To me, this just doesn't seem factual. I became an admirer of his in the 2010s. I don't believe he was spending so much time back then picking petty fights and saying unhinged or just extremely politically polarized things on social media in that time period, which the media was just covering differently than they are now. I think his public behavior has changed notably, not just the reporting on him.
if the media reaction to that had been "tesla ceo pulls private driving detail in attempt to discredit journalist" it would have formed a much more obvious through-line with the Top Gear "tesla ceo pulls battery telemetry to sue comedy show" from years prior and "tesla employees can watch you have sex in your car" from years later.
See Also the ongoing excuse of "autopilot was not engaged when the crash happened" or Tesla's insurance charging more if you drive at night. https://electrek.co/2023/09/15/musk-wanted-to-use-tesla-came... Things add up to: Elon Musk does not believe in any sort of right to your privacy.
Like in general while his public persona has gotten less reasonable over the years there's a lot of things that could/should be reported as "patterns of behavior" that, in the early days got reported as if they happened in a vacuum which let it seem reasonable at the time.
I think two things are true, both that his behavior has really changed significantly, and that the media has been increasingly less friendly to his eccentric behavior. But I think it's the first of those true things that has impacted peoples' perceptions of him far more than the second.
It takes a tremendous amount of attention for a message to get into the public in 2024. For you to know Elon’s name in the first place is a result of careful marketing and PR.
So now that media is interested in Elon the question is what changed. Did Elon lapse on marketing? More likely is that he is giving off similar messaging but the media receiving it has decided to focus on other things.
