What I took from the video game thing is that he thought he could fool people.

It's very obvious to gamers when someone hasn't played, it actually doesn't matter whether you have high level gear.

There's things you can't buy with money, and respect is one of them. He fundamentally doesn't understand how status works. He could, for free, just put out a video where he says "look at me, I'm a busy CEO, but I play this game even though I'm bad at it".

People would think positively about that.

This is made even more interesting by the fact that musk was caught misrepresenting himself playing the computer game Diablo in the not-so-distant past. IIRC he was either buying accounts or paying someone else to stream on his behalf. [0]

[0]https://fortune.com/2025/01/20/elon-musk-video-games-scandal...