The US Army Orders a Tactical Retreat from Twitch

Between making fake sweepstakes that lure people to recruitment forums (a claim that’s been refuted by the Army, who claims that participants really are entered into a sweepstake, of sorts) and probably breaking the law by censoring conversations about the United State’s long and storied history of war crimes, the US Army has been having a rough time on Twitch lately. So rough a time, in fact, it seems that Army Strong isn’t strong enough to endure the rigors of dealing with the internet, because it’s been announced that the army is officially retiring from the esports game. At least, for the foreseeable future.

This announcement came from “the world’s #1 esports consultant” and journalist Rod “Slasher” Breslau, who said this via Twitter:
 

new: sources tell me due to recent media coverage of fake giveaways and potentially unconstitutional bans, the US Army esports team has paused social activity, streaming on Twitch, and official activations with Twitch including participating in upcoming Twitch Rivals events. According to one email seen, while there is no official time frame for a return of the US Army across social media or on their Twitch channel, official marketing activations may not see a return until all the way in Spring 2021

In some respect, it makes sense. The US army obviously wants to recruit people, but the internet is a hostile space where they can’t control their own message. And it’ll be hard to reach any youth when chat is swarmed with people protesting US war crimes and spamming UwU. In other respects, if you can’t engage with your audience about some of the crap the Army does, maybe stop doing that crap. Throwin’ that out there.

Interestingly, so far, the US Navy has not retired its own Twitch stream, which is suffering similar problems as the Navy. The two have a semi-famous dick-measuring contest going, so it could just be needless flaunting, or maybe the Navy’s got something figured out the Army hasn’t.