The confrontation between the United States Military and Twitch users continues, with the US Army unbanning users and returning to the streaming service after a whole lot of controversy. Unsurprisingly, the tension hasn't disappeared in the channel's month-long hiatus, and the US Army's returning stream was unusual, to say the least.
Those unfamiliar with the situation should be aware that the Army is facing a lot of criticism for its social media presence at the moment, which has been characterized as the Army's attempt to make more recruitments from younger generations. The tipping point came when the Army auto-banned any mention of war crimes in the chat, which opened up a larger conversation about censorship.
Chris "Goryn" Jones of the US Army Esports Team addressed the elephant in the room at the very start of the stream with a speech about how war crimes are "heinous" and "prosecuted as such," which didn't really convince the viewers. The majority of the chat was a flood of comments about US Army social media controversies, citing the Army's blatant attempts to recruit from its social media audience and its censorship of discussion of American war crimes.
Jones continued talking for an hour and a half before playing a game, despite comments asking him to play World of Warcraft since the backlash wasn't letting up even that far in. He responded to some easier questions about his time in the Army, but also got into it with some commentators by attempting to correct some claims. He claimed that the Army isn't targeting kids with esports and social media because a person has to be seventeen to enlist, prompting some skepticism in the comments that seventeen-year-olds were really old enough to not be considered kids.
Recently, Representative Ocasio-Cortez of New York attempted to pass a bill banning the US Military from targeting kids and teens for recruitment, but the bill was struck down. Military.com's statistics say that it's recruited over 10,000 people through esports this year. Although the bill failed, Twitch users are not impressed with the Army's actions. Some comments just spammed the phrase "war crimes," while other people brought their research and cited some negative statistics about the US Army.
Jones also accused the "war crimes" messages of being "automated," which led to backlash and people sharing stories of friends who'd had negative experiences in the Army. Even if there was some genuine trolling, the majority of comments seemed to be real concerns that make the likelihood of the Army Twitch channel succeeding look pretty low. The Army may have shut down its fake giveaway links to military recruitment pages, but it has a long, rocky road to take if it wants Twitch viewers' approval.
Source: Kotaku