I’ve been saying this for a long time: Musk is a poseur. He’s not a great engineer; when he directly meddled in the process at Tesla, the result was the Cybertruck, or his fake robot. He’s definitely not a good scientist, as witnessed by Neuralink. His efforts at social engineering are disastrous — look at what he’s done to Twitter. Musk is just a guy with a lot of money who buys people to do work he can attach his name to. The only thing exceptional about him is his ego.
So when he started bragging about being a great gamer, you could predict that that was all a lie.
During an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, Musk boasted that he was one of the top-ranked Diablo IV players in the world.
Shockingly, this turned out to be true (at least, at the time), but really, it shouldn’t have been possible—presumably, Musk doesn’t have enough spare hours in the day.
Recently, Musk attracted the suspicions of gamers again after revealing himself to be a top player of Path of Exile 2, with his high-level characters equipped with extremely powerful gear, indicating that a significant amount of hours had been pumped into his account.
Rather foolishly, Musk livestreamed himself playing the game, and gamers instantly clocked him as an inept player.
A detailed Reddit thread laying out the evidence against Musk makes it clear that he wasn’t familiar with basic gameplay mechanics of Path of Exile 2, and couldn’t possibly have leveled up his own characters by himself.
Gamers noted that Musk’s equipment was even better than Twitch streamers who play the game full-time for a living—the world’s richest man appears to have hired players to strengthen his characters.
I’m not a great gamer, not even a good one, but years ago I played World of Warcraft, and it was easy to tell when you had a fake player in your midst. Playing that game well required a thorough understanding of the mechanics — you had to be familiar with optimal sequence of attacks, you had to know the cooldowns on your magic items, you had to know the choreography of a boss fight. You could just use lots of money to buy top-tier gear, and you could pay someone to level up your character for you, but then the person who did that wouldn’t have the reflexes or the expertise to be effective. Those were the guys you’d invite to a raid because they had the glittering armor and the magnificent sword who would then, in the fight, stand in the fire and spam one button.
It’s easy for real players to spot the phonies.
It is pathetic that the richest man in the world who is running (badly) multiple companies and has the ear of the soon-to-be president and has what, 13 kids feels the need to pretend to be a super-cool elite gamer, too. No one is fooled.
I heard that one time he jumped his skateboard over a car, but nobody saw it.
Elon has hundreds of billions of dollars and some folks can’t retire. I guess that makes him ‘fake’. Grimes takes care of Musk’s kids.
There are myriad ways to get attention and respect.
If he was as smart as he thinks he is, he would be sponsoring “Team Musk” in Formula One speed racing, sailboat racing, round-the-globe balloon racing and, of course, having lots of racing horses.
The last part reminds me of good old Bond villain Zorin, BTW.
He could have a big “Musk” museum in New York – it worked for that vile crook Rockefeller!
He could fly around the world in a private ekranoplan like the billionaire in William Gibson’s Blue Ant series.
He could build a goddamn nuclear-powered Zeppelin and never set foot on Earth, having his business meetings aloft (like Zorin did).
Hmm… human cloning? But to make replicas of himself he must first solve the considerable obstacles of cloning primates. That would take decades and cost billions… you know, this is a field where he could do some good!.
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Also to avoid harmful mutations in somatic cells he would need to sponsor a program to reconstruct the zero-age fetal genome; that would require progress in sequencing the whole genome multiple times, not just the easy-to-sequence parts.
And he would have to pay up for understanding all the methylation issues.
The more I think of it, harnessing his infinite vanity could do a lot of good.
Oops. I guess Joex was fooled.
F*ck it, there are a grillion bajillion genuinely cool things he could do with his money. But he is choosing to hang out with the adjuciated rapist who bankrupted an effing casino.
Dunc @ 1
When he plays golf with the North Korean guy both make a hole-in-one!
This post from back when he bought Twitter springs to mind –
“He talked about electric cars. I don’t know anything about cars, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.
Then he talked about rockets. I don’t know anything about rockets, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.
Now he talks about software. I happen to know a lot about software & Elon Musk is saying the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard anyone say, so when people say he’s a genius I figure I should stay the hell away from his cars and rockets.”
Honestly, at this point, the only thing that could make me have even the slightest hint of respect for Elon Musk is if he actually withdrew from all of his business and public nonsense and picked up a video game hobby or something similar.
Personally, I have no ability to understand or respect the kind of person who has even an eight-figure fortune and decides to keep working instead of doing something they unequivocally enjoy.
Because it’s clear from his Twitter and other public interactions that Elon Musk is not actually having any fun in his life right now, regardless of the brave face he tries to put on.
And that’s just pathetic.
You’re wrong, PZ. Musk is not a fake asshole. That’s a well established characteristic. It’s real. You could tack on other things to that…sexist, misogynist, hater, narcissist…but asshole is good enough. As an asshole, Musk is consummate. He tops his previous asshole-ness practically every day.
He bought her too.
All Elon has going for him is huge quantities of money.
OTOH, money is useful for a lot of things.
It wasn’t her best move.
Just about everyone who has dealt with Elon Musk has quickly ended up regretting it.
Grimes ended up suing Elon Musk for a lot of things regarding their joint children.
