As a preface, I'm neither a Musk fanboy nor a hater. He's on the spectrum, and his behaviour makes that pretty obvious. His celebrity is absurd, and I think he's well aware of that (and honestly, I think his choice to host SNL had a lot to do with his recognition of how absurd the idea really was). But the simple fact is that celebrity itself is an absurd and disgusting socio-economic phenomenon that has little to do with celebrities and everything to do with the shallowness and malaise of late-capitalist culture as a whole.... and social media in particular. (Social media, by the way, is a fucking toilet.)
Musk's famously ridiculous work schedule, along with his ASD, pretty much clarify "why" he does what he does; he's a savant living with mental illness and probably only feels comfortable when he's working and/or in some degree of "flow state". Sure he talks about the environment, and I think he fully recognizes the importance of behviour change in protecting it; he wouldn't have pursued Tesla for this long if he didn't believe in the company's "mission". Many of his cars do sell to the ultra-rich, but not all, and he's never been under any illusion that the "major" manufacturers would be on the EV bandwagon soon enough—in fact, he's always said it was inevitable. The grim truth is that we probably do need people to get rich off envornmental protection in order to move the project forward enough, rapidly enough, to make a difference.
But as far as interpreting what Musk does, it's this "inevitability" factor that is the most crucial thing to understand. After seeing a few interviews with him several years ago, it became clear to me that Musk is essentially a Bayesian. He thinks in probabilities, and his values are fundamentally grounded in probabilistic thought; in the likelihood of things. That is absolutely not the case with most of us. So things that happen on terrain to which his Bayesianism is ill-suited for navigation—like interpersonal relationships, product launches, interviews and media junkets, and... hosting SNL—just don't matter much to him because they don't calculate that way. It seems like he'll do them, or not, since for him there's no meaningful upside or downside; he ultimately sees these things as kind of inconsequential. That doesn't make him a monster, it probably just clarifies where he is on the spectrum, and how he's adapted in order to cope.
Grimes seems to understand, and hopefully she can manage it. So far, it seems like she can. Personally, I wish them both the best. They're a talented couple, and I have absolutely no need for either of them to be perfect, or even "good" for that matter. More people should care much, much less about celebrities. Ultimately, the notion of the "role model" is among the most idiotic afflictions of the popular psyche. If we insist on having role models, they should be based on character, not on celebrity, wealth, or the title on a business card. It was almost certainly a marketer, agent, or PR rep who decided otherwise. And they decided that to make money (for themselves).
