All he had to do was sit in his money bunker and make dumb tweets about harmless things and he’d have eventually died a legendary figure.
Now he’s infamous for a totally different reason. I mean look at Richard Branson. That could be Elon right now, as the worst case scenario. Some hyper-rich dude that most people are aware of but that you never hear much negative on in the media. He just kinda exists, does billionaire stuff. Heck, even Bezos right now. When’s the last time you saw Bezos show up negatively in the news? And neither of them had a full on cult of personality forming around them.