Anyone who runs a company needs a way to de-stress. For some CEOs that might mean golf or sailing. For Elon Musk, who runs or owns Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter), the main method is playing video games.
“It calms my mind. Killing the demons in a video game calms the demons in my mind,” Musk told podcaster Lex Fridman in an episode released Friday. He added later, “I’ve played a lot of video games because it’s my primary recreational activity.”
The world’s richest man also said, “My mind is a storm. I don’t think most people would want to be me. They may think they would want to be me, but they don’t, they don’t know, they don’t understand.”
Musk’s longtime companion Grimes, with whom he has three children, told biographer Walter Isaacson that Musk has no “hobbies or ways to relax other than video games, but he takes those so seriously that it gets very intense.”
Among his favorite titles is The Battle of Polytopia, billed as a “strategy game about building a civilization and going into battle.” Players compete to control resources and develop technologies, and they wage battles in order to build an empire. Musk’s brother Kimbal told Isaacson that his famous sibling said Polytopia “would teach me to be a CEO like he was.” The game was also fodder for a series of life and business lessons for Elon, with the first one being, “Empathy is not an asset.”
Another favorite of Musk’s is Elden Ring, centered on war and empire-building, which he told Fridman was a “candidate for the best game ever, top five for sure.” He added that it’s “incredibly creative” with “stunning” art.
“Beating hatred in the internal realm,” he added, “is the hardest boss battle in life and in the video game.”
Musk’s game-playing has also preceded some key business decisions. He pulled the trigger on buying Twitter right after playing Elden Ring until five in the morning, Grimes told Isaacson.
Mostly, Musk seems to use video games to get into a certain zone.
“If you play a tough video game, you can get into a state of flow which is very enjoyable. Admittedly it needs to be not too easy, not too hard—kind of in the Goldilocks zone,” he told Fridman.
“I guess you generally want to feel like you’re progressing in the game. And there’s also beautiful art, engaging storylines, and it’s like an amazing puzzle to solve.”
This article is so embarrassing that I’m never playing a video game again.
Money is wasted on the rich. He could be doing literally anything in the fucking world and he’s playing phone games. The only difference between him and an iPad kid is the amount of money he can spend on digital gems/gold coins/pay-to-play currencies. I fantasize about what I could do with a few thousand dollars and he burns that speeding up construction of his digital buildings and buying skins. Hell, he could commission a game made by any studio exactly to his fucking specifications but he still plays the same garbage as anyone else.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Elon Musk could easily solve climate change with all the wealth he obtained from COVID that he got by sheer dumb luck, finance the future and be hailed as a hero for centuries and this was all part of his original brand too, I remember him publicizing the Tesla patents in the early 2010s. Sure, it might be a little dickish that he bought his way into heroism, but that’s at least one existential threat neutralized and maybe he can have some rights to be braggy. He could do it right now, as a 100 billionaire, we’ve gotten to a point where money is meaningless to him, he literally dropped 44 billion dollars to own the libs so what if as a public apology to the state of California, he instead spent that 44 billion funding the high-speed rail? (Ok, you can stop laughing now).
Not to mention the insurance capitalism would have:
: “See? You can totally trust corporations!”
: “The bourgeoisie aren’t the problem, it’s good bourgeoisie vs bad bourgeoisie”He is on the US government payroll.
Just a few years ago Tesla almost went broke, it was the Federal Government that bailed the company out and facilitated the explosive hike of its share in the stock market. The vast majority of his wealth came thanks to the US government.
He is ultimately limited by what Deep State wants him to do.
Can confirm, I’m hanging out with 'ol muskrat right now in FBI HQ.
You’re all my favorite leftist group to spy on
Can confirm, I’m hanging out with 'ol muskrat right now in FBI HQ.
You’re all my favorite leftist group to spy on
double post is on brand for a fed
Double the posts, double the pay.
Yes but have you considered that state-backed companies are communism?
He wants to be seen as a humanity savior. He doesn’t care about humanity whatoever except as a captive audience to whatever whims he has at the moment, the way a narcissistic father figure expects an entire household to toil and struggle for his amusement.
