Musk desperately wants to appropriate gamer credibility, but he may be faking it – and doing exactly what toxic nerds have been accusing women of doing for decades

Last year on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Elon Musk claimed to be one of the world’s best Diablo IV players – and surprisingly, the leaderboards backed him up. For those that haven’t had the pleasure, Diablo is one of the most mercilessly time-intensive video games out there; you build a character and carve through armies of demons, spending hundreds of hours refining skills and equipment for maximum hellspawn-cleansing efficiency. I played it for maybe five hours last year and immediately quit, for fear that it would consume my life. Most of the people who play it are young, often male, and have plenty of time to themselves to spend on the internet and playing games – so, the exact demographic of many Musk stans.

It suited these hardcore gamer guys to believe that someone who tweets all day and runs several businesses was also an elite player who poured hundreds of hours into Diablo. This made him relatable. It fed into his preferred image of being the hardest-working man alive. But then Elon made the mistake of actually playing a game live on X, and it became clear very quickly that something was amiss. It seems Elon Musk might be a fake gamer.

On 7 January, Musk played Path of Exile 2, a very Diablo-like hack-and-slash game that came out towards the end of last year. His character was extremely well-equipped; suspiciously so. Viewers noted that he had better gear than some of the professional streamers who play this game all day every day, and he didn’t seem to know what their stats meant. I have not played Path of Exile 2 and so I can’t independently assess these claims – unlike Musk, apparently, I am quite happy to admit when I’m not an expert on a particular game – but within a few hours the many inconsistencies in his play and commentary were laid out exactingly on Reddit and in YouTube videos. (He also posted a suspiciously rubbish Elden Ring build back in 2022, which was dredged up as further evidence.) Evidently Musk forgot that we nerds are known for our attention to detail.