Billionaire and Twitter owner Elon Musk attended the final match of the Valorant Champions 2023 tournament, and the attendees at the popular Riot game’s big event weren’t very happy when they found out. Commentators at the tournament panned the camera to where Musk was sitting and pointed out who he was, and while over 1 million people watched online, the crowd of 11,000 people in the arena almost instantly started booing.
You can hear it in the clip YouTuber Jake Lucky posted on Twitter.
“Where’s that coming from?” one of the commentators asked. “That can’t be from in here, surely. Is that a bigger reaction than [professional Valorant player] tenZ got?”
Elon Musk getting booed at VALORANT Champs and the crowd starts chanting “bring back Twitter” lmao pic.twitter.com/lDoWse78YV
— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) August 26, 2023
Regardless of whether it was bigger, the reaction certainly lasted longer. The broadcasters tried switching back to the multiplayer game‘s finals, a match between Evil Geniuses and Paper Rex, but the crowd was having none of it. Right after the host said the “focus is back on the game,” the crowd started chanting “Brick back Twitter.”
It’s a reference to Musk’s drastic overhaul of the social media platform since he was forced to uphold his word and buy it for $44 million. Since then, he’s removed security features, changed algorithms, monetized subscriptions, and fired dozens of long-time staffers and engineers. He also changed the site’s name to X, though the implementation of that particular policy was rocky at best.
Meanwhile, the Evil Geniuses ended up winning this year’s Valorant championship.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF