Maike | Wen
San Francisco-based live broadcast platform Twitch may be one of the most "genuine" companies in the United States. The reason why
says this is because more than a month ago, Twitch has stood up many times and openly challenged the "US Army Esports" (@USArmyEsports) that set up a live broadcast room on their platform.
You should know that this so-called @USArmyEsports is not a high-quality imitation account. Not only are they all active or reserved members of the US Army, but even the "US Army Esports Corps" project was instructed by the US Army officials and did not originate from the whim of some Internet addicted soldiers.
Why did the US Army build such a game live broadcast room? Before answering this question, more people may have such questions, "What? In the US military, soldiers can even play electronic games?"
Yes, Jones, the current head of the "US Army Esports Corps", had enlisted in the army as early as 2003. After completing the boot camp, the first thing he did when he entered the barracks was to buy PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox in order to play video games in his spare time.
Obviously, his time in the military game did not affect Jones' performance. More than ten years later, he still serves in the army as a first-class sergeant. Before managing the e-sports team, he was a recruiter of the U.S. military.
Because he is very interested in e-sports, he often appears as a commentator in the "Street Fighter" competition organized by the US military in the past few years, and is also considered a little famous in the army.
The military uniform commentator in the picture is Jones
However, compared with Jones's hobbies, his job has not been easy in recent years. Although the United States spends far more than other countries, they have set a big plan to expand the Army to 500,000 within four years, and it is not easy to achieve.
In 2018, the US military failed to achieve the recruitment targets they set for for the first time in more than ten years. So the major general of the recruitment command found Jones and asked him to take the lead in establishing a "e-sports special forces." I want to use the popularity of the game among young people to save the dismal achievements in recruiting new recruits in the army.
So, in November of the same year, the "U.S. Army Esports Corps" was established in Kentucky. This "special force" was originally composed of 16 soldiers, who were holding generous military salaries, and the main task of his military career was to represent the American army in front of the audience to play various electronic games.
The US Army Esports Corps has many members, and the live game types cover a wide range. Since its launch on Twitch, they have aired games with different gameplay such as League of Legends, Call of Duty, Fortnite, World of Warcraft, and even Magic.
plus the gimmick of the "US Army" in the live broadcast room. Logically speaking, such publicity should really make some achievements for the troops.
However, in just less than two years, although this e-sports team has indeed accumulated more than 20,000 subscriptions, it has also caused a lot of trouble for the military.
They first started a lottery in their Twitch live broadcast room, claiming that the prize is the new Xbox Elite controller. However, when the audience clicks on the lottery link, they will be guided to a spreadsheet to apply for enlistment, and there is no trace of the elite handle lottery.
At this time, there should be a king who knows it and jumps out and shouts "Fake news!"
So everyone complained about the e-sports team committing fraud in the live broadcast room.
However, the US Army refuted this, "The lottery is real, we will really draw among those who have filled out the form and give us the handle of our promise."
This tricky operation made many viewers confused, "I'm just here to draw a prize, but you want to use the handle, so you sent us to Iraq and Syria ?"
Twitch quickly deleted the link to the lottery. They even issued a statement on the platform for this, warning the US military to stop inserting these false links in the live broadcast room, and this matter was barely calmed down.
What made the US Army Esports team form a deeper relationship with the player audience is a notorious weapon prop: "White Phosphorus Bullet".
In July this year, the live broadcast room took shifts to Joshua, a special forces member with beret, for live broadcast. While he was playing "Call of Duty", he used the prop "White Phosphorus Bullet" in the game. And this happens to be a pain point that the US military does not want to mention.
Joshua's live broadcast screen that day
Blooded white phosphorus spontaneously ignites and produces smoke with pungent smell and toxicity. Under sufficient combustion, the temperature of the white phosphorus bomb can reach above 1000 degrees Celsius, and it is difficult to remove it in time once it adheres to the skin. The killing effect is extremely inhumane, and the process will cause great pain to the creatures.
Due to its terrifying nature, white phosphorus bombs are listed as banned weapons by the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons, but the United States has not signed the Convention.
When checking the information, I saw the victim's photos, you won't want to see it...
In recent years, media have often tried to break the news, implying that the US military had used this inhumane weapon of destruction during the Iraq War, and even affected local civilians.
