americans held a favorable view of Elon Musk. 29% held a somewhat favorable view, 18% held an unfavorable view and 23% held a very unfavorable view. And if you analyze social media comments, things are looking even worse for the tech billionaire. In fact, only 19.2% of social media comments are positive about Elon Musk. 42.6% are neutral and 38.2% are negative. In other words, Elon now comes in at a negative 19% net favorability rating. A catastrophic fall from plus 45 among men and plus 10 among women.

几年后的今天，人们对埃隆·马斯克的看法急转直下。到2022年底，美国只有13%的民众对埃隆·马斯克持有好感，29%持有些许好感，18%持反感，23%持非常反感的态度。如果分析社交媒体上的评论，情况更糟。实际上，只有19.2%的社交媒体评论对埃隆·马斯克持正面态度，42.6%为中立，38.2%为负面。换句话说，埃隆现在的净好感度为负19%，相比之前男性中的正45%和女性中的正10%的好感度来说，这是一次灾难性的下跌。

In fact, I think we witnessed this drastic fall firsthand on this channel. Back in 2020 and 2021, we used to make a bunch of videos about Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla. One video that's especially insightful is this video that was posted in January of 2021, how Elon Musk made $142 billion in a single year. Obviously, this was an obscene amount of money that no one needed, and almost all of these gains were from Tesla's stock hype. Yet, if you read the comments, they're overwhelmingly positive. The man who is absolutely worthy of his billions, yet disposing it for the future of humanity, what a brilliant man. For the struggles and hardships he has faced, for the hard and smart work he has put, this manner really deserves at least this.

实际上，我认为我们在这个频道上亲眼目睹了这一剧烈的下降。回到2020年和2021年，我们曾经制作了很多关于埃隆·马斯克、SpaceX和特斯拉的视频。其中一个特别有见地的视频发布于2021年1月，标题是《埃隆·马斯克如何在一年内赚取1420亿美元》。显然，这是一个没有人需要的巨额财富，而且几乎所有这些收益都是来自特斯拉股票的炒作。然而，如果你看评论，会发现绝大多数都是正面的。评论称这位亿万富翁当之无愧，而他正将财富用于人类的未来，真是一个聪明绝顶的人。为了他所经历的奋斗与困难，为了他所付出的聪明而辛勤的工作，这个人确实至少应该得到这么多。

Fast forward to February 2024 and we posted this video, why shareholders sued Elon Musk for $56 billion and won. This is less than half the amount quoted in the previous video, and this was something that Elon was legally owed due to a contract, as opposed to just stock price exploding. The board voted for it because he stacked the board with cronies and yes men, no other reason. He stacked the board like crazy and had connections with all of them. That's why the board approved the plan. Robbed, LaMalle, oh no, somebody think of the poor billionaire. Clearly, the tides have turned for the once cherished billionaire.

快进到2024年2月，我们发布了这段视频，讲述股东起诉埃隆·马斯克并赢得了56亿美元赔偿的原因。这比前一个视频中提到的金额少了一半多，而这笔钱是由于合同规定埃隆合法应得的，而不是因为股价飙升。董事会投票通过这笔赔偿是因为他把董事会塞满了自己的亲信和唯命是从的人，仅此而已。他把董事会堆得满满的，所有人都和他有关系。因此董事会才会通过这个计划。对盗取财富者的审判，啊，不，有人来想想那个可怜的亿万富翁。显然，这位曾经备受珍视的亿万富翁的时代已经结束了。

So, what in the world happened to Elon Musk? If you're interested in deeper dives, interviews with insiders and exclusive tech analysis, consider subscribing to our free weekly newsletter. But anyway, to really understand why Elon was able to lose his variability so quickly, we first have to understand why he was so popular and cherished in the first place. If you read fanboy comments from the surface, you'll be inclined to think that it was because Elon was working on important issues. He wasn't creating a photo sharing app or infinite doom scrolling.

