What Is Really Going On With U.S. Army Esports? 

Impromptu video, not going to be regular here. This has been bugging me quite a bit, what are your thoughts on the ethics of this? Edit: I’m seeing some decent range of opinions in the comments would love to gain some perspective on this topic. I’ll be reading through them.

U.S Army Esports posting “UwU 💕” gave me whiplash

>Why the hell are my tax dollars going towards the U.S. Army having a Fortnite team? That's the most 2020 sentence I've ever heard.

Government: “violent video games cause violence in kids” Also government: “let’s fund military propaganda on twitch”

So, this is essentially just the U.S. Army saying, "Yo dudes, the *U.S. Army* is pretty chill. Maybe you could like join it or something".

Air Force : *"Aim High"* Marines : *"Semper Fi"* Coast Guard : *"Semper Paratus"* Navy : *"Semper Fo"* Army : *"Join UwU"*

Had to stop everything I was doing when I saw "USArmyESports" posting "UwU"

Imagine entering an eSports tournament and going up against the us army

Reminds me of ww1 ads that said that war was 'an adventure' and 'life changing' only for it to be horrible.

The military has always targeted the youth. Recruiters in highschools, commercials on TV. Streaming is just a new medium.

The U.S Army be like "hey kid, wanna play Call of Duty irl? OwO"

This is this generations “we need you”Uncle Sam poster...

Imagine if global conflicts were solved with PVP matches instead of blood.

Reminds me of the fact that the US army has an actual video game: America’s Army.

"You spend a lot of time with your friends, you should be spending that time in Afghanistan"

"Oh boy I hope I win this giveaway! I wonder what I'll get?" "You got drafted"

That “OK Boomer” dancing dog post made me cringe so god damn hard

I feel like younger gen z's are more impressionable with this tactic, but I just love the fact that the us army announced they were gonna stop streaming on twitch for a while bc older gen z's kept commenting "what's your favorite us war crime"

“Yvan eht nioj.” Gotta love those catchy lyrics!

At USMC boot camp, my DI's gave me a lot of crap for being in the band. The gamer recruits probably have it 10X worse lol.

I was certain the entire account was someone trolling the army. I'm baffled knowing this was a real thing

General Eisenhower: Beware of the Military Industrial Complex U.S. Army Esports: OK Boomer

"Wasting money" on video games as a recruiting tool isn't new, the Army has been throwing money and endorsement to get games like COD get made to their standard pretty much since they started. It's easier to get streaming in front of children than a product their parent has to buy, though, so of course they were going to do something scummy like this.

I served in the US Navy from 1980-86 and here's my recruiter story: In my case, my dad was in the hospital when I went off to boot camp and my recruiter was concerned that my dad's medical issues would distract me during recruit training. He somehow managed to get someone at boot camp to hold all my mail. We had mail call a couple of times a week and I couldn't understand why I never got any letters. It wasn't until I'd been there six weeks that I got my first letter, which was from my sister informing me that dad had pulled through and was finally home from the hospital. After this letter, my mail arrived normally. After completing boot camp I returned to my hometown and confronted the recruiter about this and he told me the story. I still feel it was shady behavior; I was left to wonder and worry about dad for my first month and a half at boot camp. Recruiters seem to just do whatever they want.

2:15 whenever see stuff like those i just imagine a full on built US marine with AR15 with UWU stickers on it

Let’s add that the army literally goes to high schools around the US and gives out portable chargers and free shit to make u wanna join the army

"Why the hell are my tax dollars going towards the U.S. Army having a Fortnite team?" Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd hear!

"We're totally totally not recruiting, but we are kind of recruiting."

Everyone I know who is/was in the military has said something similar to “do not enlist, do absolutely everything you possibly can to not enlist, it sucks, the benefits are a lie, finding a job afterwards is terrible, etc.” Everyone knows enlisting in the military sucks these days. They’re desperate for more bodies and they’re going as far as making esports teams and inclusivity ads just to get eyes on them.

I think they will do anything to get absolutely ANYONE in the army. So there s that

I have a buddy in the army who played against their CSGO team, and apparently they just straight up suck. Like losing to Silver 2 level suck.

Boomers: “I saw a poster of Uncle Sam asking me to join” Gen Z: “I saw a poster of mah Waifu asking me to join UwU”

I think that "Youth" have been targeted by military recruitment for a long time, this being the newest attempt. Still think that these are some questionable ethics...

It is a similar situation in Germany. Since you don't have to go to the army for 1.5 years after school anymore they desperately need new personal, so they do lots of advertisement targeting teens. This includes publishing own web series on RU-vid and be very present on video game conventions and also schools

People speedrun getting banned from their Discord just like what they do with Yandere Dev’s lmao

Despite having an abundance of people in our country to recruit, the US military does have a hard time filling its ranks and with retention occasionally. I was in Iraq in 2003, but only there for 5 months as I was ETS'ing (leaving the service), and while there heard the military was having a really difficult time with retention... big bonuses were being handed out to keep both enlisted and especially officers. This went on for at least another five years, in which time I was an AGR and still heard about Army Recruiters having long days and nights trying to meet quotas. It really comes down to a question for a lot of people thinking of joining and even those already in the military: What are we fighting? If we don't have a clear answer, being deployed for months isn't exactly high on our list of things to do. Recruiting for the military has always been rough, and trying to find ways to get more recruits and enhance retention is always something they have to think about. To the video at hand, I agree that this is wrong, targeting young people and basically "grooming" them. And its a waste of taxpayer dollars to have video game teams, period. ;l

I almost signed up for the Army reserves. Someone talked me into going. I took the test and passed but i smoked weed every day and they told me to quit smoking and come back in 30 days. Its now 21 years later and i still smoke every day. Its my success story :)

Wars in 2100: US Army eSports vs Iraq eSports ... best of 30 on Dust2 ... winner gets the Land

If they were straight up about it I wouldn't see a problem: "Hey we're here to talk about stories from out time in service, while playing games that we like. If you want to join then please do, we're always looking to welcome new people, it's not all sunshine and rainbows but there are benefits and we feel strongly about it. If you don't want to join that's fine. You're still welcome to hang out in the stream and we hope you enjoy the stories." Something like that I think would be fine but the deceptive aspect is not okay, especially when young people are involved.

