In Could 2016, billionaire Elon Musk and actress Amber Heard hung out at the Met Gala, simply weeks earlier than Heard filed for divorce from Johnny Depp. The 2 had met a number of years earlier than, whereas Heard was filming Machete Kills, for which Musk had been introduced on as a advisor — nevertheless it was on the prestigious style charity occasion that the 2 hit it off as associates. That very same month, Blizzard Leisure launched its first new recreation 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 wood 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 further data:
He instructed her that she reminded him of Mercy, his favourite character within the online game Overwatch, so she spent two months designing and commissioning a head-to-toe costume so she may role-play for him.
Not less than one review of the e-book picked out this element, which immediately grew to become a brand new motive 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 put up proof within the type of a personal image of Heard within the costume (reportedly without her permission) and, in a separate put up, point out how cool it was. The candid photograph of the actress in a skimpy, corseted model of the help hero’s armor unfold shortly by way of social media, particularly within the Overwatch neighborhood. Everyone appeared all too happy to gawk at a photo posted in a method that comes dangerously near 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 is a Torbjorn main.
![Mercy from Overwatch guns down a Torbjorn](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YJiGw35IutQcURENIIzkw4tDQ3U=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1920x1080):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24941983/Overwatch_2_Screenshot_2023.09.21___16.22.18.03.png)
Picture: Blizzard Leisure by way of Polygon
For all of his cash, Elon Musk acts like a typical sexist gamer bro who, on this case, has Overwatch as his recreation of alternative. Him ignoring the privateness of his ex-girlfriend (who has written about having been “sexually assaulted” prior to now) with a purpose to show it occurred and win cool factors feels no totally 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 people. The truth that the Overwatch neighborhood joined in shortly afterward, utilizing the alternate as a possibility to mock Mercy mains, can be not surprising. Each events have the identical deeply bizarre and misogynistic relationship to the hero.
Mercy occupies a selected area in Overwatch tradition, quite a lot of which is tied up within the persistence of sexist attitudes within the bigger gaming neighborhood. She is deeply beloved by individuals who major her, however she’s additionally thought-about a uniquely low-skill hero because of her extra collaborative play model and decreased emphasis on aiming (though this characterization is an oversimplification at finest). This dovetails with the perception that only women play Mercy, in addition to the notion that ladies are usually not good at video video games. This earns Mercy mains (regardless of gender) a truckload of sexist harassment, whether or not in textual content or over voice chat.
Regardless of 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 final word tabula rasa to mission broad sexual fantasies onto. Whereas 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 kind 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.
![Mercy aims a golden gun down the sights in Overwatch](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mhjmTjXYQsY1gIWp8wDVtsgo1z0=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1920x1080):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24941987/Overwatch_2_Screenshot_2023.09.21___16.12.44.57.png)
Picture: Blizzard Leisure by way of Polygon
![The bearded, short Torbjorn of Overwatch stares, mouth agape, into the camera](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YeGLsfkPq6S3z5xl0tBHzhBON_E=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1920x1080):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24941989/Overwatch_2_Screenshot_2023.09.21___16.11.31.81.png)
Picture: Blizzard Leisure by way of Polygon
That 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 a professional level in esports. She’s mained by “poisonous” ladies, however males nonetheless fantasize about getting their girlfriends to play as her, or about falling in love with their Mercy “pockets.”
It’s not a stretch, then, to see why one thing like a “healsluts” community exists for Overwatch; quite a lot of Mercy porn frames her as demure and coquettish, or extra explicitly submissive. Thus the logical conclusion: Wouldn’t it’s nice to have a scorching, nerdy girlfriend who hung in your each phrase, obeyed your each command, and unquestionably revered your energy? Whereas it is a completely wonderful kink to observe in areas which are designed for it, this conception of Mercy additionally has a genesis within the Overwatch neighborhood’s bizarre conduct about her, which might be mapped over the existing heteropatriarchal power dynamics that exist outdoors of designed kink areas. All of this floats beneath the circumstances of Musk posting a photograph of Amber Heard and it ricocheting throughout social media.
Musk’s biography spends quite a lot 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 “darkish vortex” surrounding his time with Heard, Musk nonetheless felt emboldened to look cool to different random males on-line by sharing this personal photograph. It’s deeply insecure conduct from somebody who’s already functionally bulletproof because of his wealth and privilege, nevertheless it’s additionally identical to a DPS participant to wish overworked and underappreciated help to maintain his vanity boosted.