Eat the rich

by Jon Sullivan - 2025-01-19 - Gaming

<<<<< previous blog            album containing this post's photo

---

Elon Musk is accused of cheating on video games. Luckily I am an expert in these sorts of things. Here's my take.

First of all, let's define "cheated". At a certain point it's weird to say circumventing the playful intent of the game to skip hundreds of hours of play time is "cheating". And the circumventing Musk is accused of is basically buying one of the top accounts/gear in the world (literally) and then lying about it being his own and doing all the work. But.... let's be real.... it's cheating. He cheated. Full stop, 100%. And then he lied about it. Trouble is.... He streamed a video showing himself on the account, and it's obvious he has no idea how the core mechanics work, let alone being one of the top players in the world. If you want a full breakdown of the cheating/lying, here it is.

Does any of this matter? Don't we have more important things to deal with as democracy burns to the ground? Actually, IMHO it's very important. I'll break it down.

These sorts of games are focused on getting the best gear to fight bosses. That "best gear" is very rare and takes hundreds of hours to farm. For top players (which Musk says he is) 40-50 hour non-stop sessions are common and expected. It's dumb. No normal person would do that or even find it interesting. Which is why the niche Musk says he's playing is always filled with people who don't have jobs and live in their parents' basement. Or... people like me. I love these games. I have no sleep schedule anymore because I need to fit in 24+ hour gaming sessions. This is the way Musk spends his time??? I hope not. And that's why it's important. This cheat/lie is the sort of thing children lie about on the playground. And Musk has doubled down on it. Some part of his brain thinks his integrity and character are less important than being a top player in one tiny corner of a video game most people have never heard of.

[editor's note] - I pointed out to Jon that framing himself as a no-life video game addict might not be the best marketing choice. He doesn't seem to care. Too busy frothing at the mouth over some billionaire playing video games incorrectly. To be fair, Jon does take nice photos, and we seem to like his cooking, and people keep telling him his writing is inspirational. So not really "no-life". My take? This is all just projection. Jon is missing a few decades of therapy.

Also important - He gains nothing from this. What even is the narrative in his head? "I need to convince people I can re-engineer the US budget and government structure for better efficiency and a stronger place in the global economy. Being one of the top video game players will give people confidence that I should be given broad and unfettered political power." No. It's just his cancerous ego metastasizing out of control. And what he's doing in the video where he brags about how good he is called a "loot grind". It takes zero skill, and success is literally random. It's not the hardest content in the game, it's the easiest. I often watch TV while doing it because it takes minimal concentration. When I was still drinking I'd often do it black out drunk. That's the great skill he's bragging about.

There are plenty of ways he could have proven he is an awesome gamer. Player vs player games are the standard for that. He doesn't play those. Famously he has said, "If I start playing League of Legends that could damage the space program," referring to how much time the game takes to be successful. Which is BS given how much grind time Diablo 4 takes. You don't just pop in for an hour a day and become a top player. And his claims of being a top player in other games may be true, but why shred that accomplishment by lying and cheating? Because he can't seem to control himself.

Crazy as it is, this stunt is pure Musk. He takes credit for other people's work as his own. Over and over. His only skill is knowing whose hard work to buy. We've now put him in charge of restructuring the government. We are fucked. That's why it's important.

<<<<< previous blog    

---