那么，埃隆·马斯克究竟发生了什么事？如果你对更深入的探讨、内幕采访和独家的技术分析感兴趣，可以考虑订阅我们的免费视频周报。 不过，要真正理解埃隆为什么会这么快失去人气，首先我们得明白他为什么一开始会如此受欢迎和喜爱。如果你只是看表面上的粉丝评论，你可能会觉得这是因为埃隆在解决重要问题。他并不是在开发一个照片分享应用或是让人无休止刷屏的东西。

Instead, he was working to solve climate change and leading the effort to make our species multi-planetary. But all of that only tells half the story. You see, there are a lot of billionaires and powerful people who have done great things, but people are quick to gloss over them. For example, back in 2000, the World Health Organization reported that 60% of worldwide measles deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fast forward to 2015, and several African countries had vaccination rates higher than North America, coming in at nearly 100%. A large part of this was obviously due to Bill Gates' African vaccination effort, but Bill never had the same fandom as Elon. And even better example is Jeff Bezos.

相反，他正在努力解决气候变化并领导让人类成为多星球物种的计划。但这只是故事的一半。你看，有很多亿万富翁和有权势的人做了伟大的事情，但人们常常一笔带过。比如，早在2000年，世界卫生组织报告说，全球60%的麻疹死亡病例发生在撒哈拉以南的非洲。到了2015年，几个非洲国家的疫苗接种率高于北美，几乎达到了100%。很大程度上这要归功于比尔·盖茨在非洲的疫苗接种努力，但比尔从未像埃隆那样拥有相同的粉丝群。还有一个更好的例子是杰夫·贝索斯。

Jeff's rocket company Blue Origin actually predates SpaceX. And Jeff's goal with Blue Origin has always been to move manufacturing and heavy polluting industries into space and other planets so that we can preserve Earth. But when Jeff works on rockets, people see him as the bald-lax-luther, copping Elon Musk and deploying money on space tourism. Luckily, the best example though is Mark Benioff, the Foundryf Salesforce. Mark has been working towards a vision of planting or conserving one trillion trees. Now, he's not even close to accomplishing this goal, but so far, he has already conserved or planted 3 billion trees.

杰夫的火箭公司蓝色起源实际上比SpaceX还要早成立。而且，杰夫成立蓝色起源的目标一直是把制造业和重污染工业转移到太空和其他星球上，以保护地球。但当杰夫从事火箭研发时，人们却把他看作是模仿埃隆·马斯克，将资金投入太空旅游的光头“大反派”。幸运的是，一个很好的例子是Salesforce的创始人马克·贝尼奥夫。马克一直在努力实现种植或保护一万亿棵树的愿景。虽然他离这个目标还有很远，但到目前为止，他已经保护或种植了30亿棵树。

I bet most of y'all don't even know who Mark is. Conversely, I bet all of y'all know about the time that Mr. Beast planted 10 million trees. With that being said, I don't think Elon's fan club was ever due to what he was building or why he was building it. Cora of Elon's fan club was always rooted in Elon's underdog persona. The bottom line is that it's hard to get excited about Bill Gates, someone who has been one of the richest people in the world for decades at Resing Vaccination. Or Jeff Bezos spending a few billion of his Amazon fortune on rockets, or a background billionaire with insane connections planting one trillion trees. All of these guys only started working on these groundbreaking ventures when they already had infinite resources and credibility.

我打赌你们大多数人甚至不知道马克是谁。相反，我打赌你们都知道Mr. Beast种植了一千万棵树这件事。话虽如此，我认为埃隆的粉丝团从来不是因为他在建造什么或为什么建造它。埃隆粉丝团的核心一直是他那种逆袭的形象。说到底，很难对比尔·盖茨感到兴奋，他已经是世界上最富有的人之一几十年了，专注于疫苗接种。或者是对花几十亿亚马逊财富上火箭的杰夫·贝佐斯，或一个有着疯狂人脉背景的亿万富翁种植一万亿棵树感到兴奋。这些人在拥有无限资源和信誉后才开始进行这些突破性的项目。

Elon, on the other hand, started working on these issues when he was a nobody. Yes, Elon had 100 to 200 million from PayPal, but in the face of developing and commercializing EVs and rockets, that was nothing. And the fact that everyone doubted Elon every step of their way only made his underdog persona even stronger. For example, in 2002, Elon went to Russia prepared to buy three ICBMs for $21 million. The Russians, however, quoted him $21 million for each ICBM, and when Elon tried to negotiate, they mocked him saying, Oh, little boy, you don't have the money?

