Elon Musk quits favourite video game after being ‘cyber-bullied'

Elon Musk 'rage-quit' a video game livestream after he kept losing while being bullied by online commentators.
Mr Musk, the world's richest man, streamed himself playing Path of Exile 2 on his private jet over the weekend in an attempt to show off Starlink's in-flight WiFi.
For around 90 minutes, he sat mostly in silence as his on-screen character kept dying – despite his claim to be one of the best players of the game in the world.
Although Mr Musk is a member of Donald Trump 's inner circle, the in-game chat was open to anyone. Within five minutes, cyberbullies logged on and began taunting him about issues including his video game skills and alleged relationship problems.
One message, which appeared on-screen alongside Mr Musk's head, read: 'You will always feel insecure and it will never go away.'
Another user, pretending to be a conservative influencer who claims to have had Mr Musk's 13th child, wrote: 'Elon. It's me, Ashley St. Claire. I have no other means of contacting you so I bought PoE2 early access. Please pay your child support. Thank you Elon.'
Mr Musk was also told to perform a sex act on Mr Trump so that the US president 'dies of a heart attack'.
Another message said Vivian Wilson, Mr Musk's estranged transgender daughter, was right about him being terrible at video games.
Some attempted to help the billionaire, advising him to mute the in-game chat to stop the cascade of abusive messages.
Others encouraged people to buy Tesla stocks, or thanked him for his work with Starlink and Doge, the government efficiency drive spearheaded by Mr Musk.
The boss
After his character was repeatedly killed by the 'boss' in the section of the game meant to teach the basic controls, Mr Musk quit saying the connection was broken, although the stream was still live.
Rage-quit means exactly what it sounds like: the act of quitting an activity – in this case, a video game – because it it was becoming increasingly unbearable.
'Well, lost connection,' he told viewers. 'Connection lost.'
Path of Exile 2 is reported to be one of the billionaire's favourite games.
However, Mr Musk's claim of being one of the world's top players has failed to stand up to scrutiny – particularly after the Tesla owner reportedly admitted to paying people to boost his in-game character account.
The game is a role-playing adventure set in a fantasy world where a player controls a character that gains skills by completing quests and defeating enemies.
It is yet to be fully released, but an early-access version has been made available to elite .

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13-06-2025

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What Elon Musk wore to the White House foreshadowed his downfall

In case you missed it, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have fallen out. For some – and in particular anyone looking at the tech billionaire's White House wardrobe – this will come as little surprise. Long before anyone hit send on those inflammatory tweets, or tensions spilled out over Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill' (OBBB), Musk's political downfall was written in the stitching. During his time in the White House, Musk shunned the sartorial rulebook of someone at the shoulder of a president, where suits and ties are the common code. He wore dark Maga baseball caps at the Oval Office and told a rally in New York: 'I'm not just Maga, I'm dark gothic Maga.' Then there were the T-shirts with slogans such as 'Occupy Mars', 'Tech Support' and 'Dogefather'. At campaign rallies, commentators noted he looked 'more like he belonged at a Magic: The Gathering tournament than a political event', his dress sense the style equivalent of the k-holes that it is claimed Musk frequently disappeared into. The more casual styles of Musk and his Silicon Valley tech bros – where stiff collars are eschewed in favour or crewnecks, tailored jackets softly pushed out the door by padded gilets – are light years away from those of the suited-and-booted US Capitol. But if Musk's clobber signalled a new DC power shift, it also spoke to different norms. 'Disruption might be a badge of honour in the tech space,' says DC-based image coach and style strategist Lauren A Rothman, 'but in politics, chaos has a much shorter runway. The White House has been around for a long time. We're not going to stop wearing suits … This is the uniform.' All of this dressing down, dressing objectively badly and dressing 'inappropriately' has form. Consider, if you can bear to, the case of Dominic Cummings. The former Boris Johnson aide subjected Westminster to dishevelment, Joules gilets, beanies, Billabong T-shirts and tote bags advertising the 1983 gothic-inspired horror novel The Woman in Black. He wasn't just a Tory, he was a gothic horror Tory. As Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian columnist and host of the Guardian's Politics Weekly America podcast, notes: 'Dressing down is usually a power move in politics, just as it is in the boardroom: only the most powerful can get away with it.' That was, he says, the message Cummings sent 'when he roamed Number 10 in a gilet: 'You lot are worker bees who have to wear a uniform, whereas I'm so indispensable to the man at the top, I can wear what I like'.' It was the same with Musk, whose threads were a flipped bird to all those Oval Office stiffs in suits. As Rothman puts it: 'His uniform of casual defiance stands in sharp contrast to that traditionally suited corridor of political power.' And that contrast screams out his different, special status. Before him, there was 'Sloppy Steve' Bannon, a man never knowingly under-shirted. On this side of the Atlantic, Freedland points to former David Cameron adviser Steve Hilton and his penchant for turning up to meetings barefoot: 'ditching the shoes was an instant way of signalling his membership of the inner circle'. It's that age-old question: who has the privilege to be scruffy? As Freedland puts it: 'Musk was happy to stand next to the Resolute desk of the president looking like he was dressed for a gamers' convention. That was his way of reminding everyone of his superior wealth and unique status, outside conventional politics.' Sign up to Fashion Statement Style, with substance: what's really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved after newsletter promotion But what Cummings and Musk share in sartorial disorder, they also share in political trajectories. Scruffy Icaruses who flew too close to the sun; their clothes a foreshadowing of their fall. Trump might talk about draining the swamp, but his Brioni suits are very much swamp-coded – plus, while Johnson might have had strategically unruly hair and ill-fitting suits as crumpled as a chip wrapper, suits they still were. Ultimately, nobody likes a bragger. Because dressing in a way in which your privilege is omnipresent if not outright stated, is a surefire way to piss people off. Not least Trump, who noted that Musk had 'some very brilliant young people working for him that dress much worse than him, actually', in an interview on Fox in February. 'The contrast between Musk's garb and Trump's cabinet,' according to Freedland, 'made them look and seem inferior: servants of the president rather than his equal. It was one more reason why more than a few in Trumpworld are glad to see the (poorly tailored) back of Elon Musk.' To read the complete version of this newsletter – complete with this week's trending topics in The Measure and your wardrobe dilemmas solved – subscribe to receive Fashion Statement in your inbox every Thursday.