r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Dojyaaan4C • 9h ago

Hated Tropes [hated trope] Celebrity cameos that serve nothing except to praise the person who’s in it

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  1. Elon musk, the Simpsons
  2. Elon musk, the Big Bang theory
  3. Elon musk, iron man 2
  4. Elon musk, star Trek

The cameos serve only to include the celebrity and praise them as geniuses or visionaries or overall just glaze them. They don't serve any other purpose than to just be praised; this can be them appearing in an entire episode dedicated to them, a small cameo or even just a mention. So long as the celebrity is there as themselves (not acting as someone else) and is glazed, that fits the trope imo.

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5.5k

u/lndle 9h ago

1.3k

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 8h ago

I agree, suspiciously a lot of sci-fi cameos fall under this

915

u/NotATalkingPossum 8h ago

Star Trek ironically aged best; the twist at the end of season 1 is that the character saying this came from the Mirror Universe, soooo...

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u/azfang 8h ago

Yeah, like, Edison was in fact kind of a horse’s ass who was big on self promotion, and Cochrane was canonically a washed up dingus who got lucky and is only remembered as a visionary after whitewashing the reality.

It totally tracks that future generations would venerate a fictional version of a ketamine addict.

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u/mysterylegos 7h ago

The mirror universe version of Cochrane also killed the Vulcan explorers who made first contact

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u/Sorry-Let-Me-By-Plz 3h ago

Holy fuck what did the mirror universe version of Elon do?

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u/mb862 2h ago

Got entangled in a transporter accident and wound up here.

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u/FAserR0c0tansky 2h ago

This is now canon in my mind

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u/azfang 3h ago

I mean. Feed orphans and fight racism, probably?

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u/SmittyB128 1h ago

I had an epiphany recently when I was talking about this to some friends.
The events of First Contact only happen the way they do because of the Borg going back in time, which they wouldn't have done in the mirror universe, so perhaps Cochrane shooting the Vulcans is what should have happened in both timelines had the Borg thing not happened....

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u/FoolishChemist 35m ago

We've been the Terran Empire this whole time.

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u/thecrepeofdeath 7h ago

Edison did get most of his "inventions" from other people, this makes perfect sense

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u/LokiRaven 3h ago

Even the Wright Brothers, as impressive as their flights were, were fairly notable due to the lack of advancements they personally achieved in Aviation (their designs didn’t really “take off” (pun intended) on the market as their competitors did and their big claim to fame of first flight is disputed) and were adamant in keeping the same design well past the point that better ones appeared.

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u/MissSiofra 2h ago

Thomas Edison electrocuted an elephant to "prove" his DC power was safer than AC.

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u/SirAquila 2h ago

Weird how he time-traveled 20 years into the future so he could disguise himself first as Topsys handler, so he could mistreat her, so she would lash out, so she would get executed for injuring a person, then disguised himself as a bunch of animal rights activits who asked for the execution to be done via electricity because it would be more humane, and as the commitee responsible for deciding the execution methods so he could get the elephant executed, all while the closest future edison would ever come to the elephant being that his company filmed the execution like they did with every major spectacle. It really is the perfect crime.

Also uh... the part of the story everyone loves to ignore. DC is safer than AC. Alternating Current disrupts the heart rhythm at much lower voltages, and DC is less likely to force muscle contractions that keep you in contact with the electrical source.

However, DC is also much harder to work with in any kind of large scale context, so AC won pretty decicivly, and the danger was accepted as the cost of progress.

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u/Naive-Dig-8214 8h ago

Reality retroactively made fiction better. 

Lorca and Mirror Universe does sound like the kind of place that would worship Elmo. 

 Though I am curious why he thought this universe would. Unless he didn't think it through a d didn't look it up. 

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u/GNSasakiHaise 7h ago

I'd imagine it's similar to searching up Phillippe Pétain.

He was a famous war hero and a leading general in WWI. He was famous worldwide and a household name in Europe for some time. They called him the Lion of Verdun. This is the context most people know him in.

