The US Army has had a rough couple weeks in the gaming world. Recently the Army Twitch channel and esports team has received criticism for fak♔e giveaways and the optics of advertising military recruitment to 13-year-olds. Now the Army has been forced to retreat; reports say on Twitch for the time being.
This follows , published by The Nation, on the Army’s recruitment tactics on Twitch. Uhl says that these military streams are not considered mature content by Twitch, which means that anyone older than Twitch’s minimum age of 13 can watch. Like Army recruiters in schoolsꦰ, Army recruiters on Twitch can only actually recruit people who are of a🅷ge, but they can groom children for a career in the US military. These recruiters are friendly. They use the lingo, reference memes, and seem relatable to the teenagers watching their stream.
However, while the Army can use memes to relate to kids, much of the pushback proved that they cut both ways. An internet challenge quickly developed to see how fast people could168澳洲幸运5开奖网: get themselves banned from army social media presence, include the Twitch channel a🦹nd their associated esports Discord channel. This included anything from as blatant as posting anti-army memes or links to the Wikipedia page f🙈or US war crimes to as subtle as posting the trans flag emote or typing the names of people killed in drone strikes. It’s a lot harder for recruiters to seem hip when confronted with the war crimes their organization committed and, perhaps optically worse, not being able to take a joke about the war crimes their organization committed.
The pushback took more official channels as well. Uhl uncovered that viewers in the US Army Twitch channel were often presented with a contest to win an Xbox Elite Series 2 Controller – an expensive $200 peripheral. Clicking on the link in the chat redirected viewers to an Army recruitment form with no mention of a contest. This forced Twitch to take action, forcing the Army to on their channel. Additionally, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:gamer congressperson Al🌸exandria Ocasio-Cortez stated plans to that would keep the milita🌄ry from using government funds to maintain a recruiting presence on Twitch.
The combination of this ba𒉰cklash has seemingly led the Army to reconsider how damaging it looks to pander to teenagers, if not the ethics of pandering to teenagers. The US Army has paused activity on Twitch with no official return scheduled. It is worth noting, however, that this is an internal decision by the Army. Twitch has taken no action other than banning the controller scams, and in fact still has an official partnership with the Army.
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