I think he wants to be seen as cool. Being marketed as a savior figure was one way into that, and was the one his PR firm took. After he fired them, he decided he could show everyone how cool he is by
posting memes 
I give you a hard time a lot but this is a great point. He has everything at his disposal to make himself an uncontroversial hero in the mainstream that will still be pointed to as a hero for as long as liberal capitalism survives, it just requires actually solving a problem instead of hyping up investors that he’ll solve a problem so he can sell them wildly overvalued stocks.
Don’t give him ideas or he’ll make that game from Gamer (2009)
Edit: oh god, this is what the brain chips are for
Edit: oh god, this is what the brain chips are for
I nonjokingly think he does want to build that particular Torment Nexus.
Hell, he could commission a game made by any studio exactly to his fucking specifications
Honestly, this is probably what I’d do if I got fuck you money
Yeah, me too, but imagine how awful a game commissioned and micro-managed by Musk would be
Chris Roberts of Star Citizen infamy has so much in common with
that he made himself LARP as his richer counterpart in his game’s own lore.
Just toss some money at Josh Sawyer and ask him to make whatever he wants.
Give a big pile of money to Remedy to make the most bonkers version of Control 2 possible
I forgot Alan Wake 2 was coming out at the end of October so I just happened to be replaying Control before it dropped. So glad I did. All the FBC stuff in AW2 was awesome.
They could give us a four hour monologue that’s just Ahti directly translating Finnish turns of phrase and charge $60 and it’d sell.
I would arm the Maoists in the Everglades
Pokemon MMO
Chao garden
Tears of the Kingdom
Chess 2
potential future: musk gets addicted to a mobile P2W PvP game and actually, literally spends billions of dollars as some random shitheel “game” dev studio struggles to make content fast enough to cater to exactly this one person.
what a fucking self absorbed loser. just say you play video games for the same reason everyone else does- they’re fun distractions. ‘omg my brain is such a unique stormy snowflake that I respond to the same advertising stimuli as everyone else omg omg guys DAE have a storm in their head???’
Elden Ring, centered on war and empire-building
…that is not how I would describe that fukken game.
The game’s setting is pretty well thought-out for how one civilization builds its architecture on the ruins of another, and how old symbols get re-appropriated by conquerors. It has the visual distinctions of a world with a long lost history.
There’s a zero percent chance that’s what Elmo meant. He meant “when you win, you get to sit on a throne and be King of the place”
you did it, you became the elden ring
So that’s why they call it that!
and also the empires are genocidal, including that aborted subplot where you’re walking through a mass grave of the people who were really nice to you, just before being given the choice to burn everything down forever.
I mean…it is…in the sense of “Do Not Build The Torment Nexus”
He pulled the trigger on buying Twitter right after playing Elden Ring until five in the morning, Grimes told Isaacson.
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
You couldn’t waterboard that shit out of me.
Remember when he posted his fucking trash build?
The Battle of Polytopia
I get it, getting lost in a video game is cathartic, but I like that he’s claiming to be a tortured genius while he “gets very intense” over a mobile game. He plays a Civilisation clone for children to “get into a certain zone” with “an amazing puzzle to solve”.
No, you don’t get it. Playing a digital board game makes me a tactical genius. I’m the 21th Century Sun Tzu.
No, I don’t play chess or go, those games are for babies.
Like at least play a Paradox strategy game or Civilisation proper. Either of those and you’re at least doing strategic things designed for adults.
Bro can’t afford to play the real games after stripping his work PC to fund twitter’s operations
I’d love to make him play Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm. Good luck figuring out why your Bradleys keep exploding, dipshit
That sounds like ADHD.
Which makes him throwing a fit about one of his ex-wives being on Adderall real fucking stupid.
This makes Elon look so cringe that I thought this had to be c/fakenews
All the money in the world and he still just does what every poor person in their mid-20’s does. I suppose it probably makes him feel ‘different’ than all of his peers, but this is pure neo-liberalism in action. Say what you will about the Romans, at least they appreciated the spectacular.
