"Shills" implies commercial backing. Ex. the democratic party hires operatives with shill account networks to create the illusion of popularity for certain tweets. (google sally albright)
"Stans" is the better term for Elon fanboys. I haven't seen any evidence Elon is paying these people to defend him online (would be pretty pathetic if he was). I think most of these people are just really into the cult of personality. Much more similar to kpop stans. (etymologically rooted in the eminem song "stan" - an excessively obsessed fan)
I think it's quite naive to assume that someone with billions to throw around doesn't have PR and social media management companies working for him.
These people are not like us. They're more like sovereign corporations with a pseudo-monarch as head, and a literal army of both overt and covert support workers handling security, PR and impression management, financial operations, and so on.
Social media bot accounts are possibly the lowest cost and highest return form of PR and sentiment management ever invented.
Such large shill operations would be next to impossible to keep secret over the long term. The more people involved, the more difficult to keep secret.
I would love for an investigative journalist to try to find an Elon-funded shill network.
I personally suspect that his army of stans is large enough he doesn't need shills, but it'd certainly be a huge story if they could prove he was funding shills.
It's almost guaranteed they're tesla shareholders, and/or passengers on whatever derpcoin pump & dump Elon is fancying at this time. If you believe the value of any of those ventures is linked to Musk's star power then shill seems an apt label.
Which coins has elon pumped? I have mostly seen him talk about Dogecoin, I think there was some discussion of Bitcoin and Ethereum from him. Has he promoted deep-catalog derpcoins as well?
(There are definitely a LOT of ~"@elonmusk59393259" fake accounts pretending to be him that try to pump coins or offer fake giveaways, but I don't think he's done so himself?)
I'd argue that in most cases these people would not be "stans" if they hadn't made money investing in Elon's businesses. They're almost always Tesla stockholders who religiously invest in and benefit financially from every financial move their idol makes. They actively shill Elon's businesses and even Elon himself because they are financially motivated to do so.
"Shills" implies commercial backing. Ex. the democratic party hires operatives with shill account networks to create the illusion of popularity for certain tweets. (google sally albright)
"Stans" is the better term for Elon fanboys. I haven't seen any evidence Elon is paying these people to defend him online (would be pretty pathetic if he was). I think most of these people are just really into the cult of personality. Much more similar to kpop stans. (etymologically rooted in the eminem song "stan" - an excessively obsessed fan)