Elon Musk Flirts with Conspiracy Theories About Texas Mall Shooting | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk Flirts with Conspiracy Theories About Texas Mall Shooting

rollingstone.com

12 pointshn20179 comments

How does he have time to constantly write tweets on every single thing? I get it that he now has an big incentive to drive engagement on his platform, but he used to do tweet a lot in the past as well. Since a majority of his tweets are replies, that might also imply he spends a lot of time doom scrolling Twitter.

That's not even close to the main issue. The issue is he is spreading false stories involving far right-wing conspiracies, in this case involving neo-nazis

> Responding to a tweet that referred to this fact as a “psyop” — short for a psychological operation, usually employed by counterintelligence military personnel — Musk said it was indeed “the weirdest story ever or a very bad psyop!”

Nusk seems isolated and paranoid. Why does he engage with obviously mentally ill individuals and their paranoid fantasies when a normal person would tell them to get help?

Example 1000 of his disingenuous, bad faith behavior

musk writes a tweet that drives engagement on the platform that he owns

It drives engagement for his account. I doubt very much it's helping with user acquisition/retention.

Incidentally officials have acknowledged his 'neo-nazi ideation' though they've held off identifying a motive. If you peruse his online footprint it's rapidly apparent that he's been suicidal for years primarily due to a dysfunctional family background and difficulty in forming personal relationships. Right-wing ideology serves as explanatory framework/coping mechanism roadmap for a lot of lonely and dissatisfied young men, but the more the odds tilt against them the more likely they are to end up blackpilled. Arguably, some of the smarter/more manipulative figures in that movement invest effort in maximizing that, because martyrs make great recruiting tools.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/09/texas-mall-g...

Ironic comment in a thread about conspiracy theories.

There are right wing groups that specifically advocate 'martyrdom' and publish material glorifying mass shooters and other acts of political violence, others that emphasize the inevitability of death and provide instructions for how to plan and carry out such actions. I write about this professionally and have a huge collection of such materials; I'm describing rather than theorizing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com