The US Army has long made use of video games in order to enlist gamers to join the army. However, a cutesy meme tweet sent by the US Army's esports account has people racing to get banned from the army's Discord and criticizing its use of memes to recruit gamers for war.
A few days ago, Discord announced its move away from a gaming focus, and in the comments, the US Army esports Twitter asked when it'd release a giant plushie of the wumpus, the pig-like mascot of Discord. Several tweets into the conversation later, the US Army esports account sent one last tweet with some heart emojis and an "UwU," a meme phrase associated with cuteness, certain fandoms, and the like.
The backlash to the tweet was very quick. Some of them posted pictures of the classic "How do you do, fellow kids?" meme from 30 Rock. Others said things like, "uwu pwease enwist and commit waw cwimes uwu." There are many Twitter accounts that advertise themselves on Twitter, such as KFC with its bizarre game about romancing Colonel Sanders, but the US Army Esports Twitter is seen as more morally questionable since it uses memes and video games to recruit gamers for war.
In response to the tweet, people are bringing back that old 'ban%' speedrun from Club Penguin. Twitter users are posting videos of themselves going onto the US Army Esports Discord server and getting banned through various means. Oftentimes this is done through anti-army jokes and memes, while others like to reference the unfortunate "UwU" meme. One user, known as "@Aurum_Corpus" got their ban by posting a link to Wikipedia's page on war crimes committed by the United States.
This has led to the Esports Discord channel putting a halt on new visitors accessing the chat channels. Going on to its Discord and agreeing to the rules by reacting to the message on the welcome channel results in nothing happening. The US Army, which recently sponsored a Call of Duty league, hasn't said anything about the trolls, but its Discord welcome channel currently has a message saying the page has been "intentionally disabled."
Source: Polygon