Elon Musk is a gamer. He definitely plays video games. There’s no real need to dispute that.
What he is not is one of the best gamers in the world, something he seems to want everyone to believe. But the fanbases of those games are not buying it, and have undergone a campaign to embarrass Musk as much as possible about his claims, dragging him into childish internet fights. Ones that he cannot and will never win with this audience.
The latest scuffle is that Musk and high-profile streamer Asmongold seemingly went to war after Asmon made a video, like a number of other creators, picking through all the obvious goofs Musk made as he claimed to be one of the world’s top Path of Exile 2 players. There were mistakes or knowledge gaps that anyone with a character that strong with that many hours played would not make, hence the narrative that Musk was paying others to grind out his characters for him, which may have also happened back in the Diablo days. The exchange resulted in Musk joking about a Chinese “pilot” for his account, but also apparently removing Asmongold’s checkmark briefly, unfollowing him and then leaking DMs, misunderstanding how a YouTube creator/editor relationship work as he made an attempt at some sort of “gotcha,” which was promptly community noted on his own site.
Musk may be one of the most powerful people on earth, running massive companies, having the ear of the President and heading toward possibly being the world’s first trillionaire, but somehow, for somewhat inexplicable reasons, he also wants to proclaim that he’s a top gamer in the world.
Even with an army of blue-check acolytes in his replies nodding at his purported gaming prowess, Musk’s army cannot compete with gamers who believe their hobby is being co-opted by someone, no matter how powerful, to make improper claims about his prowess. Path of Exile 2 fans have been roasting Musk since these videos emerged, and YouTuber and streamer reactions mocking his play have hit millions of views.
The problem emerges when Musk purports to be an expert on games that he is clearly not an expert in. He knows enough to get by, but top level play eludes him unless he’s on a character so strong it doesn’t matter. Spotting that is easy to tens of thousands of players with more knowledge than him.
This also extends into areas like this embarrassing DM leak with Asmongold, embarrassing for him as when Asmongold talks about consulting with his editors, Elon seems to believe that this is some sort of newspaper-like “editor” relationship where Asmongold is “not his own man” because he must answer to someone else. In reality this is simply talking about a team of editors who chop up big streamers’ clips and throw them up on YouTube, which happens all the time. It’s yet another thing Musk knows nothing about and when he claims to, is torched by those in the community.
There is a theory that like Barack Obama making fun of Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner which began his path toward the presidency, this idea of Musk wanting to be known as a top-tier gamer started when the Elden Ring build he posted became an instant meme because of how bad it was. But back then Elon was not claiming to be one of the best Elden Ring players in the world. Now he’s doing so with Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2, only this time with other people allegedly grinding his characters out for him. No doubt they would have made him a better Elden Ring build.
Elon Musk can try to trick gamers, to argue with them, to post their DMs against his own Terms of Service. But more than liberals and Tesla-haters and all other groups he’s in conflict with, this is one battle he’s never going to win.
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