另一方面，埃隆在还是个无名小卒时就开始研究这些问题了。确实，埃隆从PayPal赚了大约一亿到两亿美元，但在开发和商业化电动汽车与火箭方面，这点钱根本不算什么。而且，所有人对埃隆每一步的质疑，只让他的“逆袭者”形象更加鲜明。比如在2002年，埃隆去俄罗斯，准备以2100万美元购买三枚洲际弹道导弹。然而，俄方报价是每枚2100万美元。当埃隆试图谈判时，他们嘲笑他说：“哦，小伙子，你没有那么多钱吧？”

Fast forward a couple of years and both Tesla and SpaceX would be on the brink of bankruptcy during the 2008 financial crisis. Elon had burned everything he had on these companies. In fact, he had to borrow money from friends to pay rent. Both companies would end up surviving, but only buy the skin of their teeth. Fast forward a couple more years and Tesla and SpaceX were finally somewhat stable, but the mainstream media and authoritative figures were still doubting Elon. In fact, there's a famous clip of Elon nearly crying when told that his heroes were against him. You know, there are American heroes who don't like this idea. Neil Armstrong, Gene Sernan, have both testified against commercial spaceflight in the way that you're developing it, and I wonder what you think of that.

快进到几年后，在2008年金融危机期间，特斯拉和SpaceX都濒临破产。埃隆·马斯克几乎把他所有的财富都投在了这些公司上。事实上，他不得不向朋友借钱来支付房租。这两家公司最终还是幸存了下来，但也是勉强撑住的。再快进几年，特斯拉和SpaceX终于稍微稳定了，但主流媒体和权威人士依然对埃隆持怀疑态度。事实上，有一段著名的视频显示，当埃隆得知他的英雄们反对他时，他几乎要哭了。你知道，有些美国英雄不喜欢这个想法。尼尔·阿姆斯特朗和吉恩·塞尔南都在国会作证，反对你所发展的这种商业航天，我很想知道你对此有何看法。

I was very sad to see that because those guys are, yeah, those guys are yours and mine, so it's really tough. No, I wish they would come and visit and see the hardware that we're doing here. And I think that would change their mind. They inspired you to do this, didn't they? Yes. And to see them casting stones in your direction. It's difficult. Did you expect them to cheer you on? So they hope in their work. And as for the EV set of things, Tesla was literally the most shorted stock of all time. If you don't know what shorting is, basically out of any company that ever existed, Wall Street was betting bigger than ever that Tesla would go bankrupt. Looking back, these events may not seem like a big deal because you know that he made it to the other side.

我看到这一点非常难过，因为那些人是我们的朋友，所以这很难受。我真的希望他们能来拜访，看看我们在这里做的硬件。我认为那会改变他们的想法。是他们激励你去做这件事的，不是吗？是的。看到他们向你投掷石头，这非常难过。你是期望他们为你加油的吗？他们希望自己的工作能够成功。至于电动车方面，特斯拉曾经是有史以来被做空最多的股票。如果你不知道什么是做空，简单来说就是在所有曾经存在的公司中，华尔街对特斯拉破产的赌注最大。回头看看这些事件，现在可能觉得没什么大不了的，因为你知道他最终成功了。

But in real time, these were the events that created the Elon fan club, not the big rocket launches or crazy visions. It was the fact that Elon was trying to do something good, but he was being beaten down at every step of the way, just like the average person. I can make entire videos about Elon's hardships, and in fact, I have, and these are some of my most viewed Elon videos. All of the haters and doubters basically made Elon into a martyr, and 2020 was the era of reckoning. This was the year that SpaceX became the first private company to put humans in orbit, and it was the same year that Tesla finally achieved consistent profitability and got added to the S&P 500.

