What is this?
This is The Coolest Thing You Could Do, a website intended to brainstorm ways that Elon Musk could be cool.
As of mid 2025, it's no secret that Elon Musk is desperate to be cool. It's part of what makes it so sad that he fails so utterly at it. How can someone who has been so rich an powerful be so utterly swagless? He suffers for his uncoolness, and he makes society suffer for it as well. There was a time at which people I respected thought Elon Musk would give us the future, and now those people regard him as an idiot, a disappointment, and an ignorant bigot who relies on the cruelty of his family line and the success of others to prop himself up. There are many idiots in this world who prop themelves up in such a way and still manage to seem cool, but Elon has claimed to be a self-made man for so long that he's made being the silver spoon son of a family that owned emerald mines into something that isn't even like a "bad boy in a cool way" thing. It seems impossible that someone who has everything in the world should be giving absolutely nothing, to the point that a country with a fascist dictator would rather attack his car dealerships than fight back against said dictator. It seems like it should be impossible.
Lately, I've been joking around with friends about what I'd tell Elon Musk to do if I could tell him. Not any of the usual jokes I hear about rich folks, since the average "there's one very cool thing you could do" suggestion to rich people is a not-so-subtle encouragement for self-termination. I just find the complete failure of Elon Musk's public image to be a totally fascinating thing, and a totally unnecessary thing. I know cool, and I know cool people who know cool. Cool often is the currency effortlessly traded in by people who have little else. People would say I'm glamorizing poverty, and I'd say, great. I'd love for my poverty to be glamorous. In any case, it seems ridiculous that somethign that comes so easily to so many should be so difficult for Musk to maintain.
This is a genuine effort, but it is also an ironic one. Like most ironic things have proven to be in the past decade, what starts as a joke can quickly become reality. And so, a running joke I've had with my friends seems to have the total potential to be worth something in reality. If anyone can say anything online to one of the world's richest men, why not me?
The fact of the matter is, I am a leftist who sternly believes that billionaires shouldn't exist, but I'm also a person who lives in a world with billionaires in it. If billionaires exist, can't they at least be cool?
The Case for a Cool Billionaire
Americans want to believe that Billionaires could be cool, but they usually are not. Even as we have robotic Zuck, possessed Bezos, and cringey Musk as our trifecta of the most prototypical billionaires of the day. These are deeply unnatural people, who move and laugh like sweating, fearful automotons. Every effort towards coolness throws into even starker contrast the ways in which they fail. So we get the unconvincing swaglet zuck, the tone-deaf let them eat cake bezos, and a weird, primevally selfish and brutish musk who has lost the futuristic gleam that made him such an idol to so many across the world.
And yet... Americans want to believe that Billionaires could be cool. They want a realized Batman, a mythologized Barnham.
As a completely average American, in a 2020s America where Luigi Mangione is spoken of as a hero, the obvious answer for a "cool billionaire" is Mark Cuban.
Mark Cuban is already cool. There is nothing I can do to fix him. So I move on to a more fascinating project.
The Case for Making Elon Cool Again
As an American, I love an underdog story. Elon Musk has never been an underdog in his life.......... until now. Isn't that enticing? Am I crazy? He still has all the power, he still has all the money, but his coolness, at least to all normal people, has been resolutely demolished. People who drive Teslas apologize and say they wish they got a different EV. I'm sure his hype men continue to inflate his ego, but the emperor has no clothes to the bulk of us, at least here in the US. The yes men will be there to delude him as long as he has money and power, and it'd be hard for him to NOT have money and power, so they're more of an obstacle than a boon to this project of Cool Elon.
If the American People view Elon as the child of genocide, as a corrupt and insane junkie, and as an apocalyptic horseman ushering in the New Gilded Age, isn't it impossible to rescue his image?
Well, it's been done before in America, hasn't it?
Case Study: Chester Arthur
This is not the true story of Chester Arthur. This is the story I was told about Chester Arthur. I do not respect Chester Arthur, but I think the fact that this story exists says a lot about what makes Americans tick. If you want to be cool in America, but you come from a privileged or corrupt background, there is promise here.
Here's the story: Once upon a time there was a corrupt politician in New York named Chester Arthur. He was connected to the corrupt political machines of both parties, though he was supposedly a conservative Republican. He weaseled his way higher in society, until he was in charge of the Port of New York. There, he took kickbacks from his post, enriching himself as he lost the respect of all New York.
This way of things was disrupted when he was chosen as VP pick for Presidential candidate James Garfield. "That's crazy," Garfield's supporters said, "Arthur is a total hack. Garfield is supposed to remove corruption, not welcome it in the front door!" And Arthur's allies said, "Oh no, this is terrible. Arthur is supposed to be my friend, he's supposed to give me more power through the spoils system, so of course I want him to be prominent in national politics. But the spoils system will be ruined when Garfield is president!"
