Elliot vs. X: Watching My Sociopathic Friend Watch Mr. Robot
It was only a matter of time before I showed Mr. Robot to X. The minute I saw Rami Malek's vacant, calculating stare as Elliot Alderson in episode one, I knew this was the show for him. But not for the reasons most people connect with Elliot. No, X was not going to relate to the socially awkward genius trying to take down the world’s corrupt systems for some higher, righteous cause. X doesn’t bother with righteousness. He’s in it for control, precision, and the art of the game.
We sat down in silence, the familiar hum of Mr. Robot’s opening titles setting the scene—glitchy, jagged, and cold, like the digital space Elliot inhabits. X sat back, posture impossibly straight, fingers tapping in some slow rhythm as Elliot monologued into the void. The voiceover—Elliot’s internal dialogue—usually strikes a chord with viewers. Not X. He didn’t hear the loneliness. He didn’t feel the alienation.
“He’s... preoccupied with something,” X said, eyes narrowed at the screen. Not at Elliot, but through him. “A bit too aware of how little control he has.”
That was Elliot’s hook for most viewers: the crushing sense of powerlessness. But not for X. Elliot’s angst, his isolation, were little more than background noise to him. It wasn’t Elliot’s humanity that interested X, it was his ability to manipulate it.
The show wasted no time throwing Elliot into the heart of a cyber underworld. X didn’t blink when Elliot took down the child pornographer, didn’t flinch when he blackmailed his therapist’s lover. But there was an almost imperceptible nod of approval when Elliot’s hack into the cheating executive’s life revealed just how deep Elliot’s control ran over those he targeted.
“He’s good,” X said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “But... sloppy.”
“Sloppy?” I asked.
“Blackmail is too direct,” X replied. “Too much emotion. If you’re going to control someone, it’s better if they don’t know they’re being controlled.”
I wanted to press him, but decided against it. Watching X watch Mr. Robot was like watching a predator sizing up its reflection. The further we went into the episode, the more I realized that while Elliot’s hacking skills were impressive to most, they were mere tools for X. For Elliot, hacking was his way of creating justice in a broken world. For X? Hacking was just another lever to pull, another system to exploit.
When Mr. Robot—Christian Slater’s volatile anarchist—first appeared, X’s fingers twitched again. “The leader,” he said with mild interest. “But... no. Too emotional.”
And there it was, the crux of X’s worldview. Mr. Robot’s anti-establishment fervor, his nihilistic rhetoric? X saw right through it. “He’s driven by something personal,” X remarked, sounding almost disappointed. “Personal vendettas make you predictable. Dangerous in the wrong way.”
As the plot spiraled deeper into the rabbit hole of hacking, psychological warfare, and Elliot’s growing instability, X’s gaze never wavered. Elliot’s vulnerabilities were, to him, an opening—weaknesses to be exploited. “He’s in too deep,” X muttered when Elliot started to break down after one of his hacks. “Too many people know him now. Too many threads that can be pulled.”
Elliot’s descent into paranoia—a key driver for most fans, the thing that connected them to his fragile mental state—elicited only a small, dismissive grunt from X. “He lets people in too easily,” X noted as Elliot's friends and coworkers pressed further into his psyche. “He’s sabotaging himself.”
That, for X, was the real sin. Not the hacking. Not the illegal surveillance or the moral ambiguity. No, it was the emotional weakness. The fact that Elliot, despite all his brilliance, couldn’t keep the walls up. In X’s mind, trust was just a gateway to destruction. And Elliot? Elliot trusted the wrong people.
As the episodes unfolded, X’s commentary shifted from quiet observations to something more akin to a dissection. “He could have avoided this,” X said flatly during a particularly tense scene where Elliot’s carefully constructed plans began to crumble. “He let sentiment get in the way.”
Sentiment. The thing that Elliot’s entire existence seemed to be built on—the need to protect people he loved, to avenge wrongs, to reshape a broken system—was a liability for X. The idea of changing the world? That was hubris. For X, systems weren’t meant to be torn down. They were meant to be exploited, subtly, quietly, from within. Fsociety, with all its bombastic rhetoric and grandstanding, was, to X, little more than a doomed venture run by idealists who didn’t understand the rules of the game they were playing.
“The moment you make it personal, you lose,” X said, as Elliot grappled with the moral consequences of his actions. “People think they can hack their way out of chaos, but chaos is what runs everything. You don’t break systems. You just bend them to your will.”
Elliot’s struggle with his own mind—his dissociation, his hallucinations, his fractured sense of reality—finally reached a fever pitch. I thought X would find it tedious. But instead, he leaned in, not with empathy, but with curiosity. “Interesting,” he said, as Elliot realized the full extent of his split personality. “He’s been fighting himself all along.”
To X, this wasn’t tragic. It was... inevitable. In a world built on lies and control, the only person you can never fully manipulate is yourself. And for X, watching Elliot’s slow realization of this was perhaps the only part of the show that truly intrigued him. “That’s the thing with people,” X mused. “No matter how smart they are, they’re always their own worst enemy.”
As the credits rolled, I looked at X, wondering if he saw himself in Elliot—the genius hacker, the lone wolf, the one pulling the strings behind the scenes. But X’s expression told me everything. For him, Elliot wasn’t an equal. He was a cautionary tale. A brilliant mind who let emotion undo him. A hacker who, despite his skill, was undone by something as trivial as... wanting to save the world.
X stood up, his movements precise, and headed for the door. “Not bad,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “But I’d have done it differently.”
“How?” I asked.
X paused, glanced back, eyes cold. “I wouldn’t have tried to change anything,” he said. “I’d just take control.”
And with that, he was gone. As I sat there, I realized that, to X, Mr. Robot wasn’t a show about revolution, about tearing down corrupt systems. It was a manual—a reminder that the real power lies not in changing the world, but in mastering it, one quiet, calculated step at a time.