VICE News Presents: Cult of Elon (2023) - full transcript
From Tesla to Twitter, Elon Musk has become the most influential businessman ever, but it required the masses to support his seemingly unreachable visions - the cult behind the man
♪♪
-If you know the story of Tesla,
nothing about Elon's acquisition
of Twitter will surprise you.
-Elon Musk overhauls
the company.
-Half of its employees
were laid off.
-The list of companies
reportedly
suspending business with Twitter
is still growing.
-Can't help it.
Let that sink in. [ Laughs ]
-Tesla's a company that
Elon Musk willed into existence.
And the way that he did it was
by building this massive
fan base on Twitter.
[ Cheering ]
-I wake up every day
just excited for the future.
And this is due to Elon
and his companies.
-I think it's incredible
that we get to
be alive the moment
that Elon's alive.
We're watching the best business
be built in history.
That's going to change
the course of humanity,
and we get to watch it
in real time.
-Among the Tesla fans
and Tesla as a company,
there are a lot of ways
in which they feel
the means justifies the ends.
-Tesla loses money on every
single car that they make.
-Fatal flaw in Tesla's
autopilot feature.
-Serious questions about
worker safety.
-Tesla has suffered a series
of very public challenges.
[ Laughter ]
-Around this time,
there was a lot of noise
outside of the company,
a lot of news articles that,
"Hey, Tesla is going
to go bankrupt.
Elon Musk is a crazy person."
It drove us to work
as hard as humanly possible
to prove those people wrong.
-It was fear, uncertainty,
doubt everywhere.
We would sacrifice our own time,
our own mental sanity,
just to tell somebody on
the Internet that they're wrong.
-Elon is a genius.
-Tesla is skyrocketing.
-Elon Musk is now
the richest person in the world.
-He is so powerful
that he is creating
his vision of the future.
And these are the people
that perpetuate his vision.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Whether you like it or not,
you are along for the ride.
♪♪
♪♪
-Cars are freedom.
It's part of the American dream.
It represents the ability
to go wherever you want,
to take road trips,
to drive across the country.
For a long time,
people weren't sure
what was going
to come after gas cars.
We might have fuel-cell cars
or natural gas cars.
I don't think electric cars
were seen as feasible.
People were worried
that they would be underpowered,
that they could only drive
for a few miles
before you'd need
to recharge the battery.
-All of the markets
for electric vehicles
in the US and elsewhere
all sort of originate
in government policy.
The first of those
government policies
to really start fostering
an electric vehicle market
was California's
Zero-Emission Vehicle program.
-The electric car is here.
♪♪
-EV1 is the car
to be seen in this winter.
-Guy behind me keeps
pulling up on my bumper.
I can see him saying
to his wife, "What is that?"
♪♪
-The EV1 was considered
primarily the first
modern electric car.
The reason the EV1
is no longer on the road today
is because the companies
behind that one
and the others
of that generation
didn't want
to keep selling them.
As soon as that law was relaxed,
they pulled the cars
and stopped
making them for years.
-These are perfectly
functional cars
that are being taken
off the road.
-I love it.
I'm so sad I'm not going to
have it for the rest of my life.
-The community was
incredibly disappointed
at the demise of EV1.
They did funky things,
like hold a funeral for a car.
[ Bagpipes play ]
And do 24-7 vigils
and press conferences.
-We are not going
to just stand here.
We're going to keep demanding
that they build
these cars again.
-All kinds of things.
Just trying to essentially
bring attention to the story.
The end of the EV1,
the crushing of the cars
is probably the closest
we got to very dark years.
I don't think anyone looked
at the crushing of EV1s
and thought there was
a near-term future
for electric cars on the road.
-This was a really
important moment, I think,
in the build-up
to Tesla's success.
It really sort of
started to foster
this sense that this is
all ready to happen.
We can't trust the legacy
automakers to do it.
Something new has to happen.
Someone else has to step
into this gap.
Elon Musk ended up
being that person.
-Elon was born in South Africa.
And you see from an early age
this off-the-charts
intelligence.
You also see this pluck,
this curiosity,
this ability
to dispense convention
and just focus on a goal.
And his goal quickly
becomes to save the world.
His interests as a child
were reading sci-fi books
and comic books.
And one of the things
that's interesting about
that category of literature
is that it has a common theme --
an unlikely hero comes out
of nowhere and saves the world.
And that's the path
that Elon found for himself.
-He had always been passionate
about electric vehicles.
Once he made the money
from PayPal,
he didn't want to just
"go to an island"
is the way he sort of frames
the other alternative.
And so he plowed it into
both SpaceX and Tesla,
which at the time
was very unusual.
-What we're doing is critical
to the future of NASA.
We want to serve
as a catalyst
for accelerating
the electric car revolution.
-I first learned about Tesla
during the EV1 vigil.
A former EV1 driver
came up to me on the sidewalk
and told me that there were
a couple guys in a garage
in Northern California
with a converted Lotus
and that I had to go meet them
basically today. [ Chuckles ]
Anyone that wants
to start a car company
is at a minimum
radically ambitious,
often fairly arrogant,
and has to suspend disbelief
for a little while,
at least to see where it goes.
♪♪
-The simplest way to explain
why there haven't been
startup car companies
is that it's capital-intensive
but low-margin.
It costs something
on the order of $1 billion
to develop just a new car
and then to tool up
a factory for that.
What you have is
a product that enters
a brutally competitive
marketplace
with brands that have been there
for, in some cases, a century.
And then, even if you do sell
as many vehicles
as you can produce,
the margins simply
aren't that good.
It's really one of the most
difficult businesses
you can possibly get into.
-Often, when
Silicon Valley types
go and sell their company
for billions of dollars,
they start a VC fund and start
investing in other startups.
All of these companies have
sprouted up to make it easier
to find things
on the Internet
or to connect people on
social media or to get a taxi.
Whereas Elon Musk is like,
"I'm going to colonize Mars,
and I'm going to stop
climate change.
And by supporting me,
you can save the human race."
♪♪
-Once Elon started
making some money,
particularly after PayPal,
it's very clear that he wanted
attention, adulation, I think.
He wanted to be a heroic figure.
There's interviews of him,
you know,
as he's taking delivery
of his McLaren F1 supercar.
♪♪
-There are 62 McLarens
in the world
and I will own one of them.
There it is, gentlemen --
the fastest car in the world.
-Very clearly, he talks about
wanting to be
on the cover of Rolling Stone.
-I'd like to be on the cover
of Rolling Stone.
That'd be cool. [ Laughs ]
-He says repeatedly
that everyone told him
he was crazy to start
a car company when he did.
Which, of course,
leads to the question of, like,
why was he doing it?
He saw that
if he could be the guy
who could popularize
electric vehicles,
that that adulation that
he clearly cared about so much,
it was a good way to get that.
-It feels like
the people who are in this
are not in it
for the money or the glory.
