Elon Musk gets booed at Valorant championship

But this time around, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO wasn’t even onstage to prompt the boos. He was just seated in the audience of a tournament championship for the uber-popular shooter game Valorant, held this year at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles.

During the championship match Saturday between teams Evil Geniuses and Paper Rex, according to Kotaku, the camera moved to show (a very dimly lit) Elon Musk. A cascade of boos starts. Just seconds later, a new round begins — and gameplay starts on the screen.

“What is that for?” a commentator asks shortly after the camera points to Musk. “That can’t be from in here, surely.” 

The other commentator follows up, asking if it seemed like the boos were louder than the response to an appearance by popular Valorant player Tyson Ngo, or TenZ. (A video posted of TenZ at the tournament shows him getting the crowd to “make some noise.”) 

“Yeah, I think so,” the first announcer responds.

Musk’s appearance on screen appeared to last no longer than five seconds. But even after the camera moved on, the chorus of anti-Musk responses continued to grow. The commentators, having refocused on the match, were jolted back to Musk by a chant from the crowd: “Bring back Twitter.” 

“This crowd’s funny,” joked one commentator.

Just one day before, the former “Chief Twit” went on a livestream to demonstrate Tesla’s latest “full self-driving” update — which, according to electric vehicle news site Teslarati, is supposed to use “end-to-end” AI but still needed Musk’s intervention at a red light. Musk also happened to prominently display Mark Zuckerberg’s address in the video, as it appeared to be the destination of his navigation, apparently continuing the charade that a fight will happen between the two grown chief executives.

SFGATE sports reporter Gabe Fernandez contributed to this report.