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Notes -
In the continuation of Elon Musk PoE2 journey, he went on a xitter feud with Asmongold, one of the streamers who posted expose videos about it. I think that answers the question on whether Musk actually cared about being the best at the game, or simply got a boosted account for expediency.
The community notes on his posts are hilarious. The take I saw recently is the Elon wants to be "King of the Nerd", and with his eggshell-thin ego he really can't take being called out by people nerdier or smarter than him.
Incredible that being a nerd has enough cachet that the richest man in the world wants to be one, but apparently not enough for him to remember the "well, ackshually" part of the stereotype.
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https://open.substack.com/pub/samharris/p/the-trouble-with-elon?r=4gi50d
Somewhat related.
Elon Musk apparently owes 1M USD to some charity based on a very silly bet, from Elon's side, made with Sam Harris about the covid pandemic. A braindead move from Musk's side and he started hating Harris instead of admitting he was wrong.
He can't stand to be made to look stupid.
You sure he didn't hate him before ? Harris is not well liked for very valid reasons. Welshing on a bet that's, for him, trivial makes Musk look really bad though.
If true, even more disappointing than the PoE bullshit.
There's no reason to think the bet wasn't decisive/relevant. He had regular contact with Harris for years before that and ghosted him immediately and completely when it came time to admit defeat.
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I can definitely believe that Elon would make the bet and then renege.
That said, Harris is himself an icky creature at times. Particularly, he advocated tactical lying to help prevent Trump getting elected. Understandable? Maybe, except that Harris is also the author of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lying_(Harris_book)
Harris has a Trump sized blind spot that makes him beclown himself regularly. Trump is living rent free in his head, ruining the quality of his content. And, more importantly, why should we listen to someone who admits to tactically lying to us?
Is that really true? From the linked post:
What is the evidence here?
I just love going for these source hunts that you assign me!
https://x.com/Brian_Kennedy/status/1878561046362791991
Sam Harris said that burying the Hunter Biden laptop was a left-wing conspiracy to deny Trump the presidency and that it was absolutely warranted.
Maybe we can charitably say that Harris wasn't advocating lying, only hiding information. But the Biden laptop story was also (falsely) called "right wing propaganda" by the media. Harris gets destroyed in this interview and he doesn't have really any defense.
I wish that clip actually went on. I'm going to search for the entire interview. It's true Harris looks bad here, but he's not wrong about Trump necessarily, he's wrong about everything else. In other words, he isn't wrong that Trump has a laundry list of obvious cashgrabs and scams--which should give anyone pause --he's wrong that he and the big brains should do any and everything to impede Trump's election. He also doesn't seem, when he says "but that's not conspiracy," to realize that he is perfectly describing conspiracy.
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Yeah, not a good look. Some claim that the context makes a difference but none of them explain how and I don't want to go further into the sam Harris cinematic universe so I'm going to call this one confirmed.
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It's believable, and reflects badly on Musk if true.
Which makes it a little awkward when Harris has to interrupt his 'trust me bro' with 'oh, and that Triggernometry episode that keeps getting thrown around tots is being misportrayed, don't believe your lying eyes'. I don't follow Harris, so maybe his interpretation was right, or that speech was a one-off and he's spent the last four years trying to bend over backwards to admit that he was wrong then. But it makes a surprise reveal of a three-and-a-half-year-old need a little more proof than 'it's believable, and reflects badly on Musk if true'.
((And that Harris can't make it through a substack piece of this short length without dumb asides like the Gaetz comparison, leaves me skeptical that he is trying to bend over backwards.))
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He has a track record of lying about things and the fact that people took his claims about playing games seriously is just hilarious. He will double down on it. Musk never cared about being good, his gameplay looked not far off from somene who is fairly new to the game, it is the same as Dan Bilzerian who allegedly won hundreds of millions playing poker whilst looking like a noob about it when compared to actual pros, not even the high level ones.
Yeah this never seemed like anything other than trolling on Musk's part. I didn't read the original tweets where he showed off his gaming level, but it seemed obviously ridiculous. Of course he is not one of the best players in a world at a game that takes dozens or hundreds of hours of play to reach that level.
What is supposed to be the punchline of that trolling? Pretending to be retarded?
Since when was trolling supposed to have a punchline? The point of trolling is to make people upset.
Faking social cred is an easy way to make people upset.
Imagine a famous person claiming to know a language really well. They then "prove" it by clearly reading a script and making some basic pronunciation errors. They deny any attempts for native speakers to have a conversation with them. The community of those language speakers would probably end up really upset with that famous person. Other people would mostly just feel confused "seemed like they were speaking the language fine, why would they fake it?"
People seem to forget that Elon is sometimes entertained by people being pissed off at him.
