not everyone knew who he really was. musk used to have a pr team guiding his public persona. it wasn’t until he fired them that people got to see who he really was little by little.

also, a lot of people kept singing his praises and still do. for me the thing that really did it was when he started talking about tech stuff and I’m a programmer so i knew he was full of crap. but watching non tech people believe it made me realize that he’s been lying the whole time i just didn’t realize until it came to something that’s in my field of expertise