She would have my sympathy but Grimes is a pretty strange person herself.
It must be a requirement to be Elon Musk’s brood stock.
This includes his own children from his breeding hobby.
His oldest daughter makes no secret that she doesn’t think much of her father.
Elon Musk earned that by first making it publicly obvious that he doesn’t much like her either.
Money might buy a lot of things but it doesn’t buy everything. It doesn’t make you a good person or a good parent.
There are rich guys who have spent years getting good at their hobbies. Many of the top yacht racers and air plane racers are like that because it’s a really hard sport to be in if you are not rich. Musk isn’t content to spend time actually getting good, he wants to enter at the top. If he can use his money to buy his way to the top he is fine with it, until he doesn’t get the same respect that people who actually worked their way up get.
This is something he has in common with Trump. Part of their motivation is getting respect, they want to be a highly respected figures. They don’t want to/can’t do anything to earn that respect so they try to buy it. And when that doesn’t work they go for petty childish revenge.
Look, Elon is just too busy saving the world from wokeness to prove just what mad video gaming skills he has. You don’t want him to look like a chump online, do you?
@2. Joex Regular : “Elon has hundreds of billions of dollars and some folks can’t retire. I guess that makes him ‘fake’.”
Nope – but if you’d read the actual post here you’d know that the things that do make Musk fake are :
1) Pretending to be a super-cool elite gamer when he isn’t.
2) Pretending to be a great engineer when he isn’t.
3) Pretending to be a good scientist when he isn’t.
4) Pretending to be a good social engineer – i.e. politically wise – when he’s a fucking nazi douchebag. Nazis, FYI, were miserable, utterly destructive catastrophic failures and advocating for the far far reichwing fringe of politics puts you, well, on the badly flawed, unsuccessful, unethical, far reichwing fringe of politics and culture.
5) Quite a lot more that the OP didn’t directly mention like pretending he deserves his wealth, has a good sense of humour, is good businessperson who deserves and earnt his weath etc..
If you disagree with any of these points please do explain why and make a logical case for your views backed up by actual evidence. Note that aquiring and hoarding a lot of $$$ because you started off in life with a South African emerald mine does NOT prove Musk’s claim in (5) is true rather than pretense. Who after all “deserves” to be born owning an emerald mine or having family access to great inherited wealth?
Oh and someone else looking after and raising Musk’s kids is meant to be a point in.. (checks your comment , thinks about what’s implied by it) Musks’ favour? Really?
That’s also a perfect description of DJT. Although I find nothing exceptional about their egos. A dime a dozen. It’s the combination of their egos and their money that makes them exceptional – exceptionally dangerous.
@ JM : “There are rich guys who have spent years getting good at their hobbies. Many of the top yacht racers and air plane racers are like that because it’s a really hard sport to be in if you are not rich.”
Then there’s also Lance Stroll in F1 motor racing who has purchased an F1 seat and, indeed, got his father to purchase an entire F1 team and then spent years NOT getting very good at his hobby.
See Why Everybody Hates Lance Stroll… by Throttle Talk, 7 mins approx long.
r/youtubedrama was having a field day because Musk was beefing with Asmongold (conservative react youtuber) over the PoE2 thing. Musk leaked DMs with Asmongold showing that Asmongold has editors. Musk apparently believes they’re like newspaper editors, and does not understand that video editors do not hold editorial control.
For more complete coverage of the Asmongold thing, maybe refer to a more mainstream outlet. Here’s one from PC Gamer.
I once heard someone who worked with Ted Turner relate a story about him. He said (paraphrased), “In every meeting, Ted spewed ideas. 9 out of 10 of them were the stupidest thing I had ever heard. The 10th was brilliant that nobody else had thought of, and that’s why he’s a billionaire.”
Key to the success of that approach is a strong filter from your team. Ted had, and listened to, his filters.
Elon has truly had some great ideas of his own. One that I know of is for SpaceX, he insisted on rather than starting with space-qualified parts, start with commercial-off-the-shelf parts and figure out how to test and/or up-qualify them. It’s why SpaceX ended up so much faster and cheaper than its rivals. But Elon, too, has always relied on those around him to push back on the stupid ideas, of which he’s had many (according to his close associates), and let the great ones bloom.
No longer, though, it appears. The problem with that model is that the billionaire remembers their successes and forgets their stupidities, and becomes more and more convinced that all their ideas are brilliant and they no longer have to listen to any push-back.
@1 dunc wrote: I heard that one time he jumped his skateboard over a car, but nobody saw it.
I reply: the elongated muskrat jumped the shark years ago!
PZ wrote: Musk is just a guy with a lot of money who buys people to do work he can attach his name to.
I reply: just as bad as Edison! Do we know the names of all those edison hired that did all the real work to make his unformed ideas work? NO!
the elongated muskrat and tRUMP are two of many who show the wold that now it is genius to throw shit at the wall and make your flunkies scrape off what sticks and call it wonderful,
@2, @11: Grimes takes care of HER kids. Musk has 8 or 9 others.
For a public figure of any stature to brag about his gaming skills is just plain pathetic, even if all the boasts are provably true. #QElon is showing the world that either he’s really this childish, OR he’s consciously rubbing his childishness in everyone’s faces just to show he can.