-Well, you know, there's a lot
to be said for money and glory.
I wouldn't say that
those are unimportant.
Yes, I think there's
nothing wrong with
wanting to make money
or have a glorious outcome.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
-Electric vehicles have always
been driven by the bottom up,
by the community of enthusiasts
and happy warriors.
♪♪
Tesla did not realize the
original passionate community
and the asset that it had.
-Personally, I wake up every day
just excited for the future,
and this is, for the most part,
due to Elon and his companies.
I've always been
fascinated with space,
ever since I was a young child.
I can't remember a time
in which I wasn't hopeful
that humanity
would live in space.
[ Cheers and applause ]
When I first heard about what
was going on there at Tesla,
I was immediately excited
for the future.
-I think it's incredible
that we get to
be alive the moment
that Elon's alive.
We're watching the best business
be built in history.
That's going to change
the course of humanity,
and we get to watch it
in real time.
Screw Marvel. Screw Netflix.
The best content in the world
right now is the Tesla show.
♪♪
There's so few things
that rally humans together
optimistically around a cause.
And to me,
that's what Tesla is.
It's a positive cause
about the future
and making it brighter
and more sustainable.
We need more things like that
in the world, desperately.
♪♪
-This is like
the EV nerd heaven.
♪♪
-Busy enough, right?
-Oh, my goodness.
I'm so excited about
how many people are here.
The future is so bright.
-As long as it's got a plug,
you're winning.
-Exactly.
-That's true.
-That's right.
-Whatever works.
-We see thousands of people
come from across the country
in the US
just to get together
and sort of nerd out
with fellow EV folks.
-Now, do you see over there
they're doing, like, retrofits,
like conversions
of old vehicles.
-They've got a Cobra over there.
-A Cobra?
-A Cobra. Yeah.
-It's also very déjà vu
to the early days of EVs
where the gatherings
were smaller,
but the enthusiasm and
the sensation was very similar.
♪♪
-Because Tesla is perceived
as having been so successful,
Tesla proved
that you can do it.
You can start up an EV automaker
and succeed.
And I think this is why
the history of the company
is so important to understand --
because if Tesla really,
at every point on its journey,
lived and died by the realities
of its business,
of the economics
and the engineering
and things like that,
it wouldn't have made it.
Time and time again, it required
the faith that Elon Musk
is constantly cultivating
and leveraging to kind of
keep things moving along
when they could
have fallen apart.
♪♪
-For the first time
since the 1930s,
a true systemic financial crisis
is underway.
-The Dow tumbled
more than 500 points.
-America's auto industry
is running on fumes.
-In 2008, Tesla was,
by all accounts, about to die.
Elon Musk
didn't even have a house
because he sold his
and put the money into Tesla.
-He told the public
that a government loan
that Tesla had applied for
had essentially been approved
and was going to be
disbursed soon.
-What Tesla has done
is applied for funding
to develop lower-cost
mass-market vehicles.
-At the time he made
that announcement,
Tesla hadn't even submitted
the complete application
for that loan program.
This is really one of
the first examples of Musk
doing something that
he's now famous for,
which is announcing
that funding is secured
when it isn't actually.
When the chips are down,
Musk has learned
that he can meme, you know,
things into existence.
He can sort of say
that something has happened,
create the perception
that something has happened,
and the world
will rearrange itself
to make it have happened.
How is it that the perception
that Tesla has created
is so powerful that the facts
literally don't even matter?
-In the aftermath of 2008,
people were really mad
at the big banks.
People stopped trusting
traditional institutions,
and I think they were
looking for disruptors.
And Tesla is sort of
the ultimate disruptor
of this really old industry.
-Tesla goes public
on June 29th, 2010.
[ Cheering ]
Now is really an opportunity
for people to buy
and to be a part of the story.
It's very tied to Elon
and who Elon is
and how he does business.
-When the stock went public,
we were just sort of coming out
of the Great Recession.
It was not at all obvious
that Tesla was going to be
a major, major investment
opportunity.
-I think the community
has helped keep Tesla
going in darker financial times,
both originally, just trying
to grow the movement itself
and spreading the enthusiasm.
And then once
they could actually invest
at a retail level,
they would tout the stock
and try to get other people
to do the same.
♪♪
-I first bought
Tesla stock in 2011.
I was in junior year
of high school.
I ran over to my friend
Julian's house,
who was my neighbor
at the time.
We were obsessed
with Steve Jobs,
and I said, "Julian,
Elon Musk is
the next Steve Jobs.
This is going to happen.
Tesla's the next company.
And I know it sounds crazy,
but they're going to do it,
and I'm going all in."
And I was so stoked.
-I was out of college
for about four years
and I graduated
with a lot of student debt.
One of the things
I was looking to do
was generate more wealth
for myself.
When I started looking into
investing in stocks,
I came across Tesla
at that point.
They had a very vibrant
investing community
on this website
called Tesla Motors Club.
♪♪
There seem to be a lot of people
on those forums
that invested a lot of time
in the company
that I didn't find
for any other company.
♪♪
I was trying to put my money
behind something
that would change the world
in some way,
while at the same time,
you know,
I'm able to benefit
from that, as well.
That's part
of the mission, too.
♪♪
-Already, this investor's forum
was really distinct
in that they only wanted
good news about Tesla.
♪♪
They were completely focused
on the perception of the company
and making sure
that that perception
was completely positive.
It was really interesting to see
that sort of
radicalization process,
and it really was based
on Tesla as an investment.
-So, in the early days,
people were buying Tesla stock
because they wanted to bet on
the electric vehicle revolution.
And frankly, I didn't have
a cause in the world
that was optimistic,
that was a community,
that I could rally around.
[ Cheers and applause ]
It became, frankly,
to some degree, my religion
because I believed in supporting
the sustainable future
more than anything else
in my life.
-The ability
to own Tesla stock
is a new incremental outgrowth
of the fundamentally
co-creating the success
of this technology together.
These guys bought into
being able
to financially support
their heroes
and gain some success from it,
and it becomes kind of a
self-fulfilling prophecy
after a while
and inextricable
to tease out all of
the personal motivations
that might be underneath that.
-Three, two, one.
♪♪
-Both SpaceX and Tesla
sort of emerged
at around the same time
in the public consciousness.
Elon was seen as this
modern-day rocket man.
He's launching rockets
into space
and the Roadster felt
like a rocket on land.
And Elon starts
to become a celebrity.
-Mr. Musk.
How are you?
-Hi, Pepper. Congratulations
on the promotion.
-Thank you very much.
-Elon, how's it going?
Those Merlin engines
are fantastic.
-Oh, thank you.
-Yeah.
-Got an idea
for an electric jet.
-You do?
-Yeah.
-Then we'll make it work.
-Elon Musk has always had
this difficult relationship
with the media where he wants
coverage, he wants attention.