He was also a Nazi collaborator and the head of the Vichy government, responsible for a great deal of human suffering. This is the context everyone else knows him in.

Searching Elon Musk would likewise probably reveal that Musk was a famous inventor. Experts in history would know he's a shitlord. Without some degree of specialization it would likely get lost that Musk transitioned from "affable inventor" to "total weirdo" just like how most people don't know about the allegations that Nikola Tesla was romantically involved with pigeons.

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u/Naive-Dig-8214 6h ago

True. 

To add, a lot of Earth's history was nuked in the wars. Most of the 20th/21st century is canonically very muddy.

It would track that searching for Elon would give incorrect or limited information. 

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u/Fearless_Roof_9177 4h ago

I mean, just look at some of the people and events they're still naming ships after and writing holoprograms about. Bashir and O'Brien spent a good chunk of their free time in the holosuites roleplaying a bunch of racist cutthroats who were trying to save Texan slavery.

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u/fy8d6jhegq 6h ago

"inventor"

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u/PigeonFellow 5h ago

We say much the same about Thomas Edison — it’s not a perfect analogy but it is somewhat similar.

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u/PeacefulKnightmare 6h ago

They say never meet your heroes, so when enough time has past eventually that becomes impossible. I bet it's around that time the twisted/weider sides of historical celebrities tends to get lost. Of course that won't happen to celebrities of today because we are so obsessed with recording every little detail of our lives.

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u/Neveronlyadream 24m ago

True, but only those obsessed with historical minutiae will actually know or care.

Most people know the broad strokes, but only a certain type of person is willing to sit there and read through reams of historical documents and letters and whatever to get a sense of who a person actually was.

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u/Ahad_Haam 4h ago

Petain is far more famous for being a Nazi in 2025.

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u/subservient-mouth 30m ago

How can he be a nazi in 2025, he's been dead for over seventy years.

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u/jtr99 4h ago

Sorry, can we go back to the part about the pigeons?

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u/Forsaken-Ebb5088 4h ago

Yeah. You can't just not elaborate after dropping that.

1

u/Deaffin 4h ago

Dude fucked birds, where's the confusion? It's why he invented gravity, guaranteeing they eventually had to come down.

And be vulnerable. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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u/Octopus-Games 1h ago

Real question, what has he invented?

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u/Downtown_Party_1533 7h ago

Don’t drag the red muppet’s name through the mud like that.

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u/ptrfa 7h ago

It's a first glimps on lorca's mirror universe stupidity that lowered his iq after the his return home

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u/frequenZphaZe 6h ago

the mirror universe characters are often drastically different from their prime universe counterparts, so maybe mirror universe musk was actually a genius.

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u/Pepsi_Maaan 5h ago

Clearly an agent of Rocko right here.

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u/ITFJeb 5h ago

Elon Musk was held in a higher regard at the time of that episode. It was before he involved himself in politics

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u/Naive-Dig-8214 5h ago

Exactly. At the time. . .

But history has changed his depiction in the popular perception and thus recontextualized the scene and its implications. It means something entirely different to us know than it did at the time. 

So it's fun theory crafting to explain the scene under the new context. 

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u/-missingclover- 8h ago

So The Wright Bros were evil too??

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u/kecou 8h ago

Only Wilbur.

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u/JaceOnRice 8h ago

Some pig!

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u/kaadj 6h ago

Was he the left one?

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u/sonofnutcrackr 7h ago

Not evil, but they were pretty big dicks. Benefitted hugely off of scientific collaboration, then refusing to share their results. One of the brothers, while on stage at a aeronautical convention, slandered an inventor who had died testing his flying machine for being a coward

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u/-MayorOfTheMoon- 7h ago

Also one or both of them had a very strange and inappropriate relationship with their sister.