All the people were disappointed in Arthur, and nobody could believe he was seriously on Garfield's side. What kind of two-faced person would be so corrupt, but try to win a presidential campaign for an anti-corruption candidate? It seemed unlikely that the avatar of corruption would do anything good for the country at all. Even so, Garfield's promises were so appealing in the midst of the Gilded Age, that they held their nose and voted Garfield for president, even with the undesirable Arthur attached.
When Arthur arrived at the Vice Presidency, all of the fears of the people were confirmed. He spent all his time constantly demanding that Garfield put Arthur's friends in office. They had such conflict that Arthur even went out in public and claimed that the election was a fraud. When Garfield tried to shut him up by instating Arthur's pick for Postmaster, it did nothing to improve their estrangement.
All the while, there was a failed lawyer in New York applying for roles in Garfield's administration. A liar's liar and a cheat's cheat, this man considered Chester Arthur his own ally. Though his own dad considered him to have been possessed by the devil, he felt confident through some kind of parasocial relationship that Arthur would help him get a job in the Garfield white house. After all, he had given a poorly-constructed and not-well-remembered speech for Garfield... twice! Garfield and Arthur basically owed him! When no such office appeared for the unqualified wretch, the man decided that Garfield was standing in the way between him and his true hero, Chester Arthur.
The failed lawyer attacked President Garfield, shooting him twice in the back and confidently proclaiming that this was Chester Arthur's chance to be president. When questioned by police, he confidently said he was friends with Arthur and that Arthur would give those cops positions higher in government if they let him go. When the public found out about the assassination of the U.S. president by a self-proclaimed "friend of Chester Arthur", Arthur's image was at an all-time low. He practically had to go into hiding, as President Garfield was treated for his injuries.
For a month, the assassin carried on raving in prison about how Arthur would pardon him and save the nation. For two months, the President struggled to recover. All the while, Arthur refused to act as presidence, in fear of the guilt that people would lay upon him. Was he responsible? Even if he had not asked for it, Arthur had helped create a more corrupt, lawless Gilded Age America, and was he to be punished for that? He got what he asked for, power laid at his feet.
In the end President Garfield died, and Chester Arthur became President.
It was a dark day for the United States. People were terrified, honestly. Is this what the nation had become? So shortly after it had reunited? The public was certain that this was the end of the union. How could this be allowed happen? This was beyond the pale. This was the deepest depth of corruption that could be imagined, that Chester Arthur could have somebody assassinate the president and get away with it. That someone could kill the president to preserve corruption, and it would work.
Something changed in Chester Arthur, in the face of America's despair. At first, when he arrived to the White House as president, he was ready to be his usual self. He ordered lavish renovations, he made appointments as he saw fit, and he just bore the image of America's most hated, corrupt president. But then he was tested.
A corruption scandal broke out when it came to light that postal contractors were being overpaid. Americans were already complaining that they knew Arthur would never do anything to prevent this waste. This was in the wake of a successful assassination to institute a corrupt president. Reform was needed more now than ever. Reform was unlikely more now than ever. The fate of the nation laid squarely on Arthur's shoulders, and nobody believed he would be capable of doing the right thing.
The people still wanted James Garfield, the president they voted for. What they got was Chester Arthur, the president chosen by a violent maniac.
If you were Arthur, what would you do? Maybe, having benefitted from a corrupt system, you would feel no sympathy for a naive populace who genuinely believe that there could anything better. Maybe, having been spurned by the people, and finding no way to please them, you would delight in their sorrow. Or maybe, just maybe you'd realize this low moment was your one real chance to show the world who you truly are.
Arthur put his signature on the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, altering his legacy forever. When people doubted his dedication to the law, he made haste to appoint real reformers who had criticized him to the new Civil Service commission. Within a few years, the act made it so that many public offices required applicants to take civil service exams, ensuring a system based on merit, at least for a time.
In the face of this action, what critics could criticize him? How could anyone consider him an avatar of corruption? Who could blame him for the unfortunate actions of a deranged lunatic?
With the stroke of a pen, Chester Arthur went from being the face of the spoils system to being the president the people wanted. He enacted the change that his predecessor died for, not the change that the assassin hoped for. He overcame his reputation, he overcame the consequences of his own actions, and he made a mark in history that shows the everlasting potential for change in people, even people who are nailed down by the public eye.
Was this the final form of Chester Arthur's reputation? Of course not. Today, Chester Arthur is remembered as a terrible bigot who passed unfair, cruel laws against Chinese immigrants.