He wants to be a celebrity,
but only on his terms.
You know, I think that,
in turn, led to him
really embracing social media.
-This is a decade
before Elon buys Twitter,
and he's amassed
legions of followers,
and he's tweeting all the time.
He is willing to
throw away convention
and to share exactly
what he's thinking.
It becomes a powerful PR tool
because he can go
right to the people
who want to hear from him.
-You had on Twitter,
for the very first time,
a very extensive
and open social network.
So, people who were agitating
with one another
could convene
on the same hashtags.
For the Tesla brand, though,
it became something
where people could communicate
with Elon Musk.
And that, for some people,
felt like they hit the lottery.
♪♪
-Today is just about getting the
whole Tesla community together.
You can come here
and just completely geek out.
-I met some of these guys
mainly through social media.
-We have a wonderful club of
women here in the community.
Elon -- He's a visionary.
-It's just insane.
Like, there's
so many people here.
It's the largest Tesla meetup
in the world.
-When you first get
into a Tesla,
it literally will just change
the way you view
the purpose of a car.
♪♪
For me, I love technology
and community.
Did all the requirements,
and I was able to start
Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley.
What's so important about
Twitter and the Tesla community
really is the flat playing
ground that it is.
You can have 100 followers,
and Elon Musk,
he's going to respond to you.
My relationship with Elon
started through Twitter,
just talking about
how much I love my car,
and then obviously starting
this very prominent club
into what it is today.
I was able to score
an interview with Elon
by just engaging with him
and his comments.
So, he was making
a lot of comments
on who the co-founders
and the non-co-founders were
who played a role
in the early days of Tesla.
You know, might as well
shoot my shot.
Said, "Hey, let's document this.
Let's get it on record."
He said, "Sure."
Well, I just wanted to take
a moment and kind of step back.
So, the reason
we're here, right,
is because of
the early days of Tesla.
Right? There's a lot
of misinformation.
-Yeah.
-A lot of people just think
that someone else started it,
you joined later, and whatever.
But obviously
that's not true, so...
-That is not true.
And the reason
people think that is
because Eberhard has engaged
in a nonstop campaign
to try to effectively gain sole
credit for Tesla for himself.
And he's the worst person
I have ever worked with.
And that is saying something.
Okay?
I've worked
with some real assholes.
-Elon cares about
the origin story
because founders are the ones
that get the credit,
and everyone wants to be
the hero of their own story.
People overestimate
the psychology a little bit
and try to read
a little too hard into it
when his contribution,
even early on, was significant.
And I think he wants
to be recognized for that.
[ Cheering ]
-It was just a life moment.
I kind of had to pinch myself
several times.
But at the same time, it's not
like I was seeing this guy
as the richest person
in the world.
I had seen him as this person
who was literally struggling,
and then, finally, he's made it.
-Probably the most important
sort of signs of status
in that world is if Elon
mentions you on Twitter.
You get mentioned by Elon once,
and you're in the club.
If he mentions
you multiple times,
then you ascend to, like,
this kind of elite.
They're constantly competing
with each other
to identify not just
the topics and the stories
that are going
to get Elon's attention,
but then, like,
the takes on them,
that he's going to want
to either respond to or echo.
-Tesla spends zero money
on advertising and marketing.
All these other car companies
are paying huge advertising
budgets to media companies,
so they're really incentivized
not to trash them.
Tesla has none of this, like,
goodwill and free press.
What's very unique
about Tesla
is the way that their community
rallied around the Internet
to support the company
in this grassroots way.
Their products were so good
that you built social capital
by talking about the product.
-What we know from research
on social media
is that you might not trust
the local news,
you might not trust
national media,
but you might trust your uncle,
and you might trust your friend,
or you might trust
your colleague.
That parasocial relationship
that you build
with online audiences is crucial
for products or other
kinds of content to circulate.
♪♪
-Twitter is a really
powerful tool
because it lets
you have a voice
and it lets you connect
with people
that you otherwise
would have no connection with.
And being able to be seen
by people you look up to
is incredibly powerful.
The role that I've played has
been to support the community,
to make people smile,
to give people encouragement
when they're feeling down.
I built a video game
called "Cybertruck Simulator,"
and you can drive
a cybertruck around on Mars.
Creating the world
in which I want to live
includes finding people
that with similar interests.
It's creating the renewable
Earth that we all deserve,
and it's finding the people
who will go with me to Mars.
-So much of the Tesla culture
happens on Twitter.
That gives the person
at home a lot of agency
and a lot of connection,
and it builds up that demand.
-Tesla Motors today
announced plans
to ship its first all-electric
Model S sedan in June.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Yes!
-Whoo!
-When the Model S was released,
we knew it was going to be
an inflection point
in the EV movement.
-It gets all these
amazing reviews,
but it's really
expensive to make,
and it's really
expensive to buy,
and it's really
difficult to scale
in a way that will allow Elon
to launch the Model 3,
which is going to be
this affordable mass-market car
that makes Tesla into
this automotive giant.
-One, two, three!
-Tesla!
-Look at him go!
-So, in the meantime, Elon
sort of starts the hype train.
-That was everything
from Superchargers,
talking about autopilot,
and Tesla's future
in the driving automation
technology space.
-Tesla starts doing,
like, solar roofs.
It starts selling home
battery-backup systems.
[ Applause ]
It starts doing sort of
all of these things
in the interim to keep both
the hype and the dream alive
to get to the point where
the Model 3 can be introduced.
-He will say things that push
beyond the realm
of aspiration into fantasy.
-We're probably only
a month away
from having autonomous driving,
at least for highways.
The Model S and Model X,
at this point,
can drive autonomously with
greater safety than a person.
Next year, for sure,
we will have over
a million robotaxis on the road.
-Musk realized that once you
have a little bit of momentum,
if you pour hype onto that fire,
it just burns hotter.
That's essentially defined
the history of the company
ever since.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-We have an amazing product
to show you tonight.
I think you're going
to be blown away.
Do you want to see the car?
-Yeah!
-Model 3 launch,
specifically
in the Silicon Valley,
was a huge moment.
It was kind of like the iPhone
launch in a lot of ways.
-Folks started lining up
yesterday outside the store.
They are anxious to put
their names on the list.
-Tesla took 325,000 pre-orders
for the Model 3
immediately
after it was announced.
But it was a $1,000
refundable deposit,
meaning it didn't actually have
all that much money coming in.
♪♪
It was still in difficult
financial straits
and it still actually
had to figure out
how to build the cars
at a reasonable cost.
-They also had this incredibly
compressed timeline
to get it to market.
We're talking about getting
these really ambitious
production figures,
and journalists
in the space sort of knew,
you know, this is
not very realistic.
-Tesla -- the stock sinking
after reporting
a wider-than-expected loss
entering a bear market.
-This company has one thing
it seems to know
how to do very well --
lose money.
