Robert Downey Jr Speaks Out About Elon Musk "Cosplay" Of Tony Stark-The Tech Billionaire (vocal.media)
from Lord01@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 02:13
https://lemmy.world/post/21536885

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.

#technology

threaded - newest

captainWhatsHisName@lemm.ee on 02 Nov 02:30 next collapse

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.

Chozo@fedia.io on 02 Nov 02:55 next collapse

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.

tlou3please@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 10:21 collapse

Yikes

NutsGate@feddit.nl on 02 Nov 07:40 collapse

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

ryan213@lemmy.ca on 02 Nov 02:33 next collapse

He should follow Stark and sacrifice himself for humanity.

MisterD@lemmy.ca on 02 Nov 02:42 next collapse

The difference is that Elon does things that benefit HIM

TheRedSpade@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 04:35 collapse

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

[deleted] on 02 Nov 02:53 next collapse

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Crewman@sopuli.xyz on 02 Nov 02:56 next collapse

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.

sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip on 02 Nov 03:54 collapse

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.

photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 02 Nov 08:11 collapse

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

Okokimup@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 04:43 next collapse

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

Cocodapuf@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 05:22 collapse

Well he’s not Tony Stark…

T156@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 05:14 next collapse

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.

Windex007@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 05:37 next collapse

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

allidoislietomyself@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 08:04 next collapse

Wow I hadn’t heard about that.

inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 12:54 collapse
rottingleaf@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 12:40 next collapse

When he apparently was a programmer, this was a bit more normal.

I’ve met a few professors requiring uni assignments’ code printed.

Furbag@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 15:01 next collapse

I imagine that a university level coding assignment and the backend code that runs the Twitter.com website (albeit just fractions of it) are several orders of magnitude apart from each other in terms of size and complexity. I don’t know shit about programming though, I took C++ in high school and got a D+. Should’ve called the class Introduction to D++.

Duamerthrax@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 15:06 collapse

When he wrote code at PayPal, people kept having to go back and fix it. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

rottingleaf@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 15:46 collapse

OK. I just meant that one can demand that as a sign of respect or something. With a sufficient degree of narcissism.

Dasus@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 15:19 collapse

Did he want them faxed to him?

paw@feddit.org on 02 Nov 08:24 next collapse

According to Johnny Harris (m.youtube.com/watch?v=WYQxG4KEzvo) he does go into the details, according to Johnny’s sources. I can’t stand Elon as well, but I’m no longer sure if he’s just an investor.

WalnutLum@lemmy.ml on 02 Nov 09:52 collapse

I would not say Johnny Harris is a reliable source

paw@feddit.org on 02 Nov 12:57 collapse

Out of interest, do you have any sources that what he does is not reliable? This is not some kind of I’m pissed off about your comnent, I’m actually not. Having said that, I see tgis as an opportunity to learn about Harris’ shortcomings. Thanks in advance.

[deleted] on 02 Nov 10:38 next collapse

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where_am_i@sh.itjust.works on 02 Nov 20:32 collapse

And yet

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.

Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee on 02 Nov 06:06 next collapse

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?!?

helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 12:46 next collapse

Yoi jist don’t inderstand modern artucles?

Muffi@programming.dev on 02 Nov 14:17 collapse

Because that’s a good canary to show the article wasn’t AI written?

Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee on 02 Nov 15:39 collapse

<img alt="" src="https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/e48fd097-b1fd-4e2c-99bd-01e125c9b25c.jpeg">

1984@lemmy.today on 02 Nov 06:20 next collapse

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.

rottingleaf@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 06:44 collapse

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.

1984@lemmy.today on 02 Nov 07:33 next collapse

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.

rottingleaf@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 09:41 collapse

Pathological or caused by some condition traits are the big, notable ones. And personal differences are more subtle.

Just like, say, serial housing - Soviet microdistricts look all the same on the plan and even from the outside, and there are common tendencies with small crime and all that. But, of course, people living in each one of them are different, so is graffiti on the walls, illegal construction, potholes and pits, trees and bushes, garages, shops and playgrounds.

I was mostly talking about things which are specific to what autism is.

1984@lemmy.today on 02 Nov 13:08 collapse

Well, you were talking about the positive aspects of autistic people only. Maybe it’s hard to notice that, but it sounds almost like you think they are a better version of non-autistic people. From my perspective, that’s not really how it is… :) Autism or not, people can have a lot of negative personality traits that make them a pain to be around.

rottingleaf@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 15:33 collapse

Maybe you are right. I’m thinking about the wrong kind of autistic people right now.

tlou3please@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 10:24 next collapse

I’m in the process of being diagnosed as an adult, and I feel very validated as I relate to this very much.

[deleted] on 02 Nov 14:39 collapse

.

rottingleaf@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 15:33 collapse

Marcus Aurelius apparently has found a way

Subtracty@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 06:29 next collapse

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.

abbotsbury@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 08:45 next collapse

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

where_am_i@sh.itjust.works on 02 Nov 20:34 collapse

Iron man 2 was filmed at SpaceX

aeronmelon@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 07:01 next collapse

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

SplashJackson@lemmy.ca on 02 Nov 12:53 next collapse

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

MrPibb@lemmynsfw.com on 02 Nov 14:46 collapse

I like to imagine he got snapped while on a flight on his private jet…

BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee on 02 Nov 17:39 collapse

when they snapped people back into life they also made sure they were in a safe place

where_am_i@sh.itjust.works on 02 Nov 20:32 collapse

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.

