This article was published on July 31, 2017

Elon Musk’s tweets about his own mental health offer a glimpse inside a brilliant mind


Elon Musk’s tweets about his own mental health offer a glimpse inside a brilliant mind Image by: OnInnovation

There are few people in tech who capture our attention in quite the same way as Elon Musk. Whether he’s arguing with Mark Zuckerberg about the dangers of AI, or he’s breaking Hyperloop news on Twitter, he’s usually good for a headline or two.

Today he’s making a splash for frank comments about what it’s like to be Elon Musk:

 

The engimatic Elon Musk is a lot of things, a sufferer of bi-polar disorder probably isn’t one of them. What do I know though? Like him, I’m not an expert in psychology. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if Musk was one of the leading minds in psychology. Would anyone?

That’s what’s most interesting about the man behind both Space X and Tesla: it’s impossible to sum him up. Even his Wikipedia entry reads like a ridiculous made-up title:

Elon Reeve Musk is a South African-born Canadian-American business magnate, investor, engineer, and inventor.

His Twitter account is a glimpse into a cross-section of worlds that conjure Steve Jobs’ hyperbole, Bill Gates’ enthusiasm, and Mark Zuckerberg’s ambition – yet doesn’t reflect any of their personalities. He’s larger-than-life, smarter-than-you, and somehow able to be equally grounded and ridiculous.

He’s like that. It feels like he has no agenda, as though he’s just a regular business guy posting about successful product demonstrations (launching rockets into space). Other times it feels like he’s the only one in on the joke.

Social media gives us blue-collar folk an opportunity to glimpse at the lives of people like Elon Musk. When he shows us emotional vulnerability, it’s a rare insight. The fact that he was a little tone-deaf in his mental health observations is forgivable — after all he has a habit of posting things that surprise us.

Also, he likes floors. He really, really, likes floors.

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