Enough Musk Spam

Some kid pushed him down the stairs and seriously injured him when he was in school

True story?

I wouldn't doubt it.

I really know very little about Musk's past in a biographical sense, but as a lifelong student of human nature - both collectively and individually - I know him all too well.

and I don’t blame them

Nor do I.

You can see it in his mannerisms and the look on his face. He was and still is one of those people who's unjustifiably smug - who's obnoxiously arrogant in spite of the fact that everyone around him just thinks he's a loudmouthed asshole. And the secret behind it is that he's actually desperately insecure and his entire life is bent toward (over)compensating for that.

He's obnoxiously smug and arrogant because he has virtually no empathy or understanding of other people, so he doesn't know how to act to actually appeal to people.

But he sees other people who do know how to act and who have spent a lifetime earning respect and admiration, and he sees their confidence and that's what he wants. So, failing to understand even the most basic principles, he jumps right past the earning respect and admiration stage and to the confidence stage, and unable to even pull that off convincingly, he just ends up smug and obnoxious.

Which makes people dislike him, which leads him to try to compensate, which ends up just being more obnoxious arrogance, which makes people dislike him and 'round and 'round it goes.