this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
470 points (98.8% liked)

News

25415 readers
4142 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I am ashamed that I used to be a somewhat vocal advocate of Musk and Tesla.

Don't be ashamed that you got scammed; continue channeling that energy into being as vocal about how these people are giant frauds.

I was never an advocate for the guy at all, but for that reason my I expect that anything I have to say about the subject will likely resonate less and be less effective with people who were pulled in by the guy. You are probably correct that you have persuaded others to like him and a good atonement for that is to be as active and vocal now in opposition. I also think it's important to include "I was once fooled by this moron" as well because it gives others the permission to be vulnerable alongside you.

EDIT: PS: For future reference, a heuristic for avoiding getting duped into cults of personality is to watch for when something that should be larger than a single person (e.g. an eco-friendly car company, a political movement, a religious movement, a "wellness" movement, a philosophy) becomes all about worshiping some guy or gal. At that point it's probably a cult, a scam, or a combination of both.

I don't know why, but it seems like many are primed to believe that some magical guy or gal is capable of solving complex problems single-handedly.