However, the fact that I was told this story at all highlights something important: America's most hated man can become America's hero through unexpected principled action in favor of the people. All the negative things Chester Arthur did before were, for a time, wiped away by his transformative moment. Even now, his legacy is inherently tied to the identity of "the one who gave us Civil Service exams." I do not admire an asian-hating bigot, but I find it in me to admire a man who turned his back on the darkness to enstate merit as a value in the United States. He didn't even have to have gotten his own position through any merit. The fact that he was considered the antithesis to civil service reform is what makes the story endure, even after he proved he wasn't a good guy really after all. The bad guy doing the good thing is more memorable than anything else.
I suppose part of it is this sort of American narrative of temptation. It's almost as if we don't blame the people who accumulate power or wealth, we blame human greed, as if it is an inevitability. For this crucial moment, a mere man, a man known to suffer from greed, overcame his core weakness to protect America from that very weakness. In that moment, the most powerful man in America became the hero of a moral underdog story.
That could be you!
Case Study: Gilgamesh
I'll keep this one brief. It's a story you ought to know.
It is remarked early on in the epic of Gilgamesh that he terrorized his people. He behaved like he thought he was a god. His people plead to the gods to bring someone to challenge Gilgamesh, and they obliged. That challenger arrived and became his best friend. Throughout the story, they went together and destroyed guardians of natural features and earned the ire of the gods. When his best friend died, he realized death would come for him and began to hunt for immortality, which he did not find. All he can do is be a better king, and build things for his people. Gilgamesh's story, then, is bookended by remarks on the strength of a wall he built to protect Uruk. For a king, who is mortal like a human but powerful like a god, immortality exists not through eternal life but through eternal memory in public works.
When kings are superseded in power by the rich, as they are today, this kind of message starts to sound like the idea of Charity as a justification for wealth. I am a leftist, as you know, so in my own life I abide by the idea of mutual aid. Charity is seen by leftists as less worthy than mutual aid, because Charity exists as a justification of wealth. Charity exists to immortalize wealth and flatter the ego of the wealthy. We are meant to thank the wealthy as gods or kings when they are charitable. That's unacceptable from my point of view, obviously, because I think there shouldn't be billionaires. But billionaires exist, and as an extraordinarily poor person, I don't personally have the power to stop that, so it doesn't matter to you whether or not I believe billionaires ought to be allowed. So, okay, if I am going to speak to an audience of Elon, we must ignore my disdain for charity.
In the course of this website continuing to exist, I will not ask only for charity and public works. I will suggest all manner of things. But these examples I list here are the ones that keep coming to mind these days, when I think, "I can think of one thing Elon Musk could do today to become the most popular man on earth."
I joked with a friend yesterday that I wished Zuckerberg had gotten to fight Musk to the death, and as a beast-man Enkidu to Trump's tyrant they would have ruled this early period with similar viciousness together, and then Zuck would die to a god's curse and Trump would be forced to learn the role of the absolute leader he wants to be. But, let's be real, Trump is no Gilgamesh. And, furthermore, he is incapable of learning anything new. He keeps doing the same bit over and over, sending people away, "firing" them, like he's still on TV. Fire people from the government. Fire people from citizenship.
Doing Trump's bit made you the most hated man in America. Not him, though. He is doing what his cult wants, and they love him for it. You are doing what his cult wants, and you lose your own fans. You are not him. Why hitch yourself to that horrendous wagon? You're the richest man in the fucking world. Why did you suck up to anyone at all?
I can't really claim to know your personal rationale. I'm not invested in watching your every move. It gives me no joy to clown on you day in and day out. I can't imagine anything more masochistic than being you and continuing to flail around in the public eye. I understand why people in general pursue attention like that, though. The internet is like this. Famous people are harrassed nonstop, lolcows stay online despite their lives being ruined, random people are targeted by random other people and keep coming back to the well of human attention nevertheless.
There are electric fuel stations all over America because of your influence. All the time, I hear people say, "well, I guess I'm glad he made it easier to get an electric car, but I'll never buy a Tesla." Even more than that, I hear people say, "There's one really cool thing he could do anytime." You've put thousands of people out of a job, you've tried to remove the social safety net, you've really hurt everyone, and you haven't even gotten anything from it, really, but the scorn of people who didn't even know who you were before you wrecked your reputation. You could very well be remembered forever as the sniveling child of a dynasty of disgusting freaks who stand in abhorrent contrast to all the things that make it worthwhile to be human. Or you could make like Chester Arthur and do one really cool thing to make a comeback. I don't think, as it stands, your influence on the electric car industry is enough to make people forget the immense harm you and your family have done. It's really a shame, since Americans know plenty of good people come from terrible families who did terrible things. A lot of us consider ourselves among that number.
Gilgamesh had built the walls of Uruk already when the people cried for the Gods to humble him. He was not yet a Great King. He was an ass and everybody hated him. He was humbled, in the end, and he realized the source of his immortal legacy was what good he had done for his people. That is when he began to become a Great King.