I said I was done writing about Elon Musk but this is too funny and also closing on the previous.
There has been a chain of “community noted” posts by Elon Musk. If I said that he controls the platform and uses it to his own ends, how it is possible he allows this to happen, when it is clearly against himself? As I already said, he controls the flow of information, not the information itself. The hand stays hidden in order to further the lie. But when there’s an OVERWHELMING mass moving, then it cannot be suppressed without direct intervention. And when this happens, he thinks it would be superfluous. It’s better to ignore and let it wash over. As it happened with this whole PoE2 controversy and everyone now accusing him of being a “fake gamer” after the video by Quin (one of the links above has a link to it already).
It’s funny because the great majority out there now knows Elon is a fake gamer, not because of what he said and did, but because of one (eloquent) video. It’s again another proof of information manipulation, in this case completely OUT of Elon Musk’s hands, and again a very distant relative of “truth.” Which is why I’ll “defend” Elon Musk later in this post.
Here’s the recent part:
(I’ve removed checkmarks and other shit through css editing because I got annoyed, there are no other spurious edits)
(through all the other controversy that the internet loves but it’s completely stupid and irrelevant, like Dittmann supposedly being Elon’s sockpuppet, someone suggested even Ian Miles Cheong might be one of them. You can clearly see through these types of interactions he isn’t.)
So I was saying, why does he let it happen?
Because of this:
It happens when an influencer’s platform collides with another influencer’s platform. Asmongold can rally enough people to create a wave large enough to affect the high level shaping of the message that Elon Musk does on his platform.
And yet, the whole thing is irrelevant and juvenile. No one cares about what Asmongold or Musk’s achievements are in a game. But nope, apparently we all do?
This is on ALL OF YOU. Do you really need that kind of proof to understand the lie that is Elon Musk? That he trips and falls on PoE2, of all things?
It is indeed a big deal because it shows the weapon that is rhetoric, and how little of truth is left in this world.
What is the truth, then? That Elon Musk is definitely not a “fake gamer.”
When he posts this, he is simply saying that alongside the one video where it is shown how incompetent he is at playing PoE2, there are also tons of other videos showing him competently (I assume) playing Diablo 2.
So where is the “truth”? Is he a fake gamer or not?
As with all things, and why I’m writing this, you can either understand something, or judge it. The judgemental part PREVENTS understanding.
Do you want to understand Elon Musk? If so, you won’t be able to judge him. Otherwise, you would be already part of everyone out there, happy to point the accusing finger. Contented because of the “GOTCHA!” Ha-ah! We caught you! You’re a LIAR! …and of course you won’t understand a thing.
This whole story is a “gotcha!” and because of it, quite pointless, if not to observe the accuser rather than the accused. It’s a story about us, rather than him. About the rhetorical grasp that we cannot escape.
What’s the truth about him, instead? That he’s not trying to fool anyone because he is the fool. If you want to understand Elon Musk you cannot think of the way you see him, to “expose” him, but you need to understand his own mind. The way he sees himself, rather than the idea projected. And the important element with egomaniacs is that they BELIEVE the idea they project. He IS NOT a fake gamer.
When he posts that last image above, with the link to that video, he is DISMAYED: how can you accuse me of not knowing how to play when clearly it is not the case?
That’s him piloting. If we agree he plays well, then he’s not fake. (I have no idea, nor care, I haven’t opened that video)
So, now you need to think like he does, in order to understand. One of the basis of this whole PoE2 debacle, and Diablo 2 before of it, is that it takes a lot of time even to be able to collect that kind of build. Not skill, time. It’s also obvious that Elon Musk doesn’t have that time. Because no one does. Literally. In the case of PoE2, the game is simply too recent to make a PLAUSIBLE case where that type of build is legit. Already at this stage you don’t need any other proof, because only streamers and similar types of players, who started from the first hour and play on average 12 to 16 hours a day are able to get their hands on that. No matter how little Elon Musk “sleeps” or how efficiently he may play, he just CANNOT obtain that build on his own. It’s not a matter of SKILL.
