The Musk Effect

Why is he like that?

What happened to Musk? It’s a question the world has been asking for years now. Not that long ago, he seemed to be some kind of philanthropic genius who could potentially even save the world. Now he looks like a Mein Kampf-reading moronic grifter who has made it his life’s mission to cause as much damage to himself and society as possible. How do we explain this sudden, befuddling switch? Well, actually, nothing has changed. For decades now, Musk has embodied some of the most deleterious psychological phenomena known to man — so much so that I believe we need a fresh name for this combination: “The Musk Effect”. Essentially, Musk is so psychologically broken that his ketamine-soaked brains fell out of his coke-ruined nose years ago, and we are only just starting to notice.

I am not the first, nor the last, to note that Musk is a textbook example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is when someone is too stupid to recognise their own lack of knowledge, causing them to massively overestimate their abilities. And Musk displays this effect with all the subtlety of a man repeatedly jamming forks into a power socket and wondering why he smells burning.

Some great examples of this are the now-defunct Hyperloop, the flop that is the Cybertruck, and the ongoing failure of Starship. Musk had huge control over all three projects but failed to grasp their basic engineering and use cases and so totally screwed the projects up beyond the point of no return. However, DOGE and his takeover of Twitter are possibly his most public display of Dunning-Kruger. From being forced to buy Twitter at a massively inflated price, failing to understand basic programming with Twitter software engineers, firing the moderation team, mishandling the advertiser boycott, and messing around with the blue check mark, Musk’s tenure at Twitter has been nothing but a trash fire of his own making. The same is true for DOGE. He claimed he would cut $2 trillion from the US budget but now claims he will only cut $150 billion and has actually cut significantly less than that. Even worse, the cuts he has made have been so poorly analysed that they will actually cost the government far more than they have saved, making the problem he was trying to fix even worse, all whilst pissing off millions of Americans and utterly destroying his reputation.

Musk is so dense that he doesn’t realise he isn’t some super-genius who is better than the experts of the world. He just bumbles in, makes a giant mess, and moves on to the next thing. Classic Dunning-Kruger.

Still, Musk is more than this reductive two-dimensional interpretation. No, he is a complex, layered, three-dimensional fuck-up.

Have you ever wondered why Musk has Dunning-Krugered more than any human ever? Well, it’s pretty obvious he also suffers badly from a case of affluenza.

Affluenza is a portmanteau of “affluence” and “influenza”. It describes how affluence increases a person’s anxiety and depression and gives them a deep sense of inadequacy.

Musk is best known for giant phallic rockets, flashy cars, extreme political views, and being a meme lord — because, you know, these are the behaviours of someone who doesn’t suffer from inadequacy, anxiety or depression…

To reach the level of wealth that Musk has achieved almost always entails grifting, stealing, lying, and cheating, all of which Musk has very publicly done at colossal scales. Naturally, he and nearly all billionaires feel something akin to impostor syndrome. They know deep down their position of wealth and influence was illegitimately gained, making them feel incredibly inadequate and depressed, as well as profoundly anxious that it will all be taken away. So they feel they have to prove themselves at all costs.

This can manifest in many different ways. We all know a rich guy who compensates with a flashy car or dives headfirst into the manosphere for self-assurance. But for Musk, it’s cosplaying like it’s 1939 and faking being a world-class video gamer. It’s also trying to live up to the “genius” myth the media built around him. He has to Dunning-Kruger himself. Otherwise, he is forced to face the fact that he isn’t the genius the media portrayed him as, and if he isn’t that genius, his empire is a hollow tower ready to fall.

Musk’s own crisis of masculinity, identity, and self-worth, brought on by his affluenza, not only makes him act like he fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down but also makes him rabid, like a tiny scared Jack Russell backed into a corner.

Have you noticed how Musk was obviously going for a Christian Bale Batman look with his custom-made dark MAGA hat, but instead, it comes across as more American Psycho? That is because there is another layer to Musk, given that suffering from Dunning-Kruger and Affluenza alone doesn’t make you a psychopathic bitch. We don’t know if Musk has always detested his fellow human beings, but psychology tells us that his wealth will have at least made this hatred exponentially worse.

You see, the wealthier you become, the less empathetic you get — even if it is fake wealth. Researchers found that students playing Monopoly would begin getting aggressive or taunting the other players if they were given more money than the other players. This is known as the empathy gap. Possibly the most glaring example of this is the fact that 21% of American CEOs display psychopathic tendencies, as opposed to just 1% of the general population. Studies have also found the opposite to be true, with those having fewer resources learning to be more emotionally in tune with others, as they require help to succeed.

If a few thousand Monopoly bucks are enough to turn you nasty against a close friend, what do you think Musk’s $370 billion has done to what little empathy circuits were left in his brain?

It’s no wonder he callously fired 10% of Tesla’s workers to cut costs, all while suing to get the largest pay cheque in recorded history; forced his employees to work dehumanising hours for no apparent reason; fired hundreds of thousands of federal workers; cut cancer research for children; cut US foreign aid, which will cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of the poorest, most vulnerable people on Earth; and disowned his own transgender daughter.

Thanks to all those hundreds of billions of dollars obliterating his neurons, Musk sees himself above humanity and so sees any other humans as disposable and ripe for exploitation. Twisted by wealth, he has taken psychopathy to the next level.

This is where Musk sits, at the crossroads of Dunning-Kruger, affluenza, and the empathy gap. None of these factors can individually predict or explain his actions, but together they almost perfectly can. Sadly, this horrible amalgamation is breaking Musk’s psychology so rapidly that it won’t be long before he gets Grok to think for him. And it isn’t just Musk who suffers from this unique mixture of comorbidities; so does almost the entire tech billionaire class, from Peter Thiel to Mark Zuckerberg. Because this combination of Dunning-Kruger, affluenza, and the empathy gap is so pervasive and creates such distinctive, damaging behaviour, we need a name for it. How about “The Musk Effect”? And sadly, the diagnosis appears terminal.

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Sources: BPS, T&F, Greater Good Magazine, Futurism, Equality Trust, Greater Good Magazine, The Washington Post, APA, TED