this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2024
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The parallels between Musk and Stark seemed perfect on paper. Both are billionaire tech innovators with a flair for the dramatic and dreams of changing the world.

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[–] [email protected] 182 points 6 days ago (6 children)

The parallels between Musk and Stark seemed perfect on paper. Both are billionaire tech innovators with a flair for the dramatic and dreams of changing the world.

They're not, though. Stark is a rare engineering powerhouse who personally pushed past a lot of engineering boundaries, and Musk is an investor/programmer who mostly puts his name on existing things.

I might change my mind if Musk personally invents AGI, nanobots, and a previously-unknown clean energy source capable of powering a 1/3rd of NYC with a room no larger than a foyer, like Stark did, but I'm not holding out much by way of hopes.

[–] [email protected] 169 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Considering he asked twitter programmers to print out their pull requests Im not even sure he's not cosplaying a programmer

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Wow I hadn't heard about that.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Stark actually was intelligent though. He really invented all the stuff he used, he earned the right to be a bit of an arse.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 days ago

Yeah.

Elon bought the title of founder of Tesla. He's not a fucking inventor, he's a leech.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Spiderman far from home actually addressed this

[–] [email protected] 95 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Hey vocal.media why not proofread your articles a little better? The first letter is a typo, never seen that before.

Un an interview that's got everyone talking, Robert Downey Jr has finally addressed the elephant in the room; those persistent comparisons between Elon Musk and the character Tony Stark.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for pointing this out. I'd never heard of this site before. From their front page: https://fedia.io/media/dd/05/dd05739fe84d5754670a5985712d74afa8a49f6dae81a8afa01e460ff04ccf11.png

That should tell you a lot about whether or not to invest any energy into reading stories from there.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago

Why go so far as the first letter? Look at the typo in the subheading "Tony Spark"

[–] [email protected] 64 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Elon Musk is a wannabe fanboy of Tony Stark, per Iron Man 2. It’s MCU canon.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Yeah but Musk in the MCU got Thanos-snapped and the Avengers wisely left him out when they snapped everyone back

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 days ago

You call them both innovators.

What has Musk innovated?

Buying other people's ideas doesn't count.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Elton never invented anything, he's skated on other's success. He's more the evil partner from the first Iron Man using others' inventions.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Now now, Elon does technically have one patent to his name personally.

Its the shape of the charging port for Teslas.

He patented this with the idea that if he ever did actually build out that massive EV charger network, he would basically be owed royalties if it successfully became the USB C of EV charging ports, so himself personally would be owned royalties if other car companies wanted to use that charging port shape.

But that was like a decade ago, and last I heard he fired the entire team at Tesla dedicated to the charging network.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

Tesla's NACS charging standard is now the charging standard for most car companies operating in the USA.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 days ago (4 children)

When Stan Lee created Tony back in the 1960's he probably took his inspiration from Howard Hughes.

Hughes had been the inspiration for a famous novel of the time, "The Carpetbaggers."

HH was played by Leo DiCaprio in 'The Aviator.'

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago (9 children)

Probably why Tony Stark's father is named Howard, too.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

Are people ready to admit that characters like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne has always served to propagandize the idea of "genius millionaire/billlionaire" capitalists despite the fact that no such thing has ever existed in reality?

And that this propaganda is partly the reason why parasitic fraudster racketeers like Musk, Gates and Bezos gets to get away with their gargantuan crimes against humanity?

No?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 days ago (6 children)

are you ready to admit that fictional characters exist in fiction because it gives an escape to readers to fantasize about themselves as the hero?

get over yourself bringing all that hatemongering in here.

you think you offer a special perspective that none of us have that pertains to the widening of socioeconomic gaps between the rich and poor? yeah we get it, "rich man bad!"

calling comic book characters propaganda, what's wrong with you?! you think the writers of these characters have some kind of secret cabal where they purposely write great things about rich people just to make actual rich people look good?!

your perspective is skewed and you need to re-evaluate it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It isnt so much direct propaganda as conditioned propaganda. Stan Lee was a playwright for the us army a title I believe less than 10 people held at the time. He spent his late teens and early 20s being the hand on the page for the voice of the US government. Being immersed in those ideals it is no wonder he regurgitated us red scare propaganda and he expressed regret for it.

This didnt stop though and with iron man stan lee said:

“I think I gave myself a dare. It was the height of the Cold War. The readers, the young readers, if there was one thing they hated, it was war, it was the military. So I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree. He was a weapons manufacturer, he was providing weapons for the Army, he was rich, he was an industrialist. I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him ... And he became very popular.”

Prpaganda is defined as

"deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist".

Iron man certainly seems to fit. Remember Stan Lee was in the military when it was antifascist. As a result he was pro military and he used his position to sway people toward his own views which... were developed when writing for the army. ..