-It just so happened
that Tesla opened a new facility
where I lived at the time,
and I'm like,
"Holy crap, I have to apply."
When I came into Tesla,
the biggest challenge
facing the company
was the Model 3 ramp.
Around this time,
there was a lot of noise
outside of the company,
a lot of news articles
and sort of
this thing coming up that,
"Hey, Tesla is going
to go bankrupt."
-Do you have
a price target in mind?
-Well, we think
the equity is worthless.
So, how's zero?
♪♪
-It drove us to work as hard
as humanly possible
to prove those people wrong.
-Wall Street had a lot
of trouble understanding Tesla
because they couldn't put it
in a spreadsheet.
And I think it comes back
to Elon Musk
really being
Michael Jordan-esque
and everyone else, frankly, kind
of being like kindergartners
when it comes to business.
What's up, YouTube?
Welcome to HyperChange.
This is my new show
about the economy,
the financial system,
and the stock market.
I started my YouTube channel,
started documenting
what I was investing in.
They're taking
more market share.
They're building
on their mission.
As a whole,
the company is executing
and building its brand
and building sales
and building revenue.
It all seems like a good thing.
Started this kind of movement
of rallying together
tiny retail investors
to come behind a cause
and support a company
and build a community
that wasn't Wall Street
and that didn't have to go
through that traditional system.
♪♪
Tesla's entire brand image,
and particularly
for the community,
the sense of being an underdog
is a very important one.
Part of what makes that work
is the perception
that there are bad people
who are out to stop them
from making the world
a better place.
♪♪
-I believe Tesla first
caught my eye sometime in 2015.
♪♪
I was at the time working
in New York City in finance,
in a family office,
and it struck me
as an intriguing company
because it seemed to me
very overvalued
in the financial statements
and its filings.
I had in my youth been
a newspaper reporter,
and I was itching
to write again.
So, I started writing
for an online publication
called Seeking Alpha.
It was an easy platform
to get into,
and I started writing articles
about Tesla.
I wrote the first article,
and I was overwhelmed
with angry comments.
People didn't say,
"I think you made a mistake
in paragraph three
if you go check
the numbers there."
People said, "Elon Musk
is the savior of our time.
He is the Tony Stark.
He is the hero
we've been looking for.
The Earth faces
an environmental apocalypse
and he will save us from it.
And you are standing in the way.
You are standing
in the way of a visionary."
You begin to realize
this is not finance anymore.
This is something different.
This is a cult.
This is religion.
These are true believers.
♪♪
-I have seen these people
share their investment
portfolios, all in Tesla.
And those people are really
hinging all they have
on the financial success
of the organization.
So they will do
whatever it takes to get
at whatever is making
the stock go down.
-When I started
researching Tesla,
I found online
a video of an event,
and what he was doing
was demonstrating to an audience
in some auditorium battery
swapping.
-You have the choice
of a battery pack swap,
which is faster
than you can fill a gas tank.
-And he had a big SUV up there,
and he had a Tesla Model S.
And you couldn't
see it happening,
but they were taking
the battery out of the S
and putting in
a replacement battery.
Meanwhile, pumping gas
into the SUV.
And this video made it appear
that you could change
the battery on the Model S
faster than you could fill
the car with gasoline.
There was never
any battery swapping
that happened with Teslas,
but it was all a ploy
to get the California
Air Resources Board,
which at that point,
they were handing out
what are called ZEV credits,
zero-emission vehicle credits.
And Elon Musk got to capture
more of those, more subsidies
from California,
by claiming that his cars were
capable of battery swapping.
And watching that video
and seeing the reaction
of the crowd to Elon Musk,
they were orgasmic
in their pleasure
when he would make these claims.
-Hopefully this is what
convinces people, finally,
that electric cars
are the future.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-It was like watching
a religious revival.
And for me,
that was the moment I said,
"I don't trust anything
this guy is saying."
-So, going into 2018,
Tesla had begun manufacturing
of the Model 3
the previous summer,
and that was not going well.
This was the infamous
production hell
that Musk has talked
about quite a bit.
-I mean, and frankly, we're
going to be in production hell.
[ Chuckles ]
Welcome. Welcome.
[ Laughter ]
Welcome to production hell.
Tesla was really struggling
to make the Model 3,
particularly at the rates
and volumes
that they'd been telling
investors that they would.
-Every single Model 3 target
they've put out, they've missed.
-Tesla is blowing through
an insane amount
of raw material and cash
to make Model 3s,
and production is still
a nightmare.
-All of us were concerned
because this was the
make-or-break product for Tesla.
-There was so much bet
on that specific product
to come to fruition.
If the Model 3 doesn't ship
enough units per week,
you go -- it's over.
I can't tell you how many times
I would come home
and I would have a text
from a family or friend
that would say, "I'm hearing
Tesla is going to go bankrupt.
I'm hearing this and that
you should sell your shares,
so get out of there
when you can."
It's hard not to have
some doubt
because if you have everyone
coming at you from all angles,
media, friends, family
saying it's going to fail,
and you're out there working
14, 15, 16-hour days,
as hard as you possibly can
to make this thing reality --
It's extremely,
extremely difficult.
-This was why it was
the most intense moment ever,
because you had
so many people,
so many huge short sellers
attacking Tesla,
saying they weren't profitable,
they weren't going to make it.
-Simply put, short selling
is an investor saying,
"I think this company,
for example, is overvalued,
and I'm going to act
on my conviction."
They are the people that take
the garbage down to the curb.
And if there's
a garbage company,
they, in effect,
alert the market,
and information
is what markets function on.
-When a company goes bankrupt,
one of the things
that happens
is that their stock ticker --
in Tesla's case,
that's TSLA --
gets a Q
at the end of it.
And so, if Tesla
were to go bankrupt,
their stock would be listed
not under TSLA but TSLAQ.
And so, the short sellers
and the Tesla critics
started posting under this
cashtag on Twitter of $TSLAQ.
And it kind of coalesced
into sort of
a very loose, decentralized
community of people
who just think
Tesla is overvalued
and that Tesla is likely
to go bankrupt at some point.
-This is the period that Elon
begins to think
the world is against him.
He says, you know, "There's
all these Wall Street guys
who are betting against Tesla,
and it's becoming
a self-fulfilling prophecy
because they are going to drive
Tesla's stock price down
and cause the company to fail
through their information
campaign alone."
-A lot of short sellers
really emerged, I think,
during the 2018 time
because this company
was losing a lot of money
and they were trying
to ramp up production
and literally building a car,
probably in the most expensive
place on the planet.
-Short sellers realized
that the valuation
was based on narrative
and was based on a lot
of expectations
that were not necessarily well
rooted in a good understanding
of what's even possible,
economically,
in the car business.
-People want to short Tesla
because they think
they're smarter than Elon Musk
and can make money doing it.
