Not as a genius, not as a real-life Tony Stark, not as a champion of free speech, because you’re none of those things. You’re a guy who bought a hagiographer to hide your flaws and amplify your accomplishments. Unfortunately, you also have weird beliefs about spawning lots of children, which means you created witnesses to your real nature.
Vivian Wilson is at it again. This time her focus is on Walter Isaacson, the hack who wrote Musk’s biography, and this piece on Threads is going to be a big chunk of his reputation. Hooray for free speech!
Let’s talk about the Walter Isaacson book. For those of you unaware, he wrote a biography about Elon in which I am featured. This is what I have to say on the matter. It’s a bit heavy, so bear with me.
To Walter Isaacson, you threw me to the wolves in what was one of the most humiliating experiences of my entire life. Elon was your darling Tony Stark apartheid-american hero with a semi-tragic backstory who was saving the world and you were too fucking cowardly to write anything other than a sad excuse for a puff-piece. To further this goal, you portrayed me in a light that is genuinely defamatory and I’m not going to mince my words.
I was treated as a VILLAIN BACKSTORY-ORIGIN to excuse or explain away his behavior. As if my whole existence was nothing but an inconvenience to HIM. God bless the poor soul who abused his child, that must be so fucking hard for him. I was deadnamed, and misgendered for no conceivable reason and made to seem like I was just too stupid or too “communist” or too brainwashed or too what-fucking-ever to understand the 4d chess behind the reasons I was traumatized.
My identity was trivialized, my reasons for seperation were misconstrued, and I was treated as naïve; stupid, unfairly unforgiving and unreasonably moralistic. Worst of all, this was the section that was released early as part of the “promo” because you knew it would catch headlines as part of this culture war bullshit. You knew that conservatives and ‘reactionaries’ would take this and run as far as they could with it to get clicks, or to smear my name for their own self interests.
I was never asked, interviewed, or contacted to say anything for this poor excuse of pages you call a book. I know that you claim that you “reached out to me through family members” but I found out about this thing’s existence literally a MONTH before it was released. So either you are completely fucking incompetent at the most basic aspects of your “job”, or you are weaponizing your own lack of effort to try to lift the blame off of yourself because you knew damn well what you were doing.
I know for a goddamn fucking fact that you had the information necessary to contact me directly and you didn’t. It’s not exactly neuroscience when all you had to do was ask for my fucking phone number. Therefore, this “omg we like totally tried….” act isn’t gonna work. You deliberately failed because you knew the angle you were going for, and that my testimony would’ve fucked up your pretty little portrayal of an irredeemable human being.
I was content to sit in my silence up until now and to be your queer villain. You knew that I was gonna be used as an example of “how the children are being brainwashed by the trans agenda” because you did it yourself and then proceeded to blast it to every news organization to use as an ad to sell more copies. The fact that this book may have been used as justification by parents to not let their trans child obtain potentially life-saving medical treatment fucking HAUNTS me. It always will.
I’ve been waiting on talking about this subject because it genuinely hurts so much to remember. That memory of sobbing my eyes out in a dormitory worrying that I didn’t have a future because of the damage this thing did to my reputation will forever stay with me. You, your editors, and your publisher are a fucking joke for letting this thing be released into the public. I had to see posters of this thing for MONTHS afterwards.
I go by Vivian by the way, not Jenna as the book implies. Jenna is what my friends from high school and my mom calls me. If you genuinely knew what you were talking about that’s how you would’ve referred to me. It is genuinely impressive that you somehow managed to find a way to even fuck up my NAME. I think that goes to show how much research actually went into this. I am not letting this narrative continue any further.
I must request that people don’t seek out and send hate to Isaacson, I don’t think that reflects well on anyone.
Check your spelling, that should be Pony Stark.
That was painful to read.
Elon Musk is a child abuser.
The difference in power between his own father, a 53 year old famous multi-billionaire and Vivian, his 20 year old daughter is immense.