It doesn't have to be a secret conspiracy to act as propaganda. Social conditioning reinforces it. Americas civil religion permeates every aspect of life from the pledge of allegiance in kidnergarten to the anthem at ball games. If you do not recognize it and challenge it you will repeat it.

I personally think in the case of Batman it was less nefarious. A plot device gone awry. After all, how could a normal man compete with Superman? In our society he would have to be rich to fund his inventions and afford superhuman tools.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I generally agree with your post, but I'd say one correction is in order here.

Remember Stan Lee was in the military when it was ~~antifascist~~ pretending to be antifascist in order to wage war on colonialist rivals.

The US military has never been antifascist.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

I think there's some kind of general fascination with rich people ingrained naturally in the human mind. It's not just in comics. It's present in many fairy tales, mythology, religious books..

Iagree it can help the rich to get away with things. But I also think it's not fair to blame authors for using good old archetypes, while I also support kindhearted critique of those archetypes - it's important to understand their role in social context and to make authors aware of the downsides.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Can you imagine how much good he could have done, had Bruce Wayne donated all that money to school programs, while he became a politician who helped by providing services to the city.

I remember reading Kingdom come, and Batman is a fascist by then. Old and crippled and wearing an iron man style suit. But the actual Gotham city is now monitored by bat robots who watch everyone and keep them in line.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 6 days ago

He should follow Stark and sacrifice himself for humanity.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago

Musk has much in common with Tony Stark though

Mainly being egocentric and a POS human.

The difference is that Tony had a character development that made him more likable, while Musk became more hated.

That and the genius bit, of course.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Elon wants to be Stark. He's actually Iron Monger. He wants to be Stark so fucking badly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (2 children)

From the article:

Back in 2016, Iron Man director Jon Favreau revealed that Musk had been a direct inspiration for their version of Tony Stark. Downey Jr even spent time with Musk to better understand what it would be like to walk in the shoes of a real-world tech mogul.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Clicks link

The very first word in the article is a glaringly obvious fucking typo. Why on earth would I want to read anything that website has to say?!?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

Yoi jist don't inderstand modern artucles?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Who cares. How is this news?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Tony Stark created likeability with a box of scraps in a cave!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

Well he's not Tony Stark...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Well, Stark is actually a fictional character in a genre that too often uses the term "smartest X alive" when that's not how intelligence works at all. Also, like others have said, Howard Hughes is more likely the inspiration for Stark. That being said, the closest irl "tech savant" I can think of is John Carmack.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago (2 children)

His cameo in the 2nd Iron Man movie always felt so cringey to me. I don't know how it came about, but I like to imagine Musk asked the production for the role. It is so clear to me that he desperately wants to be seen as the man who will single handedly save the world. His companies do incredibly impressive things, I cannot discredit the work of SpaceX, but the more he speaks, the more I am convinced that he is just an egomaniac cosplaying as a genius.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago

I don’t know how it came about

iirc the facility that we see housing the evil iron man ripoff suits was a SpaceX facility irl

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The difference is that Elon does things that benefit HIM

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago

And he's incapable of creating anything. And he has zero charisma.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Tesla's CEO; The Inspiration For Tony Spark

Elon "Baby-Brain" Musk as the inspiration of "Tony Spark" the cheap knock-off Tony Stark.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

Yet he shook Elon's hand on screen in iron man 2, solidifying that misconception. So I guess he's cleaning up his own mess

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I don't see it. Elon is a sociopath and doesn't care about people at all. He is autistic as well. The man would easily sacrifice others in a crisis, not fight for them.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Autistic people are generally the opposite from sociopaths, relative to norm.

However, we do, existing with ratio of like 1 in 200 people, get the experience with non-autistic people that makes us think of them similarly to how non-autistic people think of sociopaths.

As an autistic person, there are many cases about which I'd say that if I had the opportunity to press the red button sending nukes, I would press it, but in fact I most likely wouldn't, because autistic people are generally less compromising on justice and honesty. The decision to, say, sacrifice one good person to punish 1000 bad people is much harder for us than for "normal" people.

"Normal" people usually consider this trait a weakness, but then have the gall to accuse us of lacking empathy.

Also autistic emotions are stronger too - we just learn to control them, because otherwise it's be impossible to function. When you read something about homeless people, you just add that to your inner narrative of how your group is good and the other group is bad, you generally don't think about the matter itself. When we read something about homeless people, we feel ourselves on their place and temporarily lose the ability to eat, sleep and enjoy life.

However, getting back to your point - in things requiring one to be a better person autistic people are almost always better. It's a fact of the "you'd never have thought" genre exchanged in autistic communities that there are, in fact, bad autistic people. That's how rare it is.

I hope I have educated you.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Thank you, but is it really fair to say they all autistic people are like you describe? Just like non-autistic people, there should be a a variety of behaviors in autistic people as well?

I was talking about Elon Musk here, not all autistic people.

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