但是实际上，正是这些事件而不是那些大型火箭发射或者疯狂的愿景，造就了马斯克的粉丝俱乐部。关键在于，马斯克在努力做好事，但在每一步都遭遇挫折，就像普通人一样。我可以做一整部关于马斯克艰辛历程的视频，实际上我已经做过了，而且这些视频是我观看次数最多的马斯克视频之一。所有那些批评者和怀疑者实际上把马斯克变成了一个殉难者，而2020年则是一个与之对决的时代。这一年，SpaceX成为首个将人类送入轨道的私人公司，同年，特斯拉终于实现了持续盈利并被纳入标普500指数。

The man who had been put down for 18 years by everyone in power had somehow made it against all odds. And in making it, he bought the entire retail community with them. When Tesla stock 25xed, it wasn't the big institutional investors and venture capital funds that made a bunch of money. All of these guys were betting against Tesla, and they lost $38 billion as Tesla rocketed. The people who actually made money were Tesla's employees and retail investors, who bought a few dozen or a few hundred shares. Retail support for Elon simply went into overdrive when he supported the Game Top movement and the Dogecoin movement, leading us to the peak of Elon's variability.

这个曾被所有有权势人物打压了18年的男人，居然在各种不利条件下成功逆袭。而且在成功后，他还带动了整个零售投资群体。特斯拉的股票涨了25倍，赚大钱的并不是那些大机构投资人和风险资本基金。他们都在做空特斯拉，结果亏损了380亿美元，而真正赚钱的是特斯拉的员工和一些买了几十或几百股的小投资者。当埃隆·马斯克支持GameStop运动和狗狗币运动时，零售投资者对他的支持达到了顶峰，带领我们见证了埃隆的高峰时刻。

May 8th, 2021, the day he went on Saturday Night Live. Even before Elon went on a dollar, we were starting to see some inklings of an unfavorable pop-up. Most of the criticism around this time centered around how Elon was basically promoting and enabling degenerate gambling. While the movements behind GameStop and Dogecoin were intrinsically good, a lot of people were just blindly gambling. And while some may have made life-changing amounts of money, the vast majority lost at all. And as someone of rising power and influence, was it really a good idea for Elon to be promoting this? Probably not.

2021年5月8日，是他上《周六夜现场》的那一天。甚至在Elon上场之前，我们就开始看到一些不利的迹象。那段时间的大部分批评都集中在Elon如何基本上在推动和助长投机赌博。尽管GameStop和Dogecoin背后的运动本质上是好的，但很多人只是盲目地在赌博。虽然有些人可能赚到了改变人生的巨款，但绝大多数人都输了。而作为一个日益有影响力的人，Elon真的应该推广这种行为吗？可能不应该。

But what really turned the crypto community against Elon was when Tesla announced that they would stop accepting Bitcoin, and that they may have sold some Bitcoin. Tesla had only bought into Bitcoin a couple of months before this, and it was one of the driving reasons behind Bitcoin's run from 30,000 to 65,000. So for Tesla to immediately sell, it kind of felt like a pump and dump. Elon was no longer the retail hero that was taking on Wall Street short sellers. Elon was the one that was selling. The crypto community almost immediately turned on Elon. In fact, here's what happened at the Bitcoin conference just a few weeks later. F**k Elon! F**k Elon!

但真正让加密社区反感埃隆（Elon）的是，特斯拉（Tesla）宣布将停止接受比特币付款，并且他们可能已经卖掉了一些比特币。特斯拉在这之前购买比特币仅仅几个月，而这也是比特币从3万美元涨到6.5万美元的主要原因之一。所以，当特斯拉立刻就卖出比特币时，感觉就像是“拉高出货”（pump and dump）。埃隆不再是那个对抗华尔街空头的平民英雄，反而成了那个卖家。加密社区几乎立刻对埃隆倒戈了。实际上，几周后的比特币会议上发生了这样的事情：“F**k Elon! F**k Elon!”

Fast forward 10 months and out of nowhere, Elon would purchase a 9.2% stake in Twitter, immediately making him Twitter's largest shareholder. Elon initially insisted that this was just a passive investment, but just a few weeks later, Elon still took over a tent. Twitter had no interest in selling to Elon, but because Elon's offer was so stupidly high, they had to accept. But this also meant that Elon was no longer the kid that was being mocked for not being able to afford a $21 million ICBM. Elon was now the guy who could throw around $44 billion to force the hand of a Fortune 500 company on a whim, just because he felt like it. And after he bought Twitter, he simply further polarized his base by getting political.