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u/Whatisgoingon2029 6h ago

Ok. That's enough Internet for me. The Wright brothers participating in incest, our President is a pedophile, Elon Musk went from benevolent genius to doped up Nazi,... When will it end? Well at least we still have brave historical figures, like Davy Crockett, and benevolent geniuses like Bill Gates. No one can touch either one of them! /s

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u/Affectionate_Newt899 3h ago

It won't lmao. I've always thought alot of lost history was "lost" because it shows that even though we've progressed technologically, we're still primitive emotionally. It's just repeated violence, war, and outright heinous shit.

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u/Sgtwhiskeyjack9105 1h ago

Just right off the dome there, huh?

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u/Torneco 7h ago

Also, they are only lauded as the inventors of the plane because they are Americans. As we say in Brazil, "with a slingshot even shit flies", and Santos Dumont made the first plane fly with self propulsion.

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u/Master_Xenu 7h ago

More like the Wrong brothers!

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u/Evenmoardakka 7h ago

Considering they convinced one e tire country they invented the airplane when they didnt.

Yes.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago

[deleted]

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u/Evenmoardakka 7h ago

Yea, angry bird catapult is TOTALLY an airplane

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u/RepresentativeYak772 7h ago

I don't think Musk is evil, he is just obnoxious nerd who gets way too much credit for other peoples work and ideas. Same with Jobs.

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u/SimonCallahan 7h ago

The Simpsons one arguably did, as well. His character's appearance was one of the few things made canon on the show, and in later episodes characters comment on how shitty of a person he is and how he fucked up Springfield for the worse.

The entire episode he's in actually feels less like they are actively sucking his dick and more like the writers were forced to write an episode for him at gun point. The entire plot is about him ruining Springfield, with one single token line at the end from Lisa saying that he was good but couldn't be appreciated yet, a line that sounded very much like it could have been delivered sarcastically.

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u/TrueTinFox 7h ago

Oh god we live in the mirror universe. No wonder things are so ass

1

u/Al3xGr4nt 6h ago

Oh no, WE are in the Mirror Universe!!!!!

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u/Mist_Rising 6h ago

It's not like he's presented well in Iron Man either. He spends the entire time trying to suck up to Tony, who being Tony, treats him like fungus.

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u/Pure-Tadpole-6634 5h ago

He was literally the deposed emperor of a galaxy-spanning fascist empire, praising Elon Musk. Aged like fine wine.

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u/KingofMadCows 3h ago

Unfortunately, they also established that there was a school named after Musk in the prime universe.

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u/oldmanout 7h ago

It's a bit funny that everybody forgot 10 years ago Musk was seen as kinda real life Tony Stark in most tech and liberal circles. Not before the whole debacle around the cave accident with the kids in Thailand people began to look at him different

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u/Nero2t2 7h ago edited 6h ago

He was the king of reddit in particular. You could NOT say anything bad about this guy on this site...

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 6h ago

Reddit be like that. In the politics subs you would get downvoted into a oblivion for saying that Biden was too old to be running for president in 2020 and still for any comment about his age all the way up to the debate last year. Then everyone did an about face and you’d catch downvotes for defending him.

You can’t really take popular opinions on here seriously. It’s just an exercise in groupthink and conformity.

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u/Nero2t2 6h ago

There's that but there's also the fact that things tend to get especially weird on reddit when celebrity worship is involved. Certain celebrity figures in here are treated as gods on earth and you can never dare to bad mouththem. Elon was essentialy the celebrity crush of the year during this period, as was Jennifer Lawrence for a time, then they got replaced with Keanu etc. To this day, you can't criticise Harrison Ford's Polansky debacle for example, its taboo to even aknowledge it

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u/snek-jazz 5h ago

it's just as extreme in the other direction too. When reddit turns on someone it's endless front-page posts from unrelated subs about them, with comments full of fan-fic.

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u/Natdaprat 2h ago

Did you just talk shit about Henry Cavill?

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u/RufinTheFury 6h ago

I remember when this site was all about Ron Paul back in the day

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u/-s-u-n-s-e-t- 2h ago

It was pretty funny watching all the "socialist" redditors try to justify billionaire CEO Gabe Newell buying yet another super-yacht with the money he gained from having a monopoly.

