Hilariously the gap is widening, perhaps because people love a dogpile.
But on another level, I really feel like there is nobody that is willing to tell him to get off the internet for a few days. Publicly torturing yourself this way is not healthy.
I am not famous, but I have been a 'main character' in a negative national news story before, attracting ~10,000 unfriendly comments just on one website. On one level you're inoculated from them as you realize the extent of the gap between the report and reality, so there isn't as much pressure to take them personally. But on another you're turning your own stress response up by reading all that negativity (or 'posting through it' if you were to start responding to people), like how exercising and developing toughness can go too far and end up with joint damage or torn muscles. Yet this is very much the hard-driving persona and work ethos that Musk publicly seeks to cultivate.
And it's been that way all week, what with him getting booed loudly on Monday. A friend who worked the show in a technical capacity described it as being painfully awkward, as Musk stood there like a prop and essentially slow-roasted for 5 minutes. This is a thing professional comedians are inured to whereas Musk was neither prepared nor equipped for it. In a context where his wealth didn't generate the usual aura of popularity, he got a painful lesson in others' perceptions of him. That's not the sort thing you can just buy a fix for.
Is it possible that we are all suffering from a form of psychological illness due to social networks, with symptoms ranging from mild to meltdown?
> a thing professional comedians are inured to
This. I think generally cultural guard rails (of various local flavor) developed over centuries prior to mass communication that addressed the needs of the super ego (our 'my place in the world' bit of self) and now our super egos are confronted by (sometimes an imaginal) 'society & public stage' that far exceeds the scope of what generation after generation of humans have confronted.
I offer as evidence the (effectiveness of) immaturity of discourse on social media. This is symptomatic of 'regression'. A sort of collective Lord of the Flies moment for humanity.
Recall how a major theme of The Great Gatsby is that even if you can't just buy a fix for a particular thing, it's always possible to retreat into one's wealth in general.
(HN'ers will recognise Jay Gatz' earnest self-improvement program in the appendix to that book in many front-page posts here. The Americans of 2025 will share a lot, culturewise, with those of 1925.)