Dagwood222@lemm.ee on 02 Nov 09:26 next collapse

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.’

brsrklf@jlai.lu on 02 Nov 11:48 next collapse

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

Dagwood222@lemm.ee on 02 Nov 11:54 collapse

Could be.

Off topic but fun.

The book ‘The Carpetbaggers’ became a movie; there was a Western actor mentioned in the story, Nevada Smith. Does anyone else know a daring character named after a state with a five letter last name?

youtu.be/Or-4aw41PkM

Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 02 Nov 12:29 next collapse

I told you before, I’m not doing any more research for your crossword puzzles. If you want to keep making them that’s fine, but don’t put the work on us.

/s just in case

interurbain1er@sh.itjust.works on 02 Nov 12:53 next collapse

Does anyone else know a daring character named after a state with a five letter last name?

That’s so reductive. The guy is MUCH MUCH MORE.

Dagwood222@lemm.ee on 02 Nov 17:26 collapse

Alexas Texas has entered the chat…

GoosLife@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 13:00 collapse

Hannah Montana!

Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 02 Nov 15:34 next collapse

I’m, like, 90% sure that last name is more than 5 letters. (I mean I guess Cyrus but not Montana which is the character’s last name)

GoosLife@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 16:41 collapse

Oh, wait

Hannah Monta!

Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 02 Nov 17:56 collapse

Now she’s not named after a state!

Dagwood222@lemm.ee on 02 Nov 17:25 collapse

Alexis Texas.

Way more daring than Hannah ever was…

Jumpingspiderman@reddthat.com on 02 Nov 14:29 next collapse

Hughes was smart though. Unlike Elon “Phoney Starck” Musk.

Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 20:59 collapse

If you watched agent Carter, Howard Stark is clearly just Hughes by a different name.

Dagwood222@lemm.ee on 02 Nov 21:32 collapse

Doc Savage has entered the chat.

Millionaire geniuses were a dime a dozen in the Pulp Era!

[jk, of course you’re right]

cmhe@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 13:11 next collapse

Tesla’s CEO; The Inspiration For Tony Spark

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

chiliedogg@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 18:13 collapse

Tony Stark first appeared in Marvel comics 8 years before Musk was born.

echodot@feddit.uk on 02 Nov 14:11 next collapse

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

Dasus@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 15:18 next collapse

Yeah.

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

thirteene@lemmy.world on 04 Nov 15:24 collapse

Spiderman far from home actually addressed this

AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 14:51 next collapse

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

where_am_i@sh.itjust.works on 02 Nov 20:33 collapse

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.

ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk on 02 Nov 21:11 next collapse

At most, Elon Musk is Tony Stark with none of the redemption ark that Stark got. That’s assuming he isn’t just the purse string holder that he is.

blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works on 02 Nov 21:34 collapse

“This is what rich guys act like”

“Oh, except you’ll be playing one who is actually quite intelligent”

Duamerthrax@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 15:22 next collapse

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.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 17:55 next collapse

I vote John von Neumann for tech savant.

Duamerthrax@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 21:42 collapse

There’s a long list of historic examples of people who actual are what the techbros fantasy about being. I was limiting myself to living examples of people who were just interested in the tech. Carmack’s comments when he left facebook was fun to see. I always thought he was better then that company.

PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world on 03 Nov 00:57 collapse

You could even put Ben Franklin as a tech savant of his time. While also being an influential person on the world stage and helped found a country at that.

masquenox@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 15:45 next collapse

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?

GreenKnight23@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 16:11 next collapse

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.

Seasm0ke@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 18:20 next collapse

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.

masquenox@lemmy.world on 03 Nov 00:53 collapse

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.

Seasm0ke@lemmy.world on 03 Nov 04:42 collapse

Yeah I guess I should have said ‘actively killing fascists at the time’

angrystego@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 19:23 next collapse

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.

Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 20:58 next collapse

Sure but sometimes the times makes certain types of escapism unattractive and not fun. The idea of a good guy billionaire is not fun in 2024

masquenox@lemmy.world on 03 Nov 00:57 collapse

It’s not fun in 2024 because, thanks to the internet, we now have mountains of evidence at our fingertips to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what they really are and always have been - ie, what the leftists have been trying to tell us since forever.

masquenox@lemmy.world on 03 Nov 00:49 collapse

gives an escape to readers to fantasize about themselves as the hero?

Your “escapist” fantasy is to be rich, dress up in tacticool BDSM-gear and be allowed to beat up working class people?

Yes, comic books are propaganda, and the super-creep variety has always had the smell of Objectivism to it.

It’s certainly worked on you.

GreenKnight23@lemmy.world on 03 Nov 00:52 collapse

<img alt="cool. bye" src="https://media.tenor.co/images/bc517761a2beb12b6cc56b8a6de39f0f/raw">

Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 20:57 next collapse

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.

masquenox@lemmy.world on 03 Nov 00:47 collapse

and Batman is a fascist by then.

I’d say that Batman is fundamentally fascist. He wages war on the working class so that crime can be preserved as an activity reserved for the class Bruce Wayne represents - the capitalist one.

corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca on 02 Nov 21:15 collapse

ready to admit

red flag

Doomsider@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 17:09 next collapse

The parallels between Downey and Musk are much greater. Both are drug addicted pick me cunts.

Also you need some new paper if you really think that a fictional character is just like Musk.

Honytawk@lemmy.zip on 02 Nov 20:25 next collapse

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.

Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world on 02 Nov 20:28 next collapse

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

blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works on 02 Nov 21:33 next collapse

You call them both innovators.

What has Musk innovated?

Buying other people’s ideas doesn’t count.

hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works on 03 Nov 07:42 collapse

Who cares. How is this news?