It’s a lot of things. It’s a measure of vulnerability, and of the social expectations and needs of men or women. It’s not exclusive to men, though I think the culture that surrounds it is certainly more outwardly destructive.

At its core, it’s a feeling of inadequacy, and that inadequacy is a vulnerability exploited by others who either feel similarly as a way to elevate themselves or just because they’re cruel enough to use it to benefit themselves. It can begin with poverty, with bad experiences, with neglect or abuse. It can begin in ignorance, or by being mislead. I think it’s also a lack of self awareness, a lack of self care, and often a lack of time or energy for either.

In the end, there’s not enough of the world that says it’s okay to fail and it’s okay to be vulnerable and that you can spend that time on yourself. People will always feel cheated, and there will always be experiences that leave you feeling alienated or hurt. What pains me is that too often it’s easier to find anger and resentment in those moments than it is to find the support you need to build yourself back up and feel okay again.

Better than that, the lack of reliance on spinning disks means that asset duplication and data read order is less of a requirement to reduce load times. It can still be argued that there’s just too many polygons, since simply scaling things back would be plenty effective in reducing storage usage and load times.

Potential ketamine addiction aside, he’s just gravitated toward where he sees more money and unfluence for himself. He wanted the prestige of being a leader in tech, so he used his influence and money to build SpaceX. Then he bullied his way into the ownership of Tesla, desperately wanting to appear as a genius to libertarian and liberal minds alike, but he’s never been any less of an authoritarian. When Trump rose to power the first time, he sat and watched and along with the rest of the Silicon Valley Moguls, he began to move himself into positions of influence with populist politicians, borrowing the evangelical right’s playbooks and throwing himself into the spotlight no matter the reason. He pivoted off his falsified image as some kind of American self-starter into MAGA rhetoric.

Musk doesn’t have lofty ideals or any real focus on the betterment of society. I don’t think he ever did. He just wanted to be a real life Tony Stark and command the influence that came with it. Now he doesn’t need to, because he’s got Trump in his back pocket and is mostly untouchable by any normal means.