快进到10个月后，突然之间，埃隆·马斯克购买了推特9.2%的股份，立即成为推特最大的股东。起初，埃隆坚持说这只是一个被动投资，但几周后，他还是逐步控制了局面。推特并不想卖给埃隆，但由于埃隆的出价实在太高，他们不得不接受。但这也意味着埃隆不再是那个因买不起价值2100万美元的洲际导弹而被嘲笑的小伙子了。他如今是可以随意花费440亿美元来逼迫一家财富500强公司就范的强人，只因为他乐意这样做。而在他买下推特后，他进一步通过涉及政治问题来激化粉丝群体的对立。

He would become one of the leading supporters of Ron DeSantis, and many of his statements seem to indicate that he's pro-Trump. And let me clarify, I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with that, but there is a clear transition at play. Both Tesla and SpaceX were largely kept alive by government subsidies and tax credits made possible by Democrats, but here Elon was supporting the Republicans. Elon has also made a lot of controversial tweets about the Ukrainian war and the Israel situation. And let me be clear here. Any statement about these conflicts is a controversial one. Likely the best example of the New Elando was an interview at the Deal Book Summit in late 2023.

他会成为罗恩·德桑蒂斯的主要支持者之一，且他的许多言论似乎表明他是亲特朗普的。让我澄清一下，我并不是说这有什么问题，但显然他在经历一个转变。特斯拉和SpaceX在很大程度上依靠民主党推动的政府补贴和税收优惠才存活下来，可是埃隆现在却在支持共和党。埃隆还在关于乌克兰战争和以色列局势上发表了很多有争议的推文。这里我要明确一点，关于这些冲突的任何言论都是有争议的。也许“新埃隆”的最好例子是在2023年底的Deal Book峰会上的一次采访。

During the interview, he was questioned about how he felt about big advertisers like Disney pulling away from advertising on Twitter due to Elon's antics, and that this was his response. When he says Bob, he's referring to Bob Iger, the legendary CEO of Disney. And while it's great that Elon is able to stand up for himself and not be blackmailed, it's also obvious that Elon is no longer the struggling man who was on the verge of tears after his heroes dismissed him. Elon is of such high status that he can publicly and repeatedly tell people like the CEO of Disney to literally f off. And that is what has really changed about Elon.

在采访中，他被问及对于像迪士尼这样的大广告商因为埃隆的行为而停止在推特上投放广告有何感想，他是这么回答的。他提到的“鲍勃”，指的是迪士尼的传奇CEO鲍勃·艾格。虽然埃隆能够为自己辩护，不被威胁，这很好，但显而易见的是，埃隆已经不再是那个因为偶像的拒绝而几乎哭出来的挣扎中的人。埃隆的地位已经非常高，以至于他可以公开而反复地告诉像迪士尼CEO这样的人“滚开”。这也是埃隆发生的最大变化。

Nothing has really changed about what Elon is working on. He's still trying to electrify the world, he's still trying to reach Mars, and he's still trying to make humans a multi-planetary species. And regarding his controversial tweets and political statements, he's been doing that the entire time honestly, but no one cared before. The only thing that has changed is that Elon is no longer the underdog, and that has made all the difference. If you're interested in having companies pay you, check out our bond investing platform, Silo, in the description below. But until then, I'm Hari, and I'll see you guys on the next one.

埃隆·马斯克的工作并没有真正改变。他仍然在努力电气化世界，仍然在追求到达火星的目标，并且仍然在尝试让人类成为多星球物种。至于他那些有争议的推文和政治声明，他一直都在做这些，只是之前没人关心。唯一的变化是，埃隆不再是那个不被看好的角色了，这让所有事情都截然不同了。如果你对让公司支付利息感兴趣，可以看看我们下方描述中的债券投资平台Silo。不过现在就这样，我是Hari，我们下次再见。