Look, I don’t like to talk about Elon Musk and I don’t like to read about Elon Musk. I have “elon” muted on Mastodon so I don’t have to hear all the chatter. I’m too old to idolize people and I’ve actually watched as many of his promises failed to materialize.

But I didn’t stop the “Dial M for Musk” episode of TrashFuture when it started playing.

And I was rewarded with this fantastic tidbit you can hear starting around 45:40.

Musk has a story that he’s fed to some uncritical biographers like Ashley Vance and Walter Isaacson about how he was horribly bullied at school. How a kid at his school kicked him down the stairs, injuring him horribly. Hell, this is part of the pitch of Isaacson’s book – you can see in the blurb on GoodReads or BookWyrm. His dad apparently doesn’t care and boy what a jerk his dad is.

When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.

Blurb for elon Musk Biography

To be clear, I stand firmly AGAINST kicking children down stairs. Even after you read the rest of this, know that I do not think little Elon Musk should have been kicked down the stairs. But if you want to understand why…

It turns out Elon’s dad has a version of this story.

His dad tells the story and there’s a detail that Elon Musk leaves out of the story and that’s that the kid who kicked Elon down the stairs, his father had actually killed himself, you know, had committed suicide and Elon Musk was making fun of the kid because his dad had committed suicide and that’s why he kicked him down the stairs. It’s like it’s probably an important detail to know…

Paris Marx in Dial M for Musk on TrashFuture

And this all seems very of character with what I read of the man – and I TRY NOT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HIM. Please do not contact me if this post made you chuckle or angry I do not want to talk more about him.

But wait, there's more

• Just kidding, nothing's related to this.