An Open Letter to Elon Musk

On power, loneliness, and the exhausting myth of the misunderstood genius.

Elon Musk,

I remember the exact moment I realized you were going to be the villain. It was that 2012 60 Minutes interview when Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan dismissed your commercial spaceflight ambitions. You looked hurt. Not angry, not defiant. Just hurt.

I knew then that you would spend the rest of your life trying to make sure no one could make you feel that way again. I even looked at my dad and said “I think we just watched a villain origin story in real time.”

Damn, I really should’ve bought a lottery ticket.

Over a decade later, you’ve built - or should I say amassed an empire. Tesla. SpaceX. Neuralink. Starlink. Twi—I mean X. You have more wealth, power, and influence than most world leaders. You’ve made yourself unavoidable, woven into the very infrastructure of modern life in ways that can’t be ignored. You’ve positioned yourself closer to the center of power than most career politicians. A $277 million donation, and what did that buy you? A vanity title in a department designed to gut the very institutions that people (not you) rely on.

Tesla, SpaceX, and your other ventures have collected over $20 billion in government funding, which makes sense seeing as how the departments taking the biggest hits from your brand of so-called ‘efficiency’ (NASA, USAID, the Department of Education) just happen to be the ones that don’t serve your interests.

Yet, for all that reach, all that control, you still haven’t gotten what you actually want.

People don’t like you.

They admire what you’ve built. They watch what you do. They tolerate your presence because they have to. But when there’s nothing left to gain; when the deal is signed, when the meeting is over, when the cameras are off, you are alone. Not because you’re a radical thinker. Not because you’re controversial. But because, at your core, you are f*cking exhausting.

For all your claims of brilliance, you don’t know how to interact with people in any way that isn’t transactional. Every conversation is a power struggle. Every disagreement is an attack. You don’t discuss ideas, you present them. You don’t engage with people, you talk at them. And the moment someone challenges you, the moment someone refuses to feed your ego, you turn hateful, spiteful, and small.

You’re not the next Einstein, the next Hawking, the next Jobs. You didn’t build Tesla. You didn’t invent reusable rockets. You bought your way into history, but as the man desperately trying to convince the world that he belongs alongside the greats. The people that you actually admire don’t respect you. The people who actually build things don’t want to work with you. Because they know the truth: you’re not one of them.

Your most loyal fans are Twitter accounts with anime profile pictures and usernames like "BasedRedPill420."

I assume that’s why you surround yourself with sycophants instead of equals. Why you fire employees for questioning you. Why you block journalists for pointing out inconsistencies. Why your companies operate in a constant state of absolute disaster. You can’t be told no.

So let me be the one to say it: Some thoughts, some ideas, some plans - they suck. That’s just how it is. Yours are no exception (And, frankly, neither are mine. Most recently? This letter).

You built your entire identity around the idea that intelligence and success should be enough. That if you were the smartest, richest man in the room, people would have to respect you. That they’d want to. But respect isn’t obedience. It isn’t fear. It isn’t manufactured applause from people who are only there because they need something from you.

You don’t take on power, you take control. You didn’t challenge institutions until you had successfully planted yourself above them. You pick fights with people who can’t fight back. Employees. Journalists. Former fans. You mock people who used to believe in you, then panic when they stop giving a damn about your work. You claim you don’t care what anyone thinks, but everything you do proves otherwise. The erratic decisions. The desperate need to be seen as funny, as charming, as brilliant. The way you bend over backward to impress the worst people imaginable, mistaking their approval for popularity.

This isn’t strategy. You’re not some misunderstood genius playing five-dimensional chess. This is all just one (unfortunately) very powerful man on a mission to buy the one thing money will never be able to give him.

And for all the power you hold, you’ll still always be the loneliest man in every room.

Sincerely,
The Narrator

P.S Checkmate.

DISCLAIMER: This is an opinion. If you disagree, cool. If you’re thinking about suing me, that’s honestly super embarrassing for you. Log out of your burner accounts. Go outside. Ask yourself why you care so much. Maybe even pull yourself up by the bootstraps and try having a real job for once. If, after all of that, you still think suing me is a good idea, I’ll just give you the 46 cents in my bank account.

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If you’re looking for a morally acceptable way to feed the capitalist machine, consider supporting your Narrator. 🖤🌙

Until the next story,

—The Narrator.

P.S. If you liked this, I think you’ll love these.