If you have never felt the desire to troll on the Internet then you are a better person than me. He just takes it to a new level with a billionaire's regard for cash and reputation.
Trolling is about annoying people you don’t like or, at best, feel neutral about (see umad memes, /pol/‘s famous trolls, the /int/ amerimutt meme, leftists calling Vance weird, calling political opponents incels, even stuff like Colbert, although that’s more parody than trolling). But the people Elon is ‘trolling’ in this theory are his actual fans who watch him on Twitch etc, young right-leaning men who like Tesla and SpaceX.
Trolling can target anyone. I've certainly trolled people id call friends.
but did they feed you?
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Seems like you're giving him too much credit. What is the way to distinguish between such trolling and genuinely being retarded in this "he is only pretending" scenario?
I've seen trolls on the internet, the payoff in their case is obvious - they spark great wailing and gnashing of teeth, but they themselves don't risk anything. Either they're a nobody so they don't have any reputation to lose from someone genuinely believing they're retarded, or they have a group of people behind them who are "in" on the joke.
In this case, there are plenty of people who already have an answer to "why would he lie" (the ones who believe he's an insecure loser who got carried by his money), while the ones who are laughing with him, not at him, are conspicuously absent. The best defense I've seen is "why do you care so much about him cheating, you're so weird, and anyway unlike you losers he doesn't have the time to play games".
I'm not sure there is an easy way to distinguish. I'm not 100% wedded to the trolling narrative. It just seems way more likely for Elon than the "insecure" narrative.
I've known quite a few and briefly been a guy that sleeps around. I've been a teenager pumped full of testosterone (naturally via puberty).
There is a confidence that these things grant you that is sort of the polar opposite of insecurity. These people and myself were way more likely to be obnoxious overconfident assholes for no good reason than they were to think "do people not like me?"
We kinda select against this personality type/mood here on themotte. We don't tolerate the trolling, and then these types are also likely to get in dick measuring contests with the mods once we demonstrate the tiniest amount of power over them.
Not all trolling attempts are going to land. Just like a lack of people laughing doesn't mean something was not intended as a joke.
Lastly people seem to be interpreting this as me defending him or giving him credit. I don't think very highly of testosterone addled aggressive males. I think they are high variance individuals. They are going to jail for violence, or they are going to have lots of sex and possibly get lots of money in risky ventures.
As I mentioned this was almost sort of me. I was having sex with different women, I was doing drugs, and I was blowing off my boring job. But going down that road meant screwing over some of my real friends, hurting many or most of the women I was sleeping with, and generally disregarding the people around me.
These are not good people. They never make for good friends, just for good stories.
I just don’t think it’s true that men who are socially and sexually successful can’t be insecure. There are tons of famous actors, musicians, political figures and so on who are obsessed with their image, stalk fan pages, get extremely upset about anonymous criticism on social media, let it get to them.
A lot of people with a lot of money are constantly worried about losing it, question whether they could make it themselves, or make it again. I think famous and successful people often have this kind of feeling. Whether you want to call it insecurity is a matter of opinion, I guess, but I do think Musk cares about his image, even though he doesn’t know how to improve it because he fired / didn’t listen to his PR, unlike Zuckerberg who seems to do what they tell him to.
Ya that's a thing too. I just know what that trolling instinct feels like, and I know what insecurity feels like. And Elon just pattern matches with trolling much better right now.
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This is not trolling at all, he is not Elon Hyde who hides behind layers of irony, is his twitter addiction which is itself a full-time job given how active he is an effort at trolling people?
Asmongold made a joke that he is either lying about his gaming or he is lying about running 6 firms, what makes people uncomfortable about this info is that if he is this willing to lie about something as pointless as video games, the things he must lie about in his businesses must exist, you don't just lie about trivial things and then develop morals around what matters.
I don't see why it's not trolling. And to your second paragraph, yes. I'm not an Elon fanboy, he seems like a clearly flawed individual. The take I've seen that best explains him is that he has been taking lots of testosterone.
It's the plain reading of the situation. Frankly, if you introduce T boosting into this, it looks even more like genuine ego trips rather than faking it for the lulz.
Framing it as trolling implies that one is "falling for it" by reacting as expected, but I don't see what I'd be falling for. Read plainly, Elon gave the Gamers (tm) a free shot to make him look like a clown, they've taken it, he then continued by having a spat with Asmongold on twitter... does he really need the extra views, compared to the rep damage he's taking?
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Him and Jeff Bezos represent the flirting vs harassment meme pretty well, going from very nerdy looking to far more imposing. Not accusing you of being a fanboy, his public image means more money for his firms at the very least, I do not think he is trolling at all, if he were it would have been funny. Pretending to be a world champion at chess and then playing like you only crammed some openings is not funny which is how his stituation looks like.
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