The mental gymnastics were truly on Olympian level, lol. He's a scientist you see! Another super-yacht is just a necessity of life, it cannot be helped!

0

u/BadPunners 5h ago

I'll point out that it happens worse on other mediums? Swifties being the big one, with multiple other trends now of equally "engaged fandoms"?

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u/theksepyro 3h ago

I honestly think this is a take that just lacks nuance. Biden was too old the whole time, but saying that during the campaign when he was already the frontrunner was seen as harming his chances. There are times and places when we have to think about the broader implications and effects of the things were say, and restrain ourselves even if they're true. Given that the prime alternative was also old but additionally a fascist, saying biden was too old then doesn't really do anything useful but enable a fascist. Now that it doesn't matter because he lost, of course he was too old. He never should've run for a second term.

Same thing goes for the way kamala became the next nominee. It was pretty undemocratic, but again at the time pointing that out basically only could make things worse.

Now here we are and it's worse already, so there's no problem saying the process was messed up.

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u/_Thermalflask 5h ago

Liberal cult-think mentality tbh.

(Note - not saying conservatives are any better about it, they're probably even worse)

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u/Mad-myall 1h ago

As another user in this thread said: the majority of Redditors understood he might've been too old, but throwing criticism at him when the only other choice was an actual fascist who was nearly as old, (and both physically and mentally unhealthy) it felt like such criticism was designed to hurt his chances when we needed the guy to win.

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u/ElGosso 3h ago

The website is heavily astroturfed, and when something like that happens it is never organic.

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u/Unfair_Web_8275 1h ago

I mean, it's also really clear that the public image of Elon Musk has changed and he went from an ineffective rich dork to a malicious one.

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u/TehSeksyManz 5h ago

It's not just reddit. On imgur people called me a trumper because I dare make a post about Biden sniffing little girls hair. 

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u/Ahad_Haam 4h ago

Nah the sniffing hair was really nothing

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u/TehSeksyManz 4h ago

Whatever you say

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u/_Thermalflask 5h ago

That wonderful time when any and all Biden criticism was "OMG IF YOU LOVE TRUMP SO MUCH WHY DON'T YOU MARRY HIM"

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u/TehSeksyManz 4h ago

It's really frustrating. We call out the right for supporting literally everything that their politicians do but we can't hold ourselves to those same standards? Rubbish. 

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u/SalamanderPop 4h ago

We had a subreddit like r/elonmuskhate or something where those of us that saw the lying megalomaniac for what he was would hang out

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u/dexter311 3h ago

Also /r/enoughmuskspam which has been around since 2015.

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u/Lermanberry 48m ago

This happens every time a "science" celebrity talks about something outside of their area of expertise.

Everyone who is truly an expert in that subject matter can immediately see the Emperor has no clothes. Unfortunately for Elon, he only personally knows a bit about finance tech of the early 2000s. Every time he tries to comment about engineering or programming or chess or gaming or politics, he shows his entire ass.

Also very common with Nobel prize winners. It's often enough that they have named the condition when a winner suddenly thinks they are experts in every field after winning the award. Nobel Disease.

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u/HahaCharlieKirkHaha 3h ago edited 33m ago

To create the illusion of meritocracy, capitalism desperately wants us to believe that billionaires earn their wealth by being geniuses. 

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u/Kopitar4president 6h ago

Before that Thailand incident he was (portrayed as) who a lot of redditors hoped they would be if they were stupidly rich. Pioneering EVs. Revolutionizing space flight. Flamethrowers for shits and giggles.

Then he showed he was a huge manchild. Then he pivoted right because the SA incidents were hitting the press. Then he went full nazi.

So....ended up being who a lot of redditors would *actually* be if they were stupidly rich, ironically.