Elon Musk has all the advantages, biological parent, multi-billions of dollars, hordes of fans, lackeys, and minions, and his own worldwide media outlet X.
And yet Musk can’t think of anything to do but bully and abuse her.
Go off queen, get his ass!
Also doesn’t Isaacson have connections to Jeffrey Epstein? I could swear I remember him showing up in Epstein’s little black book.
Phony Stark?
All you need to know is that almost everyone who has dealt with Elon Musk has ended up regretting it.
It’s not just Vivian.
Grimes has 3 children with Musk.
They’ve been suing each other for years over child custody issues.
I regret that Elon Musk left South Africa and somehow gained US citizenship.
Every single day, I find more reasons to detest this sorry excuse for a human being.
She’s amazing! 20 years old? Traumatized for much of her life by the asshole who provided the sperm but nothing else but rejection, abuse, and use of her as some sort of excuse for his assholery. She writes with clarity , courage, and so-well-earned rage.
And fuck Walter Isaacson. Whenever I’ve heard him discuss any of the subjects of his books, he seems fine with making it clear that he tries to present them as flawed, but great; ‘genius’ heroes whom he is explaining to the world. Kissinger, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk are in the same pantheon for him as Einstein, da Vinci, and Ben Franklin. Now, two of those last three have some definite baggage (I don’t know enough about da Vinci to say), but the others — with maybe the exception of Jobs — were/are irredeemable sociopathic dufusses who’s main shared qualities seem to be ruthlessness in pursuit of whatever the hell they want (regardless of the destruction they leave in their wake), and a ridiculously high opinion of themselves. I get a real cringy feeling when I hear his sucking-up to these ‘Great Men’.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Phony_Stark
I love it!
She’s got far more guts than I ever will.
I wouldn’t bother reading a bio about Musk anyway, but Isaacson would not be an invitation for me. Isaacson also wrote a bio on Steve Jobs, published about the time Jobs died, which I’ve tried to read it several times. I’m not a great reader, but I’ve found it impossible to follow as it jumps around in time so much without any thematic reasoning.
Vivid Vivian nails those two aholes! In some ways it is a (sorry for the biblical reference) David and Goliath situation. But, the legal system and society in general in this country (and likely other countries, too) is completely screwed up and full of those kinds of battles.
I wish Vivian best wishes for healing from this long nightmare. And, I wish we could make Robert Reich’s methods work. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/111252/how-to-stop-musk
Speaking of irredeemable sociopathic dufi (that’s the CORRECT plural of “dufus,” Paul K please note!*), today is the day Mark Fluckerberg killed Facebook’s misinformation tracking tool:
https://www.joemygod.com/2024/08/meta-shuts-down-misinformation-tracking-tool/
That’s what Julius Caesar called the Gauls in his writings. True story!
Wow…
That was amazing. Her courage, smarts, wit (yeah a couple good zingers there) blows me away. I’ve had a couple toxic family relationships, but I can’t imagine having to deal with that on a global scale.
Go Vivian!
Here’s a recent review on Amazon of Isaacson’s hagiography of Musk:
[3 of 5 stars] The writer was too close to the subject.
Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2024
Verified Purchase
I’ll be brief. If you want a basic outline of the career and achievements of Elon Musk, this book is ok. If you want an assessment of the man, again, it’s ok.
I think this is because the writer’s objectivity was compromised as he was pulled into his subject’s orbit. In his own telling, he becomes more than a biographer- he’s occasionally a Musk confidante. He hangs out with Musk. He has heartfelt text exchanges with Musk. That sort of thing. You get the feeling he’s a bit mesmerized by the great man, and maybe a teeny tiny little bit of a sycophant?
