Elon Musk and Asmongold are beefing over who the best gamer really is, and no matter who wins, we lose

The strange drama surrounding Elon Musk's purported videogame skills has now elevated itself into a genuine online beef, as the world's richest man has leaked DMs from Asmongold that he thinks expose the streamer as a fraud, and perhaps even worse, says Asmongold "is NOT good at videogames."

The whole ridiculous thing began last week, when Musk streamed an hour and a half of Path of Exile 2 gameplay with his level 95 hardcore character. Achieving that level with a hardcore character is a genuinely impressive feat, but Path of Exile 2 players began calling his purported skills into question based on gameplay seen in the stream that is decidedly not what you'd expect from any high level player, much less one who holds one of the top spots on the PoE2 hardcore ladder.

The suspicion, simply put, is that the account is either boosted by or shared with someone else who actually knows PoE2, and that Musk simply takes the keys now and then for public performances.

That inspired Asmongold, one of the world's most popular gaming streamers, to issue a challenge: He'll stream on X for an entire year if and when Musk proves the hardcore PoE2 account is really his. He also left no room for doubt about his own feelings on the matter: "Did Elon Musk play this account to level 97? The answer is very simple: no."

Just a little bit of trash-talking, certainly nothing unusual or egregious in our current day and age, but Musk did not take it well. Not long after Asmongold expressed his doubts about Musk's gaming prowess, Musk reportedly unfollowed him on X. He then leaked an apparent exchange of DMs between the two, seemingly thinking it was a 'gotcha' moment when Asmongold told him two other people "basically run [his] entire YouTube account."

"Asmon behaves like a maverick 'independent', but in reality has to ask his boss for permission before he can do anything," Musk wrote. "He is not his own man."

It also appeared briefly that Asmongold's blue verification check on X had been taken away, but it reappeared a few hours later, suggesting the removal was simply the result of changes made to his user profile on the platform.

If you think this all sounds very stupid, well, I'm not going to disagree, and not just because you'd think the wealthiest man in human history, who ostensibly runs major companies including Tesla, SpaceX, and X, would have better things to do with his time than argue about who's the super bestest at videogames. As the community note attached to his tweet states, he also demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of how streaming works: The people running Asmongold's YouTube account aren't his "bosses" but his employees, and it's an arrangement very common among big-time streamers, who focus their day-to-day efforts on livestreams and pay other people to handle behind-the-scenes tasks like clipping, editing, and uploading to YouTube.

To further bolster his gamer bona fides, because that's what ultra-rich super-geniuses need to do, Musk shared a video of him "doing a world record Diablo AoZ clear," which at this point proves basically nothing. But then he crossed a line.

"I'm on hundreds of streams on YouTube/Twitch playing live with the world's best players," Musk wrote. "No other way to say this, but, while Asmon IS good at caustic commentary and making fun of people, he is NOT good at videogames."

This insult—this unforgiveable affront—is what finally stirred Asmongold to action.

I suspect that's not an entirely serious expression of upset. (I'm not really one who's going to hand it to Asmongold, but I'd say his response is actually pretty funny.) Which is understandable: The response to this clown show does not seem to be going in Musk's favor, as doubts about his gaming are now increasingly being joined by questions about why he seems so insecure about it, and the wisdom of sharing DMs just to try making yourself look cool. It's the Streisand Effect in glorious action, and I strongly suspect it's not over yet.

This isn't the only online mystery surrounding Elon Musk. There's also persistent suspicion that he is at least partly behind the persona of Musk superfan Adrian Dittmann, although the claim that he is Dittmann has been fairly well debunked

As for the truth of Musk's level 97 PoE2 hardcore character, we will almost certainly never know: Percy_Verence died earlier this week.