I hate who they've turned me into

I don’t want to be a hater. I want to be able to see something cool and say “hey, that’s cool.” I don’t think it’s a mark of a sophisticated or savvy person to reject anything novel or to immediately look for the flaws in everything they encounter. For one thing, that’s no way to live. For another, it probably blinds you to the good and beautiful (h/t Lt. Markonnen).

But even more than that, I don’t want to be lied to. I especially don’t want to be lied to, over and over, by the same people and about the same things. I don’t want the fear of being branded a hater make me keep my mouth shut about what’s obviously happening in front of my eyes. To the extent that anyone who reads this blog (all 3 of you) or people who know me in real life think I get off on being contrarian: I don’t. You don’t even hear the half of it. Believe it or not, I’m conflict-averse.

So let’s talk about the Tesla Roadster.

Wait, wait. First, let’s talk about the man presenting the Tesla Roadster. Elon Musk has overpromised, underdelivered, and flat-out lied about so many things for so many years that it’s almost not worth mentioning. You’re certainly welcome to google it if you don’t believe me. It’s not that all of his companies are completely fraudulent — Tesla really sells cars, Starlink really launches satellites, and SpaceX really builds rockets. But when you compare the hype with the reality, it’s mind-boggling that anyone could still watch him unveil a product without the world’s largest grain of salt in tow.

(Not SUPER pertinent, but he’s also an unfunny doofus. From NBC News:

Tesla says a fan-based suction system creates downforce to hold the vehicle against the road’s surface, while self-refilling cold-gas thrusters power its airborne maneuvers.

Musk quipped, “This car really sucks.”

That’s a bad enough joke on its own, and saying he “quipped” implies that his delivery wasn’t halting and self-conscious. Even worse, he followed it up with two sexualized jokes about how much the car sucks, to diminishing laughter each time. A must-watch for fans of cringe comedy.)

Moving on, let’s just think about what’s happened after previous events like this. At the last big Tesla unveiling, for the Cybertruck, Musk similarly promised many things that the eventually shipped product was lacking. (Still waiting to see how it can “serve briefly as a boat.”) The funny thing about that one was the demonstration of the CT’s unbreakable windows. They threw a rock at one of the windows, which shattered. Undaunted, they repeated it with another window, which also shattered. If I had been onstage at that moment, I would have died of embarrassment, but the world’s first trillionaire is built different.

Tesla has also promised a humanoid robot that seems no closer to deployment today than it was the day it was announced, and for which the introduction was a dancing human in a robot suit. They didn’t even try to hide that one.

All that being said, the Roadster demonstration was pretty neat. The test model drove upside down and then righted itself for a smooth landing, and later jumped a row of other Tesla vehicles using self-propulsion. It did indeed resemble the flying, time-traveling DeLorean of Back to the Future II.

One has to ask, will this car ever exist? Or ever exist as a mass-produced, street-legal passenger vehicle? Musk promised production in 2028, which I would bet virtually any amount will not meaningfully happen. That hasn’t stopped them from opening up pre-orders though. Trying to imagine the chutzpah it would take to accept $250k from someone from a car you might one day produce. Can’t do it.

Even the car we saw last night — what was it, really? Concept cars are nothing new, but this wasn’t presented as one. Yet as people have pored over the footage from the event, it certainly seems as though the prototype Roadster was lacking a lot of the things one would usually associate with a car. It may have been nothing more than the propulsion system wrapped in a car-like shell. Nothing wrong with that, except for the dishonesty of the presentation.

Let’s even quibble about the word “flying.” The things we saw the Roadster do yesterday were more like jumping and falling with style. Again, still cool things! But not a flying car. Not in any way we’ve understood the idea for the past 50 years or so.

I know, I know. You’ve got to walk before you can run. But even putting aside the obvious practical questions about public safety and infrastructure, the viability of personal flight in a Tesla Roadster is still several steps down a path of unanswered questions, none of which the company put to rest yesterday.

And even putting all THAT aside, it’s amazing that Elon Musk is still allowed to stand onstage making blowjob jokes in front of his adoring fans while he lies to their faces, and meanwhile hundreds of thousands across the globe are dead because of his cuts at DOGE, and oh yeah he’s sunk over a hundred million dollars into the Texas Senate race to support one of the worst human beings on the planet, Ken Paxton.

You want to know why I’m like this? Because we’re living in a world where a jagoff like Musk can commit crimes against humanity and then go “flying cars!” and get praised for it.