I was musk and Tesla fanboy, but I personally snapped in mid 2022 when he disabled Starlink when Ukraine was doing offensive, causing it to fail.

Looking back now, there were plenty of signs earlier that he was an asshole. The incident in Thailand, his behavior during covid, his behavior when answering question about water when opening factory in Germany.

And reading more about him, everyone who was working with him said he was an asshole too.

I guess people have different thresholds that make them wake up. I think though that anyone who is still supporting him after the Nazi salute is beyond hope.

BTW after I woke up from fanboyism, I realized that he pays boots to promote him on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, pretty much everything). I saw for example bots on Facebook presenting even his biggest failures (for example Hyperloop in Las Vegas) as some kind of successes.

I noticed on Reddit that for example of you say anything critical of him on subreddit like Tesla motors, you get a permanent shadowban. This is how they maintain the echo chamber.

Elon was an asshole at that point, but he wasn't full-blown MAGA. Remember during Trump's first administration Musk was part of a committee of business leaders that advised Trump, but resigned in protest when Trump backed out of the Parks accords. Elon publicly supported and donated to Hillary Clinton and later Joe Biden.

It wasn't until 2024 that he really started to go from "shitty billionaire using politics to protect his business interests" to "maga fanatic trying to fight a culture war, destroy the administrative state, start a new era of US imperialism, etc". Even then he only publicly endorsed Trump after the assassination attempt.

I can understand how to people with bad taste, too much money, and far too little awareness of current events could have bought Cybertrucks. I mean, they clearly ignored all of the reports about how badly made the cars were, so it's not too much of a stretch to think they are under-informed. I think most true MAGA faithful probably buy F-150's or Rams or some other kind of ICE vehicle. It wouldn't surprise me if 50% or more of Cybertruck owners thought they were helping the environment by going electric, or at least helping the US be more energy independent.

There are some malicious people out there, but I think there are more dumb people than actively mean ones.

The car came out after Musk showed his true colors, but preorders were available long before then (and those preorders either cost a lot to cancel or were completely nonrefundable; I don’t remember which).

There’s a small chance that this person isn’t an asshole, but just a slow learner.

Yes, they have effectively all been recalled. But that doesn’t mean they get pulled off the street. It basically means there’s some sort of issue that needs to get repaired and the manufacturer will pay for it. Depending on the type of recall, number of cars affected, availability of replacement parts, etc. people could be forced to wait weeks or even months before getting their car fixed.