Dude could literally hire out historical reenactors to play a live war game, but he’s obsessing over a mid af mobile game lol
You guy’s don’t have phones?
I sure don’t react to phone games like
Among his favorite titles is The Battle of Polytopia, billed as a “strategy game about building a civilization and going into battle.” Players compete to control resources and develop technologies, and they wage battles in order to build an empire. Musk’s brother Kimbal told Isaacson that his famous sibling said Polytopia “would teach me to be a CEO like he was.” The game was also fodder for a series of life and business lessons for Elon, with the first one being, “Empathy is not an asset.”
Tried the woosh on his Diablo IV Twitter stream. Reference:
I totally missed the reference lol. Never clicked with Blizzard games
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
assuming that was a reference to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGByCvWDINA
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
64 gigs of RAM and overclocked i9 only to install bluestacks to emulate Diablo Immortal and never playing anything else
Why do I get the feeling this motherfucker has the best PC money can get but barely knows how it works and can’t troubleshoot so he plays Ark and Cities Skylines at max settings but still gets like 28-35 FPS and just thinks it’s normal.
Other option is he has the most expensive PC because it’s brand name pre-built but has older parts and he doesn’t even use them because he only plays games that use 1/4th it’s processing power
i am never playing video games again having learned this
LMAO, Elon Musk is what happens if Scott Pilgrim was a Koch Brother.
- probably would date a child like Scott Pilgrim
Nah, he’s more like Republican Moviebob (CW: Naziesque imagery, although the nazi in question is painted in a bad light)
An Imgur link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
His mind is a storm… front.
What do we think? Is he talking about racing thoughts from ADHD, intrusive thoughts from OCD, or sensory overload from autism? I used to describe myself the same way when I was 13 and I’ve got the trifecta.
I think it’s just excessive shit from being a shithead
I’m still a shithead but I still figured out that my mind wasn’t busy because of how smart a tortured artist I was.
His mind is a storm of the freshest 9GAG memes from 2011
In an old interview, Mr. Narcissus said he may have bipolar disorder; he said he experiences “great highs, terrible lows, and unrelenting stress”.
He has doubts because his highs and lows follow events in his life, whereas episodes from bipolar disorder often appear without triggers. Also, I’d add, the racing thoughts from bipolar disorder are extreme, and the symptom comes and goes. Perhaps he’s confusing a busy mind (from ADHD, anxiety, OCD…) with a manic mind. The highs from BD are also too high and consist of more than euphoria.
We’d know if he went for an evaluation/possible diagnosis, but I cannot even imagine him doing it.
“Empathy is not an asset.”
Rich monster discovers the profound class awareness that being a monster is short-term beneficial to rich monsters
Also explains that preoccupation with Le Simulation Theory: fascism is justified if no one is real but the fascist in le epic bibeo bame
This…actually answered one of my questions on why a lot of CHUDs are fascinated with the simulation theory, it’s why they can dismiss themselves as fun saturday morning cartoon villains and not as actual threats. At worst, they’re just doing an evil playthrough of Skyrim, but it’s ultimately okay because they’re the super special demigod so doing whatever they want “for teh lulz” is justified as their reward for being born a demigod.
CHUDs like to see themselves as chaotic neutral but they can’t handle the fact they’re lawful evil.
This…actually answered one of my questions on why a lot of CHUDs are fascinated with the simulation theory, it’s why they can dismiss themselves as fun saturday morning cartoon villains and not as actual threats. At worst, they’re just doing an evil playthrough of Skyrim, but it’s ultimately okay because they’re the super special demigod so doing whatever they want “for teh lulz” is justified as their reward for being born a demigod.
CHUDs like to see themselves as chaotic neutral but they can’t handle the fact they’re lawful evil.
Agreed, though in my experience, the very worst of them insist that they are actually “chaotic good.”
“Empathy is not an asset.”
“Beating hatred in the internal realm,” he added, “is the hardest boss battle in life and in the video game.”
I’m sorry you keep trying to jump onto the enemy with a spike on its head instead of using the hammer
