Only if one insists on talking/tweeting all the time. Plenty of business leaders do just fine by mostly keeping their mouths shut.

Ah, so, just like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Quiet_Place

What was the genre of that film again?

He could, however, not give a fuck about whether he is liked or not, which is certainly what I would do if I had 400,000,000,000$ of fuck you money. But being what would in rude terms would be described as an "attention whore", he instead spends his time making insane tweets and pretending to be good at videogames in order to impress a bunch of adolescent boys. It's almost sad.

I don't, but I expect a powerful person to have the foresight to have not just Yes men around them and listen to advice/voices that give them counter points to what they want to blurb out before they blurb it out.

Mostly people expects successful people to just live their lives.

Musk is DESPERATE to be adored and DESPERATE for influence and power outside the scope of his success.

Those are personal failings, not the failings of society.

> just to be liked

It's not merely about "likability" but more about carefully controlling the messaging, and avoiding controversies or really bad missteps.

A defendant or plaintiff can choose to remain totally silent in a court of law and speak through their attorney. The attorney filters what their client has to say, recasts it in legal terminology, and everything the attorney says and does should protect the interests of the client and the court, in opposition to the other side.

It's also about a division of labor: for God's sake, what CEO/politician/bishop wants to open all his own mail when a secretary can filter it? What CEO is going to read social media all day and respond to their DMs? Waste of a salary! Does Mr. Musk or President Trump really write all the covfefe on his own, or does he employ ghost writers? How would we know?

A PR firm likewise has a fiduciary and legal duty to protect the interests of an entity, to keep them out of litigous entanglements, and yes, to put on the best public face that they can in order to 'be liked'. Unless the org has some weird reason to play the villain or adversary in some way, and likability is not an ultimate goal, such as a gangsta rapper with a public beef, I suppose. They still use social media to sell music.

try being a billionaire and you'll note "being liked" becomes a vastly heavier lift

Not as sad as a world in which Billionaires actively and shamelessly use their power to rebuild the government on their favor and spread misinformation, populism and hate globally their own media platforms.