Betting against a company is
basically having negative vibes
as your full-time job.
"Hope our future
to go electric stops
so that I can make
a little profit with my bet
short selling a company."
-We've been short Tesla
a hell of a lot longer
than I ever thought I'd have to
be short Tesla. [ Laughs ]
-Musk released these Tesla
satin short shorts online
as a direct jab
at short sellers of Tesla stock.
-People that are betting
against a company like Tesla --
they're against the world.
They're not taking the care and
consideration into the planet.
-People in finance who,
evaluating Tesla
as a financial investment,
were stunned
that it had become a cult.
It had become so irrational,
and a lot of them
expected it to fall to Earth.
I felt like if I'm going
to write about Tesla
and say that it's an overvalued
company, for whatever reason,
I should at least
have some skin in the game.
That's when I first
bought my first put.
I always kept it
a small part of my portfolio.
What I failed adequately
to appreciate at the time
is that a cult
is a powerful thing.
A religious force
is much more powerful
than an accountant
doing debits and credits.
There's no consistency required,
no critical thinking required,
no intellectual integrity
required.
It's whatever Elon says
because he is our God.
He is our electric Jesus.
[ Audience shouting ]
-You go back to 2018,
and Elon has promised
they're going to come out
with 5,000 cars a week.
Well, they're not even close
to half of that.
And he makes a joke.
He posts a picture of himself
with a sign that says,
"Bankwupt!"
And he thought it was hilarious.
The investors did not
find it as funny.
Once you have a publicly
traded company,
what comes out of your mouth
can affect the stock price.
♪♪
-Ever since production started
for the Model 3,
the tenor of the quarterly calls
started to get
a little bit more tense.
Tesla financial situation
was not great.
The manufacturing
was not going well.
And so, he was getting more
and more tough questions
on these quarterly calls.
-So, I have been covering
Tesla's earnings since 2016.
We'll make a video
after every Tesla earnings call,
talking about
all the analyst's questions,
what I thought of the results,
and this became
my most popular video.
What up, guys? Welcome to
another episode of HyperChange.
Today, I want to do
a recap and analysis
of Tesla's earnings call
that happened this Wednesday.
And eventually,
one of my viewers was like,
"Gali, why don't you go
on the conference call
and ask Elon a question,
represent us,
the retail shareholder.
That would be so incredible."
And so, then I created
a tweet and I was like,
"Yo, Elon, 180 people
and like $20 million
are vouching for me
to ask a question
crowdsourced by retail investors
on the Tesla conference call.
And Elon replies, "Okay."
I totally lose my shit.
I slide into
my roommate's room, Lee.
I'm like, "Oh, my God!
Elon replied!
Like, this is crazy!"
-Wall Street investors
start asking Elon
all these
difficult questions,
like "Where's the Model 3?"
Why aren't you
shipping more cars?
Are you the right person
to be leading Tesla?"
And this really pisses Elon off.
-So, I'm listening to the call.
I'm in my room.
I have my questions ready,
like, sweating
because I'm so nervous.
And then I hear Elon
getting more and more pissed.
-And then he goes, alright,
like, screw these
boneheaded questions.
"Let's go to YouTube."
In my head, I'm like,
"Oh, my God, that's me."
-And then, they,
like, tap me in.
-And I just start
asking questions,
and Elon starts having fun.
-We have this incredible
conversation,
and it really sort of opened
the door to, wait,
there's a whole 'nother group
of Tesla investors
who don't care about
this quarter tiny number.
We care about all these
very important, strategic,
long-term questions
that weren't getting asked.
And finally, they were getting
some light of day.
-The old Wall Street analysts
don't get it.
From his perspective,
I think he just thought
that retail investors
are very forward thinking.
They're going to step out
of the box
and see, like,
what's the reality?
-This earnings call
made people think of Enron,
which was this commodities
trader infamous for perpetuating
the biggest financial fraud
in American history,
particularly this point
where the CEO
called an investor an asshole
for asking tough questions.
-The analyst wasn't an asshole.
Jeff Skilling was a crook,
and he ended up in prison.
And for this moment where
Elon Musk says,
"You analysts are boring
and boneheaded,"
I mean, it certainly rhymes
if it's not identical
with what happened at Enron.
-I was super happy
because it validated my work,
that it actually mattered,
that someone like Elon Musk
would take it seriously.
-He says it to Galileo,
not to Copernicus,
not to Einstein,
but a guy actually
named Galileo on the call.
-Joining us now is our friend
Galileo Russell.
-Galileo Russell.
-I said, "This is my moment.
I'm going to work my ass off.
I'm going to
make videos nonstop."
And that was kind of,
like, the rocket fuel
to take my channel
to the next level
and essentially make it
so I could make enough money
to live and do all that stuff.
Literally every single dollar in
profit from my YouTube channel
went into Tesla stock.
-Tesla's hype machine sort of --
it had become franchised
at this point.
It was no longer just
Musk himself doing the hype.
It wasn't even just
one or two blogs.
It had become this sort
of decentralized thing.
-Elon is always coming up
with new ideas,
new ways to do things.
The process is often messy,
and he doesn't hide it.
And so, people often say
that he's nuts, he's crazy,
and they often bet against them,
whether it's with their words
or with their money.
And a lot of times,
they're wrong.
[ Cheers and applause ]
So in 2018, Elon is running
SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink,
which is a company that's trying
to create a computer interface
between human intelligence
and super-computer intelligence.
He also has the Boring company,
which is trying to revolutionize
transportation on the planet.
And there is just
this media attention
swirling around
everything he does.
[ Reporters clamoring ]
-2018 is really when Elon
became a household name.
And this all really happened
when he slid
into the DMs of Grimes,
the pop star,
and they started dating.
And they showed up
together at the Met Gala,
and the tabloids
absolutely lost it.
Elon went from being
like this Tony Stark,
Iron Man type engineering
superstar nerd
to like a regular celebrity
who picks fights with people,
is in all the tabloids,
shit-talking his haters,
generally, like,
causing chaos online.
-2018 was really
when he started
to become kind of
a high-volume poster.
He was getting involved
in things that were sort of less
obviously things that made sense
for him to get involved with
because he's online,
because he's, you know,
really using that platform
to kind of keep attention on him
and to build up
his own celebrity.
It was a natural thing.
-Elon's presence was felt
[Chuckles] quite largely,
especially through social media.
He goes to Twitter
to make announcements.
And that's just for everybody.
It's for the people
at the company.
It's for people
outside the company.
When Elon tweeted,
it became news.
♪♪
-Rescue divers in Thailand
are searching
for a group of children
believed to have been trapped
in a flooded cave network
in northern Thailand.
-12 young football players
and their coach.
-In the summer of 2018,
this boys' soccer team in
Thailand went hiking in a cave.
The cave got flooded,
and they got stuck.
And it became this
international media frenzy.
It was all anyone
was talking about.
