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Cont: Musk buys Twitter II

It's okay to have fun with numbers. Myself, I am borderline obsessed with the number 23. Because 2+3=5, obviously. I do things in fives, I refer to things in 23s, I even have a Flickr album of times I've spotted the number 23 in public.

And yes, I did see the movie.

Using a particular number as a motif isn't what's reprehensible about Musk. It just shows that he's a nerd, and we all knew that already. You can be both a nerd and a dickhead at the same time.
 
dirtywick said:
420 is a weed/stoner thing not a nerd thing and musk is a poser
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It's definitely a stoner thing, not a nerd thing. Possible intersection notwithstanding, injecting "420" into everything as a joke is a young stoner thing, a joke that quickly gets tired and goes away. It originated among high-school age stoners in California (4:20 p.m. being the time they would gather) and pretty much stops there. For a man in his fifties to use the 420 joke as much as Elon Musk does is really just more sad and pathetic than funny. We don't need to belabor that Musk doesn't know how to be funny except in that sad, pathetic way.

arthwollipot said:
It's okay to have fun with numbers. Myself, I am borderline obsessed with the number 23.
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Using a particular number as a motif isn't what's reprehensible about Musk.
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I want to say these are different phenomena. I can see having a predilection for certain numbers, especially those that have cultural or personal significance. In our products that use TCP/IP to communicate, we use port 2037 as an undocumented access to discover a unit's internal state or health for diagnostic purposes. There are other culturally significant numbers like 7, 12, and 60. People have their lucky numbers for lotteries. And the whole field of numerology taps into some special relationship that humans have with numbers. Your relationship with 23 doesn't seem out of line with that.

I gather Elon Musk's use of 420 is just yet another cringeworthy attempt to be an edgelord.
 
dirtywick said:
420 is a weed/stoner thing not a nerd thing and musk is a poser
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And it is, importantly, an adolescent stoner joke, in the same way that finding 69 inherently funny isn't just a sign of a sexually active lifestyle. It's completely embarrassing (or should be) that Musk discovered these 'jokes' in his 40s, and thinks both are funny without any trace of irony. He's not only a poser, he's posing as a 13-year-old dimwit's idea of cool.
 
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elon musk doesn't even like nerd culture either. it's a phony social media influencer trend follower persona act. it doesn't really land but he keeps trying it, it's sad
 
I would say that Elon Musk exhibits some of the obsessive tendencies that you might also find in nerd culture. But in his case it's less a fanatical devotion or a desire to obtain and use arcane knowledge, and more of a strategy to intimidate people who might threaten his self-image. I think it's more accurate to say he doesn't understand nerd culture (or really any culture), but thinks that he has to build credibility there in order to have people trust him in his enterprises.
 
arthwollipot said:
It's okay to have fun with numbers. Myself, I am borderline obsessed with the number 23. Because 2+3=5, obviously. I do things in fives, I refer to things in 23s, I even have a Flickr album of times I've spotted the number 23 in public.

And yes, I did see the movie.

Using a particular number as a motif isn't what's reprehensible about Musk. It just shows that he's a nerd, and we all knew that already. You can be both a nerd and a dickhead at the same time.
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No. What is reprehensible is that he uses these numbers as motifs when he really shouldn't. For example, if you want to set a price per share for the acquisition of a company, you should really do a serious valuation and quote a realistic price instead of a packing a number out of your arsenal because you think it's funny.

The other thing, which is not so much reprehensible as hypocritical, is whining when other people do the same thing to you.
 
arthwollipot said:
It can certainly be both. Some nerds are also stoners, and stoners are quite often nerds. It's definitely quite nerdy to use a number as a recurring motif.
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As a nerd and a stoner, I agree it can be both but it's way, way more leaning to the stoner side lol. 4:20 is deeply rooted in stoner culture and instantly ties in with the Grateful Dead movement\culture.

The numbers don't mean as much as the time does, as Jay referenced. If you walked into a computer science class and said 420 you'd probably be met with mostly blank stares. Walk into a room full of stoners and say it and you'll get a bunch of laughs. It's like intro to stoner 101. You first learn to pass it to the left and then you learn what 4:20 means.
 
mumblethrax said:
I know. It isn't a recurring motif. It's a furtive shibboleth.

People don't say "420" out of some fascination with the number itself. They say it because it means something to people in the know, and nothing to rest of the world.
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I think you'll find that a lot more people know what "420" means these days.

"Friends of Dorothy" was a shibboleth. My setting my keysafe combo to 2305 isn't.
 
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