Elon Musk asked Amber Heard to cosplay Mercy in true gamer bro cliche

In May 2016, billionaire Elon Musk and actress Amber Heard frolicked on the Met Gala, simply weeks earlier than Heard filed for divorce from Johnny Depp. The two had met a number of years earlier than, whereas Heard was filming Machete Kills, for which Musk had been introduced on as a guide — however it was on the prestigious style charity occasion that the 2 hit it off as mates. That identical month, Blizzard Entertainment launched its first new sport franchise in years with the colourful hero shooter Overwatch, which might go on to promote over 50 million copies. And, years later, these two moments in popular culture historical past intersected.

On Sept. 12, Elon Musk, a biography by Walter Isaacson, was launched. Isaacson spent two years with the present proprietor of X (née Twitter), producing a picket recounting of Musk’s lifetime of entrepreneurship and struggles with household, psychological well being, and relationships. Casually tossed into the chapter about his on-again-off-again entanglement with Heard was this two-sentence bombshell, with no extra info:

He advised her that she reminded him of Mercy, his favourite character in the online game Overwatch, so she spent two months designing and commissioning a head-to-toe costume so she may role-play for him.

At least one evaluation of the e book picked out this element, which immediately grew to become a brand new purpose for the web to clown on Musk. Undeterred by disgrace, Musk took to the replies of a joke post retweeting Dexerto’s protection to wordlessly submit proof in the type of a non-public image of Heard in the costume (reportedly with out her permission) and, in a separate submit, point out how cool it was. The candid picture of the actress in a skimpy, corseted model of the assist hero’s armor unfold shortly by social media, particularly in the Overwatch group. Everyone appeared all too happy to gawk at a photo posted in a method that comes dangerously shut to revenge porn.

The billionaire is a longtime fan of Overwatch: He talked about it being considered one of his favourite video games in 2017, and he exchanged tweets with the official Overwatch Twitter account in 2020 a few times, revealing that he’s a Torbjorn important.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment through Polygon

For all of his cash, Elon Musk acts like a typical sexist gamer bro who, in this case, has Overwatch as his sport of alternative. Him ignoring the privateness of his ex-girlfriend (who has written about having been “sexually assaulted” in the previous) in order to show it occurred and win cool factors feels no completely different than some other random dude bragging about one thing like this, regardless of Musk having been named considered one of this yr’s most influential folks. The undeniable fact that the Overwatch group joined in shortly afterward, utilizing the trade as a possibility to mock Mercy mains, can also be not surprising. Both events have the identical deeply bizarre and misogynistic relationship to the hero.

Mercy occupies a selected house in Overwatch tradition, lots of which is tied up in the persistence of sexist attitudes in the bigger gaming group. She is deeply beloved by individuals who important her, however she’s additionally thought of a uniquely low-skill hero due to her extra collaborative play fashion and decreased emphasis on aiming (despite the fact that this characterization is an oversimplification at finest). This dovetails with the notion that solely ladies play Mercy, in addition to the notion that ladies aren’t good at video video games. This earns Mercy mains (no matter gender) a truckload of sexist harassment, whether or not in textual content or over voice chat.

Despite being so hated, Mercy has an interesting visible design, which makes Elon’s personal curiosity extra legible. Being white, blond, physique normative, and female permits Mercy to fall straight into stereotypical (and likewise white supremacist) concepts about purity and saintliness, whereas additionally making her the last word tabula rasa to venture broad sexual fantasies onto. While Overwatch porn has lengthy been a class of curiosity that tops the charts on Pornhub, Mercy herself dominates fairly a number of of these searches particularly, whether or not in animated type or by the use of a performer dressed as her. The concept of a girlfriend doing this in personal would completely be the dream of some guys.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment through Polygon

Image: Blizzard Entertainment through Polygon

This is the place the rubber meets the highway with Mercy as a playable character, a media object, and a efficiency; when one thing is so particularly gendered as feminine, all of those concepts then get reproduced in a myriad of unusual methods. She’s a low-skill hero, however she’s performed at knowledgeable degree in esports. She’s mained by “toxic” women, however males nonetheless fantasize about getting their girlfriends to play as her, or about falling in love with their Mercy “pockets.”

It is just not a stretch, then, to see why one thing like a “healsluts” group exists for Overwatch; lots of Mercy porn frames her as demure and coquettish, or extra explicitly submissive. Thus the logical conclusion: Wouldn’t or not it’s nice to have a sizzling, nerdy girlfriend who hung in your each phrase, obeyed your each command, and unquestionably revered your energy? While this can be a completely superb kink to observe in areas which are designed for it, this conception of Mercy additionally has a genesis in the Overwatch group’s bizarre conduct about her, which could be mapped over the prevailing heteropatriarchal energy dynamics that exist exterior of designed kink areas. All of this floats below the circumstances of Musk posting a photograph of Amber Heard and it ricocheting throughout social media.

Musk’s biography spends lots of time on how he was somebody who finally rose to success out of the hardships of being bullied, and but he appears to be the most important bully of all of them, particularly to the ladies in his life. For what he described as a “dark vortex” surrounding his time with Heard, Musk nonetheless felt emboldened to look cool to different random males on-line by sharing this personal picture. It’s deeply insecure conduct from somebody who’s already functionally bulletproof due to his wealth and privilege, however it’s additionally identical to a DPS participant to want overworked and underappreciated assist to preserve his shallowness boosted.