An example, he sort of sympathizes with Musk’s outrage when a blogger tweets the movements of the Musk private jet, which was a matter of public record in the first place. This despite Musk’s supposed iron clad belief in freedom of speech. But then Musk tweets that a former employee with whom he’s had a falling out sympathizes with child porn, mostly because he’s gay. And Musk has no problem with Twitter users making public this former employee’s address such that he eventually has to sell his house. This writer judges in Musk’s favor in other controversies. But here he’s happy to state the facts and move on. He should have condemned Musk unequivocally and in the clearest terms. But no-can-do’s-ville if you want the great man to keep liking you.
The most glaring failure is the nearly complete ommission of Musk’s dealings with China. The writer writes favorably and at length of Musk’s stance on freedom of speech vis a vis Twitter. But he devotes a single sentence to his cooperation with the CCP in suppressing embarrassing Twitter content, even outside China. And nothing about Musk’s massive business interests in China. It seems very possible that these two items are linked, does it not? Anyway, leaving China out of the book is inexplicable.
Finally, Musk is definitely portrayed as a toxic human being. But this is repeatedly excused on the grounds that he’s probably autistic. Well, I’m a Special Education high school teacher, and I’ve known dozens and dozens of autistic people and I say with absolute confidence that autism makes a person into a better, more caring human being. Yes, they often have trouble reading other people, but how you get from that to Musk’s complete disregard for the lives and needs of others, I do not know. Unless of course, you want to make excuses for him. Because you’ve been drawn into his orbit. And you’re mesmerized by the great man. More likely, Musk grew up with demons and has never had to grow through them because no one has told him no since he was 22 years old.
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That’s the only review I could find that didn’t absolutely fawn over #QElon (and sometimes fault Isaacson for not fawning enough). And only two other reviews gave the book less than four stars.
Also, one fawning reviewer complained about the book’s coverage of #QElon’s falling-out with “his son” (apparently thinking it wasn’t relevant, or wasn’t a big deal worthy of discussion). So either that reviewer was talking about a falling-out with another of #QElon’s sons, or they’re misgendering Vivian right along with her dad.
Is there a way to send love to her?
Musk won’t be remembered at all. When you look at the business founders that are famous it’s because they actually founded the company and/or invented/developed something. People like Musk that invested in companies get forgotten. If they hold up Musk will get a line item in the history of Tesla and SpaceX a century from now, that’s it.
If he spends a fortune on charities he might get his name plastered on some things but nobody will care who the name goes with.
And the kind of people who idolize #QElon won’t ever look at charity-donor lists anyway.
I’m sorry she lost the parent roulette. This is the guy who overpaid for a social media app and turned it into a nazi bar. He then sued the organization that pointed out all the swastikas flags, and his lap dog is now demanding advertisers unfuck themselves.
At least her mother is a decent person.
JM@16: Musk started SpaceX and joined Tesla in its founding stages. He’ll be remembered for reusable rockets and popularizing EVs.
He likely will also be remembered in western nations for rotting his brains out on ketamine, buying Twitter at a huge loss just to broadcast hate, and generally being a piece of shit. China doesn’t seem to be bothered by all that stuff though, and Russia loves him for it (even as wrecked Tesla batteries get a second life as batteries for drones that hunt down Russian soldiers).
Really? How many “popularizers” get remembered after they die? I know they’re good at getting attention when they’re alive and active, but that tends to wear off and evaporate when they stop working.
For a recent example we remember Jobs for popularizing GUIs, the mouse, and smartphones. He didn’t invent any of those things, just used his company to hire teams to develop and commercialize them and bring them to the mass market.
Further back, we remember Ford for bringing cars to the masses … and for buying a loss-making newspaper in order to translate antisemitic tripe from Russian to English. History rhymes.
We think of Edison as a great inventor, but he was really just the head of a lab that filed patents and commercialized the results, many of which had competition.
So, the previous instalments in this saga:
July 24, This is not a super-villain origin story
This post by PZ was criticising the story in which Elon had decided to publicise his ‘disowning’ of his daughter, when the reverse was what had actually happened. This method of trying to change a narrative is sometimes known as ‘flipping the script’. At comments 42 and 43 I posted details from Vivian Wilson’s petition to the court from two years earlier, where she had said, explaining the reason for her request of a name change:
Vivian Jenna Wilson, 18 April 2022 (declared under penalty of perjury)
She’d disowned him two years earlier!
