A lot of people have been asking me for my take on what’s going on with Elon Musk these days. But what they’re really asking is obvious: Is he crazy?

Not crazy like a fox, but crazy as a loon.

In the past few months, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX has: ear-boxed analysts on an earnings call; made bankruptcy jokes about the health of his companies; attacked journalists as shills; relentlessly baited short sellers who have bet on his downfall; and called a diver in the Thai crisis with whom he wrangled a “pedo” — as in phile. Yeah, he did that.

This past week Mr. Musk upped the ante considerably, revealing via a terse tweet that he wanted to take Tesla private and had the “funding secured.” No surprise — since it is now clear that his announcement was, oops, premature — that it set in motion a boardroom kerfuffle about what to do about his Twitter addiction. And more problematically, it has reportedly triggered an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission about the circumstances of that tweet, which sent Tesla’s stock zigzagging (lawsuits are likely to follow).

Most of these high jinks have played out large on Twitter, where Mr. Musk’s pronouncements too often land with the force of a stink bomb. They have prompted speculation about what is up with the famous entrepreneur, who is often compared to the fictional Iron Man, Tony Stark. Words like “erratic” — first used by those shorts who have been trying to paint Mr. Musk as insane — are now being uttered by analysts and journalists to describe him. There has even been the creation of the inevitable #muskmeltdown.