ELON-O-MANIA!

Chapter 2: Omar (reading time: six minutes)

If Elon Musk can’t free Britney Spears, no one can.

Quick roundup:

— Hmmmm. Maybe Tesla Autopilot has serious issues, and skeptics question timelines for Full Self-Driving.

— Tesla delivers more than 200,000 cars in a quarter for the first time.

— We don't even have a Cybertruck yet, but why not make it a camper?!

— Elon says Falcon boosters may be reused 20 to 30 times!

— The Boring Company proposes a tunnel to the beach in Ft. Lauderdale!

Meantime, let’s meet the Muskovites.

As I noted in Chapter 1 of Elon-O-Mania!, I will use this space to profile Elon’s fans and foes. The passions he inspires fascinate me. The polarization around Elon approaches Trumpian levels, and it rubs off on his disciples.

I’ve dubbed his super fans “Muskovites.”

We start with Elon Musk’s biggest fan who isn’t named Elon Musk.

His name is Omar Qazi, a young computer programmer who’s become a celebrity in his own right.

Omar tweets at @WholeMarsBlog, and people in the Twittersphere think he's either wonderful or evil, a champion for truth or a dangerous liar, reflecting how they feel about Musk himself.

I expected a zealot, but Omar was surprisingly sweet and disarming. He agreed to our interview before Bulletin was announced, so he had no idea where this would end up or how he’d come across. He took a leap of faith, and I appreciated that.

Qazi says he first discovered Musk in college when his dad bought a Tesla S. “It was so different from any other car I’d ever driven.” When the Model 3 was unveiled in 2016 at a lower price, “I gave (Musk) $1,000 on my credit card, and I reserved one.”

It would be two years before Qazi took ownership of the car because of production delays. By then, he’d fully immersed himself in what he called “this whole world of Tesla.” Omar started writing about Tesla and talking about Elon on social media. A lot.

“They want vengeance.”

Many responses were positive. “I’ve talked to a lot of fans who are like, ‘I was depressed, and I didn’t know what I was doing in my life, or maybe even I was suicidal, and I really found a lot of meaning in what Elon was doing.‘” On the other hand, “There’s just these crazy people who hate you and hate Tesla, and really want to try and hurt you just for speaking up about Tesla,” he says. Particularly angry are the legions of short sellers losing a lot of money. “It’s very emotional for them. They want vengeance.”

Omar attracts much of that vengeance.

One person on Twitter claimed Qazi had been arrested in Las Vegas as a felon in possession of a firearm. Turns out, it was a different Omar Qazi. Oops. “I’m definitely not a criminal and I haven’t been charged with any crimes ever,” says the Omar Qazi who loves Elon Musk.

He’s also been named as a co-defendant with Musk and Tesla in a lawsuit filed by Aaron Greenspan. Greenspan has long shorted Tesla shares, and in the federal lawsuit he accuses Qazi and Musk of everything from libel to violating securities laws, calling Tesla “a ponzi scheme that just happens to produce cars.”

This is one wild lawsuit, the angriest tech feud since the Zuckerberg-Winklevii spat (Greenspan has also sued Facebook).

I’m not going to weigh in on the merits of the suit because I don’t want to get dragged into it, but it’s worth a read if you have a PACER account to search public court records and can access case number 3:2020cv03426. Yes, I have a PACER account. So sue me. Actually, don’t.

Omar says the lawsuit has cost him $140,000 so far, and he started a GoFundMe campaign for his legal defense.

“I just wanted to say that I liked my car.”

He seems both shaken and elated by all the attention. On the day we spoke, he had temporarily taken down his Twitter feed. “I’ve kind of had to retire from talking about Tesla, because it’s just too much craziness… I just wanted to say that I liked my car.”

However, his Twitter account was back up hours later, and he was again talking about Tesla. He just can’t help himself.

Omar laughs at the idea that Muskovites are a cult, pointing out that the same thing was said about fanatical followers of Steve Jobs. The difference is Musk is popular in the age of social media. Elon regularly replies to followers, which further solidifies their devotion. I mean, Elon replying to your tweet is kinda like being chosen by Yoda to join the Jedi, amirite?

“He’ll reach out to random people in a way that you wouldn’t expect from someone who’s one of the richest guys on earth,” says Omar, “and that certainly makes the emotions a lot more inflamed.” (Jobs reportedly used to respond occasionally to random emails.)

Elon even invited Omar to his home in January 2020 (!) for a four-hour interview (!!), where Qazi says he enjoyed sandwiches brought in by Maye Musk, Elon's mom (!!!). “I’m a computer programmer, and it’s like you’re just talking to any other engineer,” he recalls.

He thinks they may actually be friends now. #ElonAndOmar

That’s the Musk Magic.

Some have accused Omar Qazi of being on Elon Musk's payroll, but he insists that’s not the case. “No, I actually pay him,” he jokes, referring to his Tesla. All of his love and PR are generated for free.

Still, even Omar has his devotional limits. “I scratch my head as much as everybody else when he’s tweeting about Dogecoin.” He defends Elon’s obsession with crypto by suggesting Musk has been interested in digital money going all the way back to PayPal. “I think that this is something he’s been thinking about for a long time.”

Omar also believes his idol is “optimistic sometimes to a fault,” especially when it comes to timelines. He chalks it up to naïveté. Critics would say it’s not naïveté at all, that Musk is intentionally exaggerating, maybe even lying. But at the end of the day, Omar says most of Musk’s wild ambitions come true.

So far.

Mars beckons.

“Elon is a guy who tackles problems that seem insurmountable.”

He calls Musk a “one in a billion thinker” making electric cars mainstream and space travel more affordable with reusable rockets. “I think Elon is a guy who tackles problems that seem insurmountable,” Omar says. “And he recruits the engineers and solves the problems piece by piece, incrementally.”

His favorite Musk story is the one about SpaceX failing three times to launch its first rocket into orbit. The company was on the brink of financial collapse and didn’t have enough money for a fourth launch. Omar describes what happened next. “They took all the parts left over from the three rockets and they built the fourth one, and they said, ‘Please, God, let this work,‘ and it got into orbit.”

To Omar Qazi, nothing symbolizes Elon Musk more than that moment. “You’re going to have failures,” he says. “You’re going to have situations where you mess up. It’s going to be embarrassing. It’s going to be painful, but just keep going and just do it until it works.”

Still, would he like to work for Elon Musk? Um, no. “He’s very demanding,” says Elon’s number one fan. “I’m not sure if that’s really for me.”

Take the poll! Who’s made the biggest impact (or will, long term): Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, or Jeff Bezos?

Thoughts? Feel free to comment below, or email me at jane@janewells.com