"How are these boys
going to get saved?"
-Elon Musk is always sort of
looking for opportunities
to market himself.
And he proposed
that his SpaceX team
would be able to develop
some kind of submarine
that would allow the rescuers
to bring these kids
out of the cave.
-After Elon tweets
about the submarine,
this rescue diver
rebuffs Elon's idea.
-Elon Musk was
deeply wounded by this
and essentially called him
a pedophile on Twitter.
-Shares of the electric
car company Tesla
fell sharply Monday after
the company's CEO, Elon Musk,
accused an organizer
of the Thai cave rescue
of being a pedophile
and wrote...
-One thing that people
don't quite understand
about the history
of the Internet
is how different communities
have formed around this idea
that there's a pedophile lurking
around every corner online.
So, when Musk decided to accuse
the man of being a pedophile,
many people were shocked
and horrified.
But that kind of insult
is so common on the Internet.
-For some folks at the company,
it probably swayed
their opinion for a few days.
I think folks were probably,
you know,
kind of questioning, like,
"What's going on with this?
He's kind of like -- Maybe
he's losing it a little bit."
-Particularly with
the "pedo guy" incident,
there was an initial reaction
of just, like, shock.
For me, the shock really came,
like, within 24 hours
when all of a sudden,
the fans got over their shock
and were sort of like, "Oh,
this is actually not so bad."
And it kind of made me
realize that, like,
wow, these people
will forgive anything.
-I saw Elon trying
to be the hero.
I saw him doing what he could
with the resources that he had
to save lives.
It was something that
didn't need his attention
but that was
an important issue.
Elon cares for all of humanity,
and he definitely showed it.
-I think the reason
why he has so much support
is that he is
very visibly imperfect.
I think there's a lot of people
that appreciate that.
They see somebody
who is not polished,
but they view him as
very capable of big successes.
♪♪
-Unfortunately,
that is going to be
part of what comes
with following Elon Musk
is he's going to say
some stuff like that
that is just potentially going
to rub you the wrong way.
But I think when you
step back and realize
this is probably the greatest
inventor of our time,
if not ever,
you kind of weigh
the pros and cons.
-As a sociologist,
we're inundated
with thinking about cults.
Sociology 101 is like, what is
the basis of social solidarity?
The basis of social solidarity
is some belief in something
bigger than oneself.
Are people that are invested
in Tesla that fanatical,
that they are expressing
cult-like behavior?
Probably.
But when we think about this,
there is a kind of religiosity
in innovation itself,
a belief in something to come,
some kind of redemption story,
a future with
limitless possibility,
that it enhances our lives.
♪♪
-The summer of 2018
in particular was a really,
I think, a really
chaotic time for Elon Musk.
-Elon tweets, "Funding secured,"
that he was going to take Tesla
private at $420 a share.
-Who was providing
the financing?
-He's going to get some flak
for that.
-Billions of dollars
have been made and lost,
set in motion by this tweet.
-And then, around that time,
he also went
on Joe Rogan's massive podcast
and smokes weed on the show.
[ Elon chuckles ]
-You probably can't
because of stockholders, right?
♪♪
-I mean, it's legal, right?
-It's totally legal.
-Okay.
-There's tobacco
and marijuana in there.
That's all it is.
-The public reaction
to all of this is like,
what is Elon doing?
-I think Elon was really
kind of pushed against a wall.
He was trying to ramp
Model 3 production.
People said it was impossible,
and he was literally
doing the impossible
in trying to get this car out.
And I think that
that was weighing on him.
-Elon's behavior
in 2018 was, I think,
a little bit concerning
if you were a shareholder.
I don't really care
what he tweets.
I just care how he runs
his company.
But to be fair, at the time,
I put out a video that said,
"Dear Elon, like, you need
to get your shit together."
Elon Musk, in my opinion,
you have become Tesla's
biggest existential threat.
But the short sellers cannot
stop you from building cars,
from succeeding with Tesla,
from building amazing products,
from changing the world.
But they can remove you as CEO
if you keep tweeting.
And I just think
you're one tweet away
from really ruining Tesla.
-We were all trying to really
fight the traditional media
because traditional media
was just putting out
whatever clickbait
that they could throw out there.
It was kind of like
us against the world.
During those days where he had
probably very late nights,
very dark moments,
we were there supporting him
and backing him up.
Unfortunately, there's certain
heights of fandom
that can get really
out of hand really fast.
Yes, there's an aspect
of the fandom
that was all about the stock,
but then a lot of it is just
kind of celebrity fantasies.
They want to be the most,
like, Elon fanatic,
but then that becomes
who they are.
It becomes their identity.
The people that have
those interactions
are going to become people
that are part of the problem.
-A common criticism
that one hears
if, like me, you write
critically about Tesla
is that you are spreading
what's called FUD --
fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
To me, fear,
uncertainty, and doubt
are important elements
of being a good investor.
-When somebody
is spreading the FUD,
they would often reference
the community as a cult,
which is nothing more
than trying
to lower our standard of
confidence within the community.
But ultimately, it's a cult
of kindness, in a sense.
It's a cult
of sustainable energy.
It doesn't have
a negative connotation.
-The community really mobilized
in a grassroots way to say,
"I'm going to make
YouTube videos,
you're going to make tweets,
I'm gonna make this
kind of YouTube video.
I'm going to do
this sort of event."
And we just rallied around
trying to spread the good word
about Tesla
in a grassroots way.
-I actually had a neighbor
who actually was showing
a video of the car autopilot
taking it into a wall.
But I was like, "I know that
exit. It's Saratoga Avenue."
So, I went there,
and I reenacted and I was like,
"There is no way that autopilot
is going to take you
into a wall."
Perfect. See? It was seamless.
-It was fear, uncertainty,
doubt everywhere.
And what we did back
in those days was fight hard.
We disproved, like,
all of the myths,
and we would go and kind of
sacrifice our own time,
our own mental sanity,
just to tell somebody on
the Internet that they're wrong.
♪♪
-At this time, Elon becomes
maybe the most accessible
businessman on the Internet.
And it's sort of this,
like, self-feeding ecosystem
where Elon is talking to people
on Twitter all the time,
and people on Twitter are
talking about Elon all the time.
And he becomes just this huge
topic of conversation.
-All the people that did
believe in them and said,
"We're going to keep
giving you capital.
I'm going to buy public shares
in the market
to keep the equity price up
so you can keep doing
secondary offerings
so we can keep this going
because we believe
in you, Elon."
We shouldn't allow them
to go bankrupt.
And I'm buying shares
hand over fist
and investing in this company.
-You have all these
people out there,
just saying
all these negative things.
-Tesla's going to get crushed.
-He hasn't got a network.
-He can't service the cars.
-Tesla shares
fell 12% overnight.
-But then you have a sub
segment of the population
now utilizing social media
with Twitter, in this case,
spreading positivity.