And that’s the whole point. It’s not a matter of skill.
Again, you need to understand how he THINKS.
What he thinks, being a legit “gamer” same as any one of us, is that these games are 95% made of GRIND. What is grind? Essentially a waste of time. And he’s a successful businessman, time’s precious. He’s not anymore a basement-dwelling kid who can play all day long without giving a single fuck about anything else. And that’s WHY all his game-“things” are all fake and “achieved” by other people. It’s OBVIOUS. You don’t need proofs for something THIS obvious. No convenient gotchas.
All that means that he sees the game made of two parts, the pointless grind, and the interesting challenge at the end. Paying someone to replace the grindy part, and not disclose it, it’s like waving away what’s irrelevant to his own mind. It’s not HIDING the trick, it’s simply smoothing the story. A simple matter of presentation, not of essence. Yes, that’s not his own earned loot, but this says nothing of how good a player he is. It only speaks of time invested, and it doesn’t hold anything meaningful to him. It doesn’t hold an idea of efficiency, but of time wasted. Appropriating that part would be counterproductive, admitting of WASTING time.
He doesn’t see himself as a time waster. The idea he projects is the idea he believes. Therefore the internal narrative has to be set straight. It can’t be a lie. In his mind, being consigned a pre-set character with a pre-set build is akin to a sports pilot who’s participating to an official competition. He’s the Lewis Hamilton. He’s not the engineer who built the car, he’s the fucking PILOT! He comes in for the race. When the race’s over, the team takes care of the rest.
He comes on stage for the show, the show that is his own life, to himself. Not to us, TO HIMSELF.
His mind is so deeply caught into this process that when “gamers” get their gotchas he can only react with DISBELIEF: yeah, none of those items were acquired by me, wasn’t that obvious? I’m rich, I can pay people that do the boring part so that I can show all of you the good one. My own skills are reserved for the part of the game that requires them.
And of course no one is an expert at PoE2, the game’s too new. He’s trying it out, like everyone else. And of course he’s trying out the only part of the game that he sees relevant: the endgame.
It should be obvious that his interest in games is not fake, that he’s just another nerd like “us.” What is fake, to a certain extent, is the “achiever.” The story to sell rather than the story he believes. But that part is in itself utter idiocy. Look above at that part listing Asmongold’s “achievements.” Who fucking cares?
This story, again, speaks more of us, than him. About the pettiness of the easily handed out “gotchas.” Of the judgemental us, extending the “if he lied about this, then he could have lied about everything else!” As if you needed this as a fallacious “proof.”
Yes, of course. Same as all of us. We’ve proven once again our own stupidity, and it would be a waste not taking advantage of it. That’s why we’re here.
(The reason why the Trumps and Musks keep coming up to plague our collective lives is precisely because of this. Because we are satisfied by the gotchas! that do no harm. Because we’re smug about the superfluous, as long it is self serving. We fire a toy weapon that was given, believing it an act of rebellion. Because we’re just like “them”, but ended up on the unlucky side.)
EDIT: going to address this too. Apparently Musk removed Asmongold blue checkmark on X, that I couldn’t notice because as I said I’ve removed some pieces of the UI a while ago when the interface started to became a bloated mess. Anyway, this is again another “weapon given.” Attacking Musk for free speech, using this as an example, is ineffective. Musk has already said this:
To him, removing Asmongold’s checkmark is the same as removing revenue. The fake mantra he repeats, “you are the media now”, simply means that literally: Elon Musk is your boss and editor when you post on his network. Just the same as it happens on a newspaper, with the only difference that he can wash his hands of responsibility for the bad stuff. And the message to Asmongold is simple: your’re fired.
On the personal, behind the scenes, level, instead, the story is more like this. (the video is just another of those emphatic gotchas, again, but the sample message from Covid era are quite coherent with the stupid shit Musk was posting publicly at that time)
EDIT2: Yeah, fuck you :) You’ve made abundantly clear you’re garbage and are just attempting at juggling your own farce.