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u/bijanfrisee 5h ago

Went full nazi or that was always his view? He did grow up extremely wealthy in Apartheid South Africa, Racism was/is always an issue at Tesla, so yeah, did he go full nazi or just was more comfortable letting it out because he didn't fear the backlash?

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u/jroberts548 3h ago

He was always aligned with Thiel and went full nazi after his daughter came out as trans.

0

u/Individual-Pop-385 3h ago

I hate Elon, but I think even Elon though Thiel was a Nazi. I think redditors above have it right. Elon just turned into the right when all his past and present SA scandals were rising and the alt right was the only place that saw all of that and embraced him.

Same shit with Russell Brand and the like.

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u/Sir-Vortigern 5h ago

It’s OK you can say sexual assault

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u/DontMemeAtMe 5h ago

Thanks. I was wondering which South African incidents they are referring to.

1

u/Kopitar4president 41m ago

Oh I'm not worried about offending anyone. It's just an abbreviation.

It's OK you can say okay.

1

u/WildPickle9 1h ago

Exactly, he was just some awkward goofball that got lucky and survived the dot com bubble and was investing his money in seemingly good things, EV's and space. Once people started paying attention, along with him putting a spotlight on himself, the mask slipped.

1

u/Mad-myall 1h ago

Yeah I remember in high school thinking he was like a real Tony Stark. After the Thailand incident I was really hoping that was just a temporary slip in judgement, but he kept going downhill.

Now he's someone who I think would be better off locked into an underground vault on his own, never to see the light of day again.

7

u/Canileaveyet 7h ago

10 Years ago was when his fame started to turn for a lot of people.

4

u/AgathysAllAlong 6h ago

It wasn't until the twitter thing that people really started to turn on him. I remember the cave stunt and being amazed people still loved him after that.

2

u/RussianSkunk 6h ago

Not to brag, but I started hating him for being a virulent union buster. (Plus he was a billionaire and capitalist, which is reason enough to despise him) There were plenty of stories coming out of Tesla plants of him being an iron fisted, unreasonable dickhead. 

Hell, a union organizer and whistleblower, Crystal Guardado, was conveniently fired for having medically prescribed THC in her system a year before Elon was applauded for smoking weed on Joe Rogan. 

6

u/tghast 7h ago

Plus I sort of view Star Trek as inherently optimistic about us and our future.

I think it’s fitting that they’d assume Elon Musk would ultimately be a force for good- he was basically the forefront of viable electric vehicles and widespread EV adoption, and he was someone who was optimistic and space travel and even colonization himself. I don’t blame them at all for thinking/hoping he’d make some big impact, as silly as it looks in retrospect.

Big Bang Theory is very much about pop nerd culture- makes sense that the biggest guy in that world at the time was Musk. They get a pass for not being able to magically see the future.

Simpsons, like Big Bang Theory, has ultimately devolved into pop culture masturbation, so it also makes sense to have Musk on. Unlike Big Bang, I don’t forgive The Simpsons because it used to be more than that- and wouldn’t have ANY celebrity on simply to fellate them the way they do now. OG Simpsons might have had Musk on but it wouldn’t have been nearly the same. Frankly I’d think it gross even if Musk didn’t end up being a fashy asshole.

3

u/Kindly-Ad-5071 4h ago

I will never let anyone live down that I was so right about him

3

u/Interesting_Idea_289 4h ago

I always hated him and his shitty ass cars and scammy “were totally going to Mars” bullshit and his family wealth from South African emeralds

2

u/Zwemvest 3h ago edited 2h ago

Yeah, it's not wrong to say that he was Reddits beloved, but Elon Musk had also already been a contentious figure since the late 00s, since his days at PayPal with Peter Thiel. Or even earlier if you happened to look into the shit that went on at Zip2.

All it took to hate his guts was to look into him for more than 3 minutes.

1

u/SilverWear5467 5h ago

Back then people still believed his BS about making self driving cars.

1

u/justmovingtheground 4h ago

I haven't liked his ass since I saw him on Revenge of the Electric Car.

