It has been another exceedingly stupid week on planet Earth, the culmination of several nearly-as-stupid weeks before it. One of the most eye-catching jewels in this trash crown: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who you’d assume has something better to do, is beefing with Twitch streamer Asmongold over apparent evidence that Musk – despite his high-level characters in games like Diablo IV and Path of Exile – cheats at video games. Why does he insist on doing this? What is he trying to prove? On this week’s Aftermath Hours, we talk about that.
We begin the episode by breaking down Nintendo’s long-awaited reveal of the Switch 2 – although we use the term “reveal” loosely. After months of speculation, we now know… what it will look like. And it looks like a Nintendo Switch! Some people, Chris included, are disappointed by this. Nintendo used to swing for the fences with its hardware ideas, but now it’s navigating a world of its own creation – one filled with Steam Decks and Asus Rog Allies. Can Nintendo’s Apple-like iteration strategy keep it at the head of the handheld pack, or is it already ceding ground simply by conforming?
Then we discuss the impending TikTok ban, which thanks to interventions from both outgoing president Joe Biden and incoming president Donald Trump, we don’t think is actually going to happen, but which has produced the funniest possible outcome in a bunch of people migrating to a comparable Chinese app. After that, we turn Luke’s brain to mush by discussing Elon Musk’s gamer beef with Asmongold, but he endures it like a champ. Finally, we wrap up by designing our own Switch 2 (it’s got a foldable screen; it’s sick).
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that we can buy TikTok and replace all the videos with blogs.
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:
Chris: The funniest thing about all of it is, on some level it’s just “Lie until you make it,” but also if you say you’re good at something and then you’re really, really clearly not good at something, everyone is gonna say “Well, what else do you suck at?” There’s the degree to which [Musk] and Trump’s friendship makes a lot of sense, because they both love lying about stuff and fucking over labor. They love doing that shit – like Trump lying about his golf game, hypothetically. The difference is, we’re not watching him play. He’s not livestreaming sucking ass at golf, although I’d love to see that. He just tells people he’s good at something, and you know he’s lying about it in some capacity.
The need for there to be proof [in Musk’s case] is somehow more damning and insecure. Just lie and don’t worry about it.
Nathan: Trump is lying for others; Elon is lying for himself in that he’s also trying to convince himself he’s great even though he’s probably had his video game characters boosted. He’s still trying to contort his mind into believing “No, but I am good at this, though! I’m just this natural expert.” All these guys – but especially Elon – are trying to reify this idea of the genius, the person who’s just inherently superior to everyone. Same reason Elon Musk is like “I’ve gotta have a million kids; I’ve got to pass on my genius genes.” He needs to believe, for his own sake, that it’s possible for him to jump into the deep end of anything and excel immediately.
Chris: The thing about all those guys who are like “My beautiful genes” is, your kids fucking hate you, man. At least one really fucking hates you [in Musk’s case]. You just created an opposition to your legacy. Your kid doesn’t have to like you. Having a child doesn’t mean your legacy is going to be continued, except in some freak weird genetic way. And that’s all they care about: “Oh, my genes are beautiful.”
Nathan: And they’re not, but that’s another story.
Chris: No, he’s got a weird head.
Nathan: He’s built like a Cybertruck.
But the full circle element of this is that his comebacks to Asmongold about Asmongold’s career have also been wrong. He’s trying to allege that Asmongold is lying to the world. Elon Musk tweeted “Asmon behaves like a maverick 'independent' but in reality has to ask his boss for permission before he can do anything. He is not his own man." And as evidence of this, Elon linked DMs between the two of them, wherein Asmongold was talking about creating content, and he said “I’m going to see if my editor might want to make a second account for it even.”
So Elon is taking this to mean that Asmongold’s editor is his boss. That’s not true. Almost every Twitch streamer has YouTube editors who cut up their streams and make videos out of them for YouTube, because the streamers themselves do not have time to do that. They’re streaming all day long. [Streamers] pay these people. They employ these people [typically on a contractual basis]. Effectively, Asmongold is their boss.
But Elon once again doesn’t know how shit works and is making these audacious claims with no understanding. It’s so demonstrative of his entire little process, his whole cycle.
Chris: This is messy in the same way the Matt Taibbi thing was messy. You thought you were gonna be best friends with this guy, and it turns out he’s a messy bitch who loves leaking his DMs – and loves stabbing you in the back the second you become mildly annoying to him, in a way that makes you both look like shit.
Nathan: But the other thing is, content creators do this too. You’ll often have creators who become BFFs for a little bit, then drama occurs, then they leak DMs everywhere, and then they both make more content out of it. That gets them viewership. That’s why Asmongold is also down to engage with this. I’m sure he’s not heartbroken – far from it. I bet he’s ecstatic. He’s like “Man, I’m gonna dine out on this for weeks.”
I think we’d want the outcome of all of this to be gamers at least – if not the world – seeing that Elon is a fraud, because he is and always has been and the faster we all realize that, the better off we are. But the way this unfolds in the world of content creation is that someone is revealed to be a fraud, but they still maintain a fanbase, and then three weeks later the status quo resets, and people are like “Oh yeah, he’s over there doing his thing. I’ll check in on him later, and I’m sure he’ll be doing something different, and it’ll be fun to watch.”
Chris: It’s not really gonna change anything meaningfully. He’s fucking loaded.
Nathan: He’s the shadow president.
Chris: He’s in the weird, fake little playpen all the billionaires are working at for free, so whatever.
Nathan: Chat says, “Elon, just make fun of the rat clock.”
Chris: It’s right there!
