If you search for Musk online comment threads on, say, Reddit, you’ll quickly sense the presence of teenage male body sprays and stained gym socks. It’s “incel” heaven. 

Hier einige Punkte, die Coupland nicht auf Musk sitzen lassen möchte: 

1. He's a dick.

Let’s be totally honest here, because in your heart, you know, and I know, dear reader, that you can be a real dick, too. So can I, and, if we’re being truly honest, so can, say, the Queen. She probably has to be a dick 10 times a week. So since when does being a dick somehow invalidate you as a person? It doesn’t. 

2. Er ist nur auf Publicity aus.

Elon Musk is actually terrible at publicity. His Cybertruck launch was a disaster, and the “Tesla in space” thing was cringey. When being interviewed he’s opaque, overly techy and difficult to connect with – Richard Branson is a million times better with publicity, but there’s something about Musk that makes Branson seem a thousand years old.

3. But self-driving cars will kill people!

Grow up. Musk didn’t just generate a few fundamental patents and move to Santa Barbara to golf for the rest of his life. Every day he tries to reinvent the wheel and it’s working. Shopped online lately? Ever wanted to visit the International Space Station? Want a new car?With cars alone, Musk pretty much single-handedly shamed and forced the global auto industry to accelerate the electric car rollout by seven to 10 years. 

4. Er ist unpolitisch.

No, he’s not. The left doesn’t like him because he doesn’t fund them or show interest in their causes. And the right doesn’t like him because he messes around with the stock market and doesn’t take classical capitalism seriously. He seems to see left versus right as an obsolete binary and instead focuses his altruistic energies on ecology and invention. He seems to be more about the systems that create signals rather than the signals themselves.

Couplands Verteidigungsrede ist eine Eierschaukelei erster Güte, parteiisch, peinlich, eitel, aber auch eloquent und lustig zu lesen. Ein unangenehmer Moschus-Geruch bleibt auch hier zurück. "Erwachsene Stimmen" bleiben beim Thema Elon Musk wohl weiterhin rar.