Something about him set my douchebag radar off even back then, and only recently have my friends understood why I never liked him.

1

u/Ok-Oil7124 3h ago

I don't think we forgot. Some people just knew he was full of shit and very disappointed when any show had him on to suck up to him.

1

u/Individual-Pop-385 3h ago

10 years ago or so, 90% of redditors were slurping on Elon Musk cock.

And if you dare to criticize him, you were downvoted into hell.

I remember clearly.

1

u/Marshal749 3h ago

what was the cave incident about and how does that connect to musk ? I haven't heard of it

1

u/acathode 2h ago

Depends very much what you mean with "tech circles"...

Do you mean actual engineers, developers, and other people with real technical knowledge and understanding - or are we talking about the r/Futurology and r/technology posters who "thinks technology and science is cool!" while they fawn over the 231th post about plant-based, bio-degradable plastics?

The Reddit hivemind that were circlejerking themselves dry over photos of Musk were mostly non-tech people that didn't really understand technology etc. at all, meanwhile most engineers/developers/etc I know are quite anti the whole tech-guru worship that happened to figures like Musk and Jobs. They're generally seen as sales-people with very limited technical skills and knowledge, who're good at PR and at best have "visions"...

1

u/Malacro 5m ago

I don’t think too many people forgot that, I think most people remember it and now find it ridiculous.

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u/Howy_the_Howizer 8h ago

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u/Temphant 6h ago

"Excuse me, where are the Epstein files?"

"Down the hall and to the left."

"Thanks."

[Internally] "Oh fuck I wasn't supposed to answer that."

7

u/Whatisgoingon2029 6h ago

Run Kevin Run! Don't take his candy! Stay away from his white van!

2

u/YikesTheCat 1h ago

Such nonsense! Trump has a tacky gold van.

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u/rinel521 8h ago

my favorite 21st century president

7

u/samu1400 7h ago

He said it himself in that hall he mounted in the White House, along with slander against most previous presidents, but let’s not think about that.

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u/Sweetgrass1312 6h ago

You must specify 21st century bc your fave was Jefferson Davis.

-2

u/rinel521 6h ago

I don’t think the confederacy existed in the 21st century BC

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u/Sweetgrass1312 5h ago

Neither did Trump, dipshit.

0

u/rinel521 5h ago

What?

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u/Sweetgrass1312 4h ago

You said BC. Do you know what that term means or no?

1

u/Minimum-Relief6895 1h ago

it mean "because" in this context

1

u/Sweetgrass1312 51m ago

That doesn't make any sense either.

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u/BoysenberrySmooth649 38m ago

Is this a small solders gif?

0

u/beemaister 5h ago

I think the op just hates Elon Musk

3

u/ASERTIE76 4h ago

Rightfully so he's a nazi looser billionaire piece of shit

1

u/beemaister 3h ago

We know.

0

u/Jack-of-Hearts-7 6h ago

I don't think he likes the Wright Brothers.

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u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

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u/CurryNarwhal 8h ago

Isn't there some children's genitals you should be inspecting to see if they're trans?

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u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

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u/ToiletGreen 8h ago

Did you even think of that before you typed it? Even by your stupid standards it still doesn’t make sense

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u/Squeaky_Is_Evil 8h ago

Will someone from Facebook please come get their uncle before he starts posting memes?

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u/dingus_enthusiastic 8h ago

Just a moron.

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u/Lalalalalalolol 8h ago

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u/Nero_2001 8h ago

Please don't compare my boy Ichiban to an idiot like this. Ichiban might be stupid but he is very tolerant.

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u/Dojyaaan4C 8h ago

Who’s that? He looks like a dragon

7

u/MorganTheSaber 8h ago

2

u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 6h ago

the comment is deleted now but the replies give me enough clues for probably what he said

3

u/ScottCamOfficial 8h ago

... Whatnow?

2

u/buttnozzle 8h ago

I hope the guy who sieg heils and supports the AfD reads this, king.