July 26, Vivian Wilson strikes back!
Obviously, this details Vivian’s response via interview, and she posted similar content on Threads, no doubt to get under her deadbeat dad’s skin; in fact, a pipeline of people crossposting Vivian’s comments on threads to annoy people on Xitter who deserve to be needled.
A couple of days later on Threads, she documented the story about the custody dispute between the toxic father and Grimes, and which visually quotes Grimes’ mother’s concern about him abandoning his children while swanning around the globe. If you haven’t read it already (both Vivian’s thread and the quoted image of comments by Sandy Garassino), it is beyond egregious. Grimes’ grandmother is in end-of-life palliative care at the age of 93, and Sandy complains that besides welching on co-parenting duties, he is withholding passports for the children to visit them in Canada while he attends the Olympics.
But sure, dude is making sure he wipes out the “woke mind virus” blah blah blah.
goaded @ 15, I’m pretty sure she’s getting a lot of love from followers on Threads, as she was rather amazed at reaching a hundred thousand recently. Her TikToks are a lot of fun and I couldn’t help notice the giant squid in her bedroom.
I mentioned this in the most recent thread following the bullying of Imane Khelif, but Matt Bernstein and Natalie Wynn have a video discussion (released a couple of days ago) covering the current egregious trend of bigots doing transvestigations, and I recommend it if you’re interested in a couple of smart and funny trans people digging into the whole tin-foil hat world of the “we can always tell” cult.
Bravo Vivian, bravo!
@20. Raging Bee : Really? How many “popularizers” get remembered after they die? I know they’re good at getting attention when they’re alive and active, but that tends to wear off and evaporate when they stop working.
Popularisers? Is that what Musk is?
I thiought that term referred more to writers who, eg,. popularised scientific ideas and info like Carl Sagan who I do remember very fondly and respect.
Seems a odd use of that word to me bt maybe that is just me.
SpaceX and Tesla will be remebered for sure and people will remember what Musk did to destroy the previously apparently very useful Twitter.
@20. Raging Bee : Really? How many “popularizers” get remembered after they die? I know they’re good at getting attention when they’re alive and active, but that tends to wear off and evaporate when they stop working.
Popularisers? Is that what Musk is?
I thiought that term referred more to writers who, eg,. popularised scientific ideas and info like Carl Sagan who I do remember very fondly and respect.
Seems a odd use of that word to me bt maybe that is just me.
SpaceX and Tesla will be remebered for sure and people will remember what Musk did to destroy the previously apparently very useful Twitter.
StevoR: Yes, that’s why I put the word in quotes.
Also, it’s a bit too soon to tell whether SpaceX or Tesla will be remembered for long after Musk is gone. If another competitor comes along and takes over the market for either company by improving on its product, then the Musk company will be remembered more as an “also ran” or just one of many steps in a long progression of innovation and development. Possibly more like Tucker than like GM.
@23, I’ve now watched the whole 90 minute conversation you linked between Matt Bernstein and Natalie Wynn (Contrapoints), and it was enlightening. They covered the brouhaha over woman boxer Imane Khelif, a story which they made clear did not actually have any transgender people involved. At one point, they talk about other women athletes that have also been wrongly attacked for being transgender, including Katie Ledecky.
One aspect that I noticed and I wonder if anyone else has is that both Imane Khelif and Katie Ledecky have larger than average noses. Women are often made conscious about their noses, sometimes to the point they get plastic surgery. So it seems to me that policing women’s looks and transphobia have clear commonalities.
Just for clarity – my post 23 was added by accident here to the wrong thread; it was intended for the “OK, Megan, which is it?” post, about the false confidence some people have in their own ability of reading someone else’s gender.