'Valorant' Fans Taunt Elon Musk With “Bring Back Twitter” Chant During Championships

The Valorant Champions 2023 tournament has come to an end, with the Evil Geniuses walking away victorious. But the spotlight briefly spun away from the team during their match against Paper Rex, as the jumbotron in the stadium flashed to Elon Musk — who was attending the event as a spectator.

Elon was only shown for a few seconds, but Valorant fans wasted no time in taunting Elon for the next several minutes of the championship match. Here’s a look at what happened.

As soon as fans learned Elon was in attendance (thanks to an eagle-eyed camera operator), chants of “Bring back Twitter,” immediately broke out throughout the stadium. A clip of the incident shows that even the announcers were a bit confused about what was happening — though it’s clear the chant wasn’t directed toward the players.

“I can’t quite tell what they’re saying,” says one announcer. The other announcer chimes in with, “No, I can’t hear it through my headphones.”

Along with the “Bring back Twitter” chant, the crowd also managed to boo Elon for about a minute.

Of course, the event quickly went viral on social media, and it earned plenty of fans. Some folks also took this as an opportunity to send a few more shots toward Elon.

“Bro saw this go down and is getting the check out to buy Riot,” wrote one viewer in a potential nod to the rumors that Elon was buying Fortnite. Another joked that “Xalorant is on the way,” playing off Elon's Twitter rebrand to X.

Elon's overhaul of Twitter hasn’t earned him much love, with large portions of the social media site trying to find a new place to call home. Bluesky has become a popular destination, as has Mastodon, though none are nearly as popular as Twitter (despite the Elon backlash).

Since the regime change, Twitter (or X) has reworked how DMs work, planned to remove the ability to fully block users, and has swapped out the beloved bird logo for a stylized “X.” The moves have been met with resistance every step of the way — which was made clear during the latest Valorant tournament.

Aside from going viral on TikTok, the incident also pulled in millions of views on Twitter. Jake Lucky, a popular content creator, posted about the event on Aug. 26, and the clip is now sitting with nearly 15 million views. Clearly no one in the gaming community is pulling any punches when it comes to the infamous billionaire.

It’s clear that Elon isn’t the most popular person in the world of gaming, despite his many attempts to ingratiate himself with the community. It looks like he’ll have to do more than post memes and make gaming references if he wants to win over supporters — and if the chants from the Valorant tournament are any indication, bringing back the old Twitter would be a great place to start.