Once again, people are experiencing secondhand embarrassment because of the way the world’s richest person is acting on social media. Elon Musk has been known to do some pretty questionable things on X, the platform that he owns. At one point, people even suspected that he was using his mom’s account to say good things about himself. And now, he’s using his free time to publicly argue with a chess website.
The awkward interaction has gone viral.
It all started when Elon shared his thoughts on the game.
There are more possible chess games, by about 40 orders of magnitude, than atoms in the observable universe. To solve chess, you'd have to map them all. Good luck. https://t.co/JmcWn0C9Di
— Chess.com (@chesscom) September 4, 2026
“The actual number of moves that are not utterly stupid in chess is tiny and chess will be fully solved one day,” Elon wrote on X. But the person managing Chess.com’s X account had thoughts.
“skill issue,” they replied. Elon, for whatever reason, actually responded to this. “Chess is hard for humans, but not for computers,” he wrote. “One day, it will be fully solved like checkers.”
He then added, “Between now and then, or even after, have fun. People enjoy many games/sports where machines are vastly better.” The chess website responded, writing, “There are more possible chess games, by about 40 orders of magnitude, than atoms in the observable universe. To solve chess, you’d have to map them all. Good luck.”
You might assume that the conversation would end there. But nope.
Elon continued to engage after this.
I’m a full-time employee. https://t.co/ehEKTSkDLY
— Chess.com (@chesscom) September 4, 2026
At the very least, he seemed to recognize how ridiculous this was. But the interaction only got more embarrassing for him from there. Elon asserted that the Chess.com account’s claims were “wrong.”
He wrote, “All legal chess positions are ~40 oom less than the estimated atoms in the Universe. And ASI will figure out ways to solve and compress that are far beyond what we could possibly comprehend.”
He also added, “Here I am arguing with some random intern at a chess website.” In response, the Chess.com account simply clarified, “I’m a full-time employee.”
About 15 minutes later, Elon responded with an emoji: “😮💨” Meanwhile, the Chess.com employee wrote, “even my friends don’t text me back that fast.” Oof.
Unsurprisingly, other people started roasting Elon as well.
even my friends don’t text me back that fast
— Chess.com (@chesscom) September 4, 2026
In the comments on X, one person jokingly defended Elon, writing, “Now now, he has like 20 children to ignore, he’s a busy man.” Someone else said, “This is probably the healthiest relationship Musk has with another human being right now.”
People also pointed out that the fact that Elon owns X makes the whole interaction especially embarrassing. “Bro bought a website just to get ratioed like this. Embarrassing,” one of them commented.
Several others claimed that Elon doesn’t appear to be all that busy, given that he had time for this exchange and responded so quickly. They also referred some of his recent controversies. “dude took a break from impersonating his own mom on twitter to reply to you,” one critic joked. Another person wrote, “Elon has time to email epstein on Christmas morning.”
A discussion about this interaction also emerged on Reddit, where people called Elon “insufferable” and “cringe.” Many found the “even my friends don’t text me back that fast” comment hilarious, but several people jokingly argued that Elon wouldn’t understand it.
“Elon then asked Grok the ‘average text message response time of a friend’ since he had no frame of reference,” one commenter joked.
Jokes aside, though, people also took issue with what Elon chooses to do with his time and his wealth. “this manchild could do so such for so many…….. but chooses to hoard his wealth instead,” another critic concluded.
“Arguing with chess.com?” someone else wrote. “Like, go and actually contribute something positive in this world with your billions you sad, pathetic man.”
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