For 2022 I predicted that Elon Musk’s brand/popularity would continue to grow. Although it’s hard to quantify this, with the Ukraine crisis unfolding Elon Musk yet again thrust himself into the media spotlight by having Space-X provide internet access to Ukraine via Starlink satellites. This was a huge deal, generating major media coverage everywhere. Tweets by ELon related to the project have gotten anywhere from 300-700 hundred thousand ‘likes’ each, which is a record. The story is still unfolding, as Russia attempts to jam the signals and Elon rebukes efforts at censoring pro-Russian content.
This is is similar to in early 2020, during Covid, when Elon Musk defiantly (and correctly) spoke out against the efficacy of masks and shutdowns, thrusting himself to the fore of that issue too.
Here is the prediction verbatim:
Regarding Tesla, the personal brand of Elon Musk will be even bigger than it already is (although I am not sure how to quantifiably measure this in terms of making a prediction). Elon’s Twitter account is the most popular on the site by a huge margin (way more popular than Biden, Obama, or any celebrity), and is a social network in and of itself. If Elon wants to become a trillionaire even sooner (which will happen in a few years anyway),
AFIK, I am the only one who made this type of prediction, not about an economic event or geopolitical event, but about the popularity of a particular individual. This also agrees with my earlier posts about how we’re in the ‘era of billionaires’. Billionaires will continue to impart a growing influence in politics and economics going forward. NASA for example has been supplanted by Space-X.