“
Levchin had trouble knowing what to make of Musk. Was his arm-wrestling gambit serious? Were his bouts of maniacal intensity punctuated by goofball humor and game-playing calculated or crazed? “There’s irony in everything he does,” says Levchin. “He operates on an irony setting that goes up to eleven but never goes below four.” One of Musk’s powers was to entice other people into his irony circle so they could share an inside joke. “He turns on his irony flamethrower and creates this sense of exclusive Elon Club membership.
”
”