You should know that most of the viewers watching the live broadcast of the US military e-sports team are not strong young people who want to join the army with the mood of "Make America Great Again". And Twitch is not only watched by American players.
Most people come here just to see a gimmick. Some foreign audiences living in the U.S. military stationed areas may be even more squatting here with the mood of "the world is suffering from the U.S. military for a long time."
Seeing such a rhythm point, of course, everyone will not let it go easily. So many viewers began to question Joshua in the live broadcast room, "How many people have the US military killed abroad like this?"
"What do you think of the war crimes committed by the US military in the past?"
Joshua had a very difficult time in the game that day, and he started to rhythm at this critical moment. It can be said that anger arose from the heart, and evil arises to the courage. So he simply left the keyboard and personally banned the audience who spoke rude to the troops in the live broadcast room.
A large number of messages were blocked and deleted by the administrator
When the audience saw it, "Oh? He was anxious." So they cursed even more. In a very short time, Joshua had banned hundreds of accounts in the live broadcast room. But there are still more people coming here, and they want to challenge the bottom line of banning people in the live broadcast room.
For this reason, some people even specially set up a "race challenge" to compete for who was banned the fastest.
Messages about "war crimes" swept across the live broadcast room of the US Army like a tide. Joshua found that he could not ban it at all, so he simply restricted the right to speak in the live broadcast room.
However, this time, these attempts to calm the conflict did not calm the incident down quickly.
This battle between the US military and the audience alarmed the American Civil Liberties Association. They believe that the live broadcast room is a public place, and the US military's behavior of banning audiences from speech violates the regulations on freedom of speech in the United States First Amendment. So they want to file a lawsuit against the "US Army Esports Corps."
, while the Twitch platform kept speaking and urging, persuading the "US Army Esports Team" to release all the players that were banned this time.
At this time, even House of Representatives Member Alexandra stood up. She believes that the US military spending should have been reduced long ago, and the troops should naturally not spend their funds on live broadcast platforms such as Twitch.
Rep. Alexandra
So she quickly submitted an amendment bill to try to terminate the US military, but the bill was not approved in the final vote.
According to Alexandra himself, it was because most of the members participating in the voting had no idea about the live broadcast platform, so they encountered a failure this time.
In this situation of internal and external troubles, the US Army Esports Corps was still timid. They chose to retreat, allowing players to provoke and scold in the live broadcast room and Twitter, and also shrank their necks and hung up for more than a month of war-free cards.
city gate fire affected the fish. In the more than a month since the US Army stopped updating and live broadcasting, people have discovered that the US Navy and Air Force have also followed suit and quietly logged on live broadcast platforms such as Twitch according to the "Army E-sports Team".
So many people vented their beautiful greetings for the Army anchor to the Navy and the Air Force.
Interestingly, the audience found that the live broadcast rooms between the Navy and the Air Force seemed to be ready. They added a large number of live broadcast room blocking words in advance, not only adding alternative spellings like "w4r cr1mes", but even the name of a naval soldier who was involved in a scandal a long time ago could not be called in the naval live broadcast room.
Of course, in this conflict, all the US military was involved in a vortex of restricting freedom of speech.
On August 14, the US Army Esports Corps, which had been "radio silence" for more than a month, finally decided to try to return to the Twitch platform.
They first unblocked the audience who had been banned before according to Twitch's call, which was a signal to seek reconciliation. Then he posted a picture of "Dragon Ball" on Twitter, announcing his return.
In addition, they also established a series of new speech rules for their live broadcast room before the broadcast started.
The most important of these is that they demonstrate a striking user agreement : The U.S. Department of Defense reserves the right to review, move or delete information in its sole discretion without notice.
After preparation, Jones, the person in charge, personally started the first live broadcast after his return. However, unexpectedly, after a month, the audience did not seem to forget about this matter at all.
comments within 5 seconds randomly intercepted
Jones was hit by the audience at the beginning, although he played World of Warcraft for a while and tried to communicate with everyone many times. But for more than three hours, most of his movements were just watching the audience's fancy mockery, twisting and twisting in the chair uneasily.
Since that bad return debut, the "US Army Esports Team" has quickly fallen into silence again. It seems that if they want to return to the audience's horizon, they have to wait for a better opportunity.
Although it is a good idea to place gamers as the promotion target for recruitment, it is a good idea to choose to fight with netizens in verbal disputes. The US military really got the wrong target this time...
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