It is extremely off base and irresponsible to dismiss/justify Elon's actions as the product of a "15 year old kid" mentality.
He is a sociopath. A severely mentally ill sociopath and a danger to society.
No "15 year old kid" without severe mental illness would praise Putin's invasion of Ukraine, praise Xi's impending invasion of Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong, fabricate bizarre irrational lies about cave rescuers being "pedos" or Pelosi being attacked by his gay, drunk, high, male prostitute, on their way to a pizza restaurant to drink the blood of children in the basement.
No "15 year old kid" would publicly attack his own transgender child by mocking their pronoun preference.
No "15 year old kid" would trivialize the holocaust by equating it to some well-intended temporary public health measures at the Canadian border crossing.
And no "15 year old African kid" would dare to show up in *my* country and actively work to overthrow it by promoting, amplifying, legitimizing, and advancing the agendas of those who seek to destroy America.
First off many 15 year old kids can have some screwy beliefs about a lot of things. And it doesn't take a sociopath to do the things you listed here. They are typical of people who are not born sociopaths who have been sucked into a cult.
There was an experiment done in the early 1960s which showed how humans can do horrible things due to social pressure. It's called the Milgram Experiment
Milgram experiment - Wikipedia
Going in they predicted very few test subjects would go all the way towards shocking the actor (who they thought was the test subject) at maximum voltage, but they were surprised to find most went all the way, though all questioned it at some point.
My partner participated in this experiment during her undergrad Psychology program. Every member of her class were put in the position of the person administering the shocks. As soon as she figured out what was going on, she quit. The professor told her she would get a zero for that lab and it would affect her grade, but she stood on principle and left. Later in class the professor introduced the class to the Milgram Experiment and discussed the results of the first study. She said only one student refused to participate, a few dropped out before reaching maximum voltage, but all but the one did stick in there until they were administering high (fake) voltages. The actor appeared to be in a lot of agony.
It's a rare bird who will never yield to peer pressure. There are people with relatively high resistance, but a depressingly large percentage of the population have a soft moral compass that changes with their peer groups.
This is alien to me personally, but I've seen it more times than I can count, a large number of people like having an excuse to be a bit anti-social. It's why online forums will devolve into cesspits of negativity if left unmoderated. Not everyone will go there, but if one person starts getting rude, trolling, etc. others will "return fire" and the forum devolves into a barroom brawl.
Elon has not shown a history of sociopathic behavior. A sociopath is actually called an Antisocial Personality Disorder in the DSM-V. This is the diagnostic criteria which does have some overlap with other conditions
| 1. | failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest |
| 2. | deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure |
| 3. | impulsivity or failure to plan ahead |
| 4. | irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults |
| 5. | reckless disregard for safety of self or others |
| 6. | consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations |
| 7. | lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another. |
For a clinical diagnosis it requires at least three of these patterns to match and these behaviors also need to be seen to some degree before age 15, though it usually comes into full blossom in adolescence.
My partner's ex-brother-in-law had an APD, and he was a con-man to those who hadn't figured him out and dangerously violent with those who had. He told people he had degrees which he didn't have (he barely finished high school, though was extremely intelligent) and was always running a hustle to get money and other things.
Elon does have some behaviors that can be explained in other ways. He is behaving more antisocial lately, but he had few of these signs years ago.
He has said he has Asperger's and his historic behavior does fit that diagnosis. He has poor social skills and is not very good at reading social cues. It also made him a bad manager.
Somebody with Asperger's and a feeling like they need to belong would be vulnerable to getting drawn into a cult-like community. He would feel like he was part of the club when the cult was just using him for their own ends. People have observed that since Elon took over Twitter the bulk of the followers he interacts with are far right activists.
I hope he wakes up from this path and changes direction soon. It's not good for him, nor is it good for any of his companies.
. (The video below the cybertruck bit)