For somebody that's
working there, it's gigantic.
-The Internet is designed
so that ideas from the fringes
or from the bottom up
or these decentralized nodes
can have an effect
on the greater conversation,
especially social media.
When a large group of people
are creating their own memes
and are part of some campaign
that is bigger than themselves,
it can have these
lasting influences
on all of the other networks
that they're plugged into
and sharing with.
-Elon, these companies,
and his Twitter fan base
have evolved together.
Where you really see the impact
is when he's having a hard time,
and you see these fans
rally around him
and telling him how important
his mission is.
The negative is that
some of those fans
attack people who disagree.
So, it's kind of
this double-edged sword.
-There came a point when certain
Tesla fans started to believe
that if you didn't think they
should get credit for everything
and could do no wrong,
you're a hater.
The quickest way to get
nasty notes in your inbox
is to say anything about Tesla
that was short of 100% glowing.
-In July 2018,
I had just returned to work.
One day, one of my colleagues
came into my office and said,
"Hey, our boss just got
a phone call from Elon Musk.
And Elon Musk says
that you are saying
terrible things about Tesla.
He's going to stop you,
he's going to sue you.
And unfortunately,
that means that our boss
is going to be sued, too."
So, I told my colleague,
"Okay, I don't want our boss
dragged into a lawsuit.
I will stop writing
about Tesla,
and Montana Skeptic will
exit stage right from Twitter."
What kind of human being --
you know, at that point,
one of the richest people
in the world --
wants to not only shut down
somebody that's writing
critically about him,
but to do it
in a vindictive way,
to cost them their livelihood.
-Among the Tesla fans
and Tesla as a company,
there are a lot of ways
in which they feel
the means justifies the ends.
Elon's saving the world.
Tesla's saving the world.
Therefore, whatever happens,
whether it's treating
your employees badly
or calling someone
a pedophile online,
it's all fine.
It's all excusable.
♪♪
-This tumult of 2018 --
it was sort of a stress test
for his fandom.
And his fandom, by and large,
stuck with him.
Once you were
on the other side of that,
and that was the reality,
all of a sudden,
Musk looks more powerful
than ever,
because what could
possibly stop him now?
♪♪
-At the end of 2018,
Tesla announces that it
has finally turned a profit.
It started to ship
the Model 3.
It's finally out,
and the narrative
around Tesla changes,
and the narrative
around Elon changes.
-Is the magic of Elon Musk back?
-Tesla -- it reported
a surprise profit.
-Maybe he's a little crazy,
but Tesla's finally
making money.
The dream is really happening.
-One of the most
important lessons from Tesla
is that however you do it,
if you are able to build a cult,
it can be
an incredibly powerful tool.
If you can rally more people
and you can create
enough financial and other kinds
of incentives
to get more people
on your side,
you can really kind of drown
anything out.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Growing global concerns
over the coronavirus.
Health officials
sounding the alarm
about how fast it is spreading.
There is some fear creeping
into the markets now.
-The Dow closed
down by more than 3% again.
-When the pandemic hit,
there was sort of this initial,
very brief bear market
where sort of
everything went down.
But then very quickly
after that,
we sort of entered
this very weird period
where sort of everyone's
at home, everyone's in lockdown,
and everyone
is trading stocks online.
♪♪
-What's with GameStop?
-AMC stocks' wild ride.
-What are people doing
buying the stock?
-What's infinity stock
when it goes up that much?
It's infinity money.
-If it weren't for COVID to put
people in front of screens,
it might not have ever happened
this way.
-All of a sudden, we get this
roaring bull market,
and Tesla is
like the poster boy.
-Stock market for Tesla
is skyrocketing.
-Tesla will be added
to the S&P 500.
-Electric carmaker shares
have already surged
over 500% in the past year.
-It makes me sad that so many
people shorted Tesla
and that they tried
to tear down the company,
but in some ways, damn,
it made the victory sweeter.
-This is the time
where the whole concept
of a meme stock
sort of comes into being.
-You are gonna be so happy you
stayed with Bob Sugar
because I am
a fucking terminator.
-A meme stock is a kind of stock
that a group of people
get behind,
not because they think
they're going to make money,
but because they think that
there's some kind of social
or political message
they can send by purchasing it.
-I bought at 40 bucks.
GameStop to the moon.
-[ Laughs ]
-The way that Elon seems
to have fun
is through these moments
that expose the corruption
or the fissures in some of
our most important institutions.
So, as the phenomenon
started to gain steam,
Elon Musk encouraged people
to go with this and use GameStop
in order to expose a bunch
of these short sellers
and have this really
big impact on the economy.
♪♪
-Social media became a
tremendous and effective vehicle
for retail investors
who did not know each other
to coalesce
and take joint action
so they could jointly run up
the price of a stock
without knowing anything
about the company.
And none of them had
the first inkling
about the fundamentals
of these companies.
♪♪
-So, when Tesla started
to really succeed
and I was like,
"Okay, I'm up triple,
I'm up quadruple,
I'm up quintuple,"
it was really exciting
and felt good
and sort of changed my financial
situation for my own life.
My big thing is, like,
Tesla's fucking succeeding.
I drive down the road
and I see Teslas everywhere
and every single one
gives me a smile.
That's the part to me
that I'm like,
"Fuck yeah, we won," and, like,
really makes me happy.
-Tesla and its surging
stock price have made Elon Musk
the new richest person
in the world.
He's worth more
than $185 billion.
-In 2018, 2019,
through those really dark days,
we had no idea it was going to
go 10X, 15X.
That's just a joke.
To be able
to watch the stock
literally almost go 10X was
kind of a pat on the back,
but, really,
we already knew that.
That's why we were
all doing this.
-When the stock price
exploded in 2020,
for me, it was like, "Well, I
knew this was going to happen."
It was a very proud time
for the community
to be recognized globally.
-And so, you started to see,
like, young people
retire on their Tesla stock
and, like, tweet about it.
-The fact that there's a term
like "Teslanaires" [Chuckles]
says lots about how
the growth of their stock
changed the lives
of certain people
that would never have seen
that kind of wealth.
-It really felt like we won,
and now it was
just a matter of seeing
how far we could
take this thing.
-So, how much money
did you make?
-I'm not going to tell you.
[ Laughs ]
A decent amount. Yeah.
But I'm not
going to tell you. Yeah.
-I went from living
the corporate rat race
and, like, pretty much
just being broke
to, like, being a mogul.
Seven-figure net worth.
Like, who knows what's next?
I'm going to start
a crazy company.
My career is a rocket ship.
♪♪
-When I decided to work
at Tesla, I took a pay cut.
My hours basically doubled.
It was a huge risk
that I took at that time,
and it felt like
the risk paid off.
♪♪
Welcome, everybody.
The last few days have been
extremely eventful
in the Tesla world,
as I'm sure you know...
