The unusual drama surrounding Elon Musk’s purported videogame abilities has now elevated itself into a real on-line beef, because the world’s richest man has leaked DMs from Asmongold that he thinks expose the streamer as a fraud, and maybe even worse, says Asmongold “is NOT good at videogames.”
The entire ridiculous factor started final week, when Musk streamed an hour and a half of Path of Exile 2 gameplay together with his degree 95 hardcore character. Achieving that degree with a hardcore character is a genuinely spectacular feat, however Path of Exile 2 gamers started calling his purported abilities into query primarily based on gameplay seen within the stream that’s decidedly not what you’d anticipate from any excessive degree participant, a lot much less one who holds one of many high spots on the PoE2 hardcore ladder.
The suspicion, merely put, is that the account is both boosted by or shared with another person who really is aware of PoE2, and that Musk merely takes the keys every now and then for public performances.
That impressed Asmongold, one of many world’s hottest gaming streamers, to challenge a problem: He’ll stream on X for a whole yr if and when Musk proves the hardcore PoE2 account is basically his. He additionally left no room for doubt about his personal emotions on the matter: “Did Elon Musk play this account to degree 97? The reply could be very easy: no.”
Just a little bit little bit of trash-talking, actually nothing uncommon or egregious in our present day and age, however Musk didn’t take it nicely. Not lengthy after Asmongold expressed his doubts about Musk’s gaming prowess, Musk reportedly unfollowed him on X. He then leaked an obvious alternate of DMs between the 2, seemingly considering it was a ‘gotcha’ second when Asmongold advised him two different folks “mainly run [his] whole YouTube account.”
“Asmon behaves like a maverick ‘unbiased’, however in actuality has to ask his boss for permission earlier than he can do something,” Musk wrote. “He shouldn’t be his personal man.”
It additionally appeared briefly that Asmongold’s blue verification examine on X had been taken away, nevertheless it reappeared a number of hours later, suggesting the removing was merely the results of adjustments made to his consumer profile on the platform.
If you suppose this all sounds very silly, nicely, I’m not going to disagree, and never simply since you’d suppose the wealthiest man in human historical past, who ostensibly runs main firms together with Tesla, SpaceX, and X, would have higher issues to do together with his time than argue about who’s the tremendous bestest at videogames. As the group word hooked up to his tweet states, he additionally demonstrated a basic misunderstanding of how streaming works: The folks operating Asmongold’s YouTube account aren’t his “bosses” however his workers, and it is an association quite common amongst big-time streamers, who focus their day-to-day efforts on livestreams and pay different folks to deal with behind-the-scenes duties like clipping, modifying, and importing to YouTube.
To additional bolster his gamer bona fides, as a result of that is what ultra-rich super-geniuses must do, Musk shared a video of him “doing a world document Diablo AoZ clear,” which at this level proves mainly nothing. But then he crossed a line.
“I’m on lots of of streams on YouTube/Twitch enjoying stay with the world’s finest gamers,” Musk wrote. “No different strategy to say this, however, whereas Asmon IS good at caustic commentary and making enjoyable of individuals, he’s NOT good at videogames.”
This insult—this unforgiveable affront—is what lastly stirred Asmongold to motion.
I believe that is not a completely critical expression of upset. (I’m probably not one who’s going to hand it to Asmongold, however I’d say his response is definitely fairly humorous.) Which is comprehensible: The response to this clown present doesn’t appear to be getting in Musk’s favor, as doubts about his gaming are actually more and more being joined by questions on why he appears so insecure about it, and the knowledge of sharing DMs simply to strive making your self look cool. It’s the Streisand Effect in wonderful motion, and I strongly suspect it isn’t over but.
This is not the one on-line thriller surrounding Elon Musk. There’s additionally persistent suspicion that he’s at the very least partly behind the persona of Musk superfan Adrian Dittmann, though the declare that he is Dittmann has been pretty nicely debunked
As for the reality of Musk’s degree 97 PoE2 hardcore character, we are going to nearly actually by no means know: Percy_Verence died earlier this week.