Being invested in the company
allowed me to purchase
my first house.
It allowed me to purchase
our investment properties.
It's allowed us to build
sort of a framework
where my wife and I
can do sort of whatever we want.
I feel like I'm the luckiest
person in the world
because who am I
that I got a chance
to have this sort of freedom
because of this investment
in the most,
like, weird company
that's ever existed.
-My only regret was, like,
"Well, I should have
bought more, right?"
But it is okay.
It is what it is.
There's been a huge influx
in people
that are only interested
in the company for the money,
for the potential gains,
for the day trading.
That to me,
that's not why I'm there.
-Tesla has matured
into a real car company.
It's selling way
more cars than ever.
It's still profitable.
But Tesla's high stock price
is more tied
to the futuristic dream
of Tesla,
where it's not just
a car company,
it's a self-driving car company.
It sells solar energy,
battery storage,
and it really redefines
the energy paradigm
in the entire world.
-By 2020, I was no longer
expecting Tesla's stock
to be based on anything related
to actual EVs or sales
or any other business
fundamentals. [ Laughs ]
So, I was pretty
properly indoctrinated
to how wild that ride
had become by then.
-Tesla is just
the ultimate meme stock,
but it's nonsense.
It's an automobile manufacturer.
It's in an industry
that is capital intensive,
that is low margin,
that is highly competitive,
and all those things
will remain true about it.
-So, how much money
did you lose?
-I haven't totaled it up
exactly.
I would guess it's somewhere
between $200,000 and $300,000.
The people propping up Tesla,
they fall into two camps --
the very cynical
and the very deluded.
I say they're deluded.
I say this is not
a new paradigm.
Time will tell.
♪♪
-Elon Musk has been obsessed
with Twitter for a decade.
He used Twitter to build
this huge following of superfans
who do his bidding.
And now he owns the whole thing.
-Can't help it.
Let that sink in.
-It's a Twitter bloodbath.
Nearly 4,000 fired
in one fell swoop.
-Many Twitter staff woke up
locked out
of their work laptops,
finding out by e-mail
that they no longer have a job.
-Twitter is where he creates
his perceptions.
It's his most powerful tool
in his most important work.
And so, it makes sense
that he'd want to sort of
vertically integrate
his operations into that.
-When I first heard
Elon wanted to buy Twitter,
I was surprised.
But the more I thought about it,
it made me extremely excited
as a Twitter user
because Elon Musk is, like,
the biggest Twitter user.
He knows firsthand the problem
with the platform.
-We've been trained to think
that people with a lot of money
have intentions that are not
necessarily for the people.
They're trying to achieve
something for themselves.
From the perspective
of an Elon Musk,
I believe that he has
a track record that shows
that he is doing things
because he feels like
they're right for people
and for humanity.
He wants to ensure
there is free speech,
a platform where people
can share ideas freely.
-Immediately after Musk
took over,
hate-filled tweets
increased substantially.
-Elon Musk is the very
opposite of a First Amendment
or free-speech hero.
He professes to believe in it
in the abstract,
but when he is criticized,
his opponents must be shouted
down, shut down, and punished.
-So, there's this old saying --
"Politics is downstream
from culture."
And to that, I would add
that culture is downstream
from infrastructure.
The way that we are able
to communicate with each other
is very important
for the kinds of issues
that we take up as a public
and decide to solve.
I think he originally
wanted to buy Twitter
because of the social
and political impact
that he could have
if he owned this platform.
If he owned it, he could shape
culture wars to come.
He could shape
public conversation,
and he could have an influence
on political agendas.
And so, Elon is at
a distinct advantage
being at the helm of that,
rather than being
on the sidelines
and watching someone else
have that kind of power.
-Elon Musk has signed up
for his biggest challenge yet,
and that's because Twitter
is this marketplace of ideas,
and it's this place that makes
almost all of its money
through advertising.
Advertisers don't want to put
their products up for sale
next to Nazis
and hate speech.
-I think what it shows,
really, is that he has become
so isolated and so wealthy
and just so convinced
of his own ability
to turn anything
into a success,
that he was incredibly sort of
thoughtless and impulsive
about how he went
about this thing.
And it's fascinating now because
he stuck and as a result,
people are starting
to realize...
♪♪
...he's not actually a genius.
He's not actually
right about everything.
And I think that that's one
of the reasons why perception
is really starting
to shift around the guy.
♪♪
-Oh, it's gonna fly away
like a snail.
-Not.
-Yeah.
♪♪
-Whoo!
-Cheers to Gali and friends.
-To Gali!
-Cheers to you guys.
Thank you guys for coming.
Alright. What up, everybody?
Welcome to Why Tesla Matters.
Thank you all
for coming through today
and tuning in on YouTube.
Today, we're going to talk --
The real good thing about
the Tesla community is
it's expanding.
I think it's
one of the fastest-growing
"cults," you could call it,
or people who believe
something in the world.
And it's all these people
who are just on board
with the "why."
Like, we need to go sustainable.
We need to electrify the world.
Tesla's just a piece of that.
So, I hope it inspires
more of these movements.
[ Applause ]
♪♪
-I think that entire community
should feel validated
because they have scraped and
pulled and nudged and prodded
and brought this
into being in a way
that would not necessarily
have happened otherwise.
♪♪
-When you have something
that's grand,
it's going to attract
all kinds of people.
And when it's really
being driven by somebody
who appears to be passionate
and behind a very,
very large mission,
a subsegment of those people
will act in ways
that could incite people
to think of that company
or mission as a cult.
-So, first,
I want to say I love you.
[ Laughter ]
-I love you, too.
-You're awesome.
-Yeah, I think it misses
a lot of nuance.
What gets lost is the fact that
it's a very strange, unique,
weird company that operates
like no other company,
and a time that's like
no other time in the world.
-When you believe in nothing,
you'll believe in anything.
Elon Musk is
an illustration of that.
He is a secular religion
for a lot of people
because so many currents
converge with him.
The idea that we need
to save the earth.
He is turning his back on
Wall Street's stolid boringness.
I suppose we need
something to believe in.
But when it causes you
to suspend critical thinking,
when it causes you to embrace
dangerous fantasies,
it's not a good thing.
-I think when you look
at Elon's fan base
and Elon's success,
there is this bit of caution
that's important
because when you're surrounded
by people who agree with you,
want to impress you, fear you,
sometimes you get too far
removed from the truth
as it needs to be told.
♪♪
-I think the examples
of Tesla and of SpaceX
has served
a really aspirational role.
Some of the polarization
that we're seeing generally
in our society
is led by not just Elon,
but people like that.
They sort of go out there
and behave in a way
that also make people
look at it and go,
Oh, that's the way to succeed.
I got to do more of that.
I would like to think
it's possible
to have Tesla-style success
without some of
the Elon style tactics.
It doesn't say much
for all of us
if that's the only way
to succeed.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