From what I know, the military is very very interested in getting gamers into the military, and basically weaponize that competitiveness especially in youth that love tanks and guns and war simulators. There's even discussion of making military vehicles, drones etc operational by handheld controllers to make it easier for gamers to make the leap from war simulation to real world battlefields. ..... So I'm assuming it's that.

Oh boy, nobody tell him about JROTC.

"Wh4ts ur f4vourite w4r crimes?"

*notices your oil field* OwO what's this?

Recruiting from the army has always been a bit scummy. I got a call from the army in high school and they tried to make it seem like I didn’t have a choice to even come meet with them. I fell for it but my dad was able to help me get out of the meeting as I had no interest in joining. It was just incredibly manipulative for people who probably don’t know what’s going on.

"We aren't here to recruit anybody" Launches into recruitment spiel.

This just feels like one of those "Hello there fellow kids" things that large companies do to seem more relatable.

So, in summary - they totally aren't recruiters, but their information is found on the recruitment website, the only army-related account they follow on twitter is the recruitment account, and in order to join you have to undergo exactly the same training as recruiters. Seems like a pretty blatant way to circumvent the fact they aren't supposed to target minors for recruitment, but what do I know.

I go to a lot of fighting game tournaments and before the pandemic there would be Army recruitment booths at most major tournaments. They claimed they were there as players and spectators but it still felt very predatory. I even heard from a few people that the recruiters would challenge people to first to 10 matches. What was on the line? Well if you won you got nothing afaik. But if you lost you had to sign up for the army. Thankfully they got banned from most, if not all, majors after practically everyone complained about their presence there and their predatory tactics

I remember watching this video when it came out, I'm now re-watching it because I'm doing a persuasive research presentation in college about how messed up it is. Thanks Barely Sociable.

How do you know the military recruiter is lying? His mouth is moving.

Can we also talk about how recruitment ads on twitch and youtube make the army look like a videogame?

Please we need more uploads! I have watched your videos like twice over, they’re awesome. I respect and understand it takes a long time to put these together. I love these videos!

from my experience, tbh the meme culture postings are a more accurate depiction of military life than the typical tv hero type ads.

Basically it's kinda army recruitment aimed at children/teens, thinly veiled as a eSports team.

I'm an Army vet from 80-83, in the 2000s the US Army developed a video game called Americas Army as a recruiting tool. My friends and I played it quite a bit back then. It was a first person shooter game that had stats kept on the server so you could progress while playing, it was a lot of fun but could hardly be considered grooming. Why they shut that down and went with an e-sports team is anyone guess.

I hadn’t heard of it, I wish I hadn’t either. I’ve been waiting for something along these lines happening.

army recruiting has created ads before implying "play CoD irl", and there are people in the army on record saying that CoD is a good recruiting tool. theyre now taking it a step further and certainly a step too far

Its just propaganda like in the 50's with the uncle sam posters but this time anime girls

Over the last couple days I just found both Barely and Slightly Sociable and I dig your content. Relaxing to listen to.

'Sir these rice farmers are no match for our Teabagger Batallion' OwO

Yo story time they came to my school and they got us (like 10 kids) in this big truck with gaming computers and stuff all rgb it was sick and whoever won got a playstation.. I came in 2nd but army recruiting at its finest they were all very nice tbh I was so surprised hearing abt all this LMAO It’s weird that they claim that they aren’t trying to recruit anyone when they DID THAT lol at OUR school with kids from grade 9-12 handing out goodies and manuals and they’re trying to say it’s not recruitment?

I love memes, but when a serious organization is posting memes, I trust them less. Imagine your surgeon all of a sudden starts giggling and saying stupid things right before your surgery. That's just terrifying.

i think the reason the US Military is trying so hard to use streaming and social media platforms to influence young people, is because the amount of people joining the military across all branches has been falling and the military needs to increase the amount of people joining the military.

Army wants to find gamers to join army to fly drones remotely cause gamers already have a good skill set that can be easily trained to fly drones remotely to blast people or places USA wants get rid of this is common knowledge.

I'm a navy vet, and I think that this is usual recruitment. They would normally go to high schools and colleges for recruitment, but I can see how their offers would work better on people who play FPS games. However, I do agree that it is wrong to hide the fact that this is, most likely, a recruitment process.

Speculation: this is a way in which recruiters can gauge manual dexterity/visual acuity/hand-eye reaction time as potential aptitude for drone operators. As for the Twitter account, it’s simply a dumpster fire. 😐

Thank you for this video. Very interesting and even more important now, 2 years later, I’d say.

I realize what it was for the second you showed their posts. I knew what it was for because their new TV ads literally are like a COD trailer

"We're not here to recruit anybody, except we are"

You forgot the controversy that the "trolls" in the twitch stream were people asking questions like "how many points is ordering a drone strike on civilians" and generally just based around how bad the military is towards veterans and all the war crimes they do. So the mod of the twitch stream banned them, you know something that's the right of every streamer. Except, it wasn't just some streamer. It was the US government preventing people from saying what they'd like, and that thing was criticizing the government. The ACLU got involved with calling them out on this, and now that they're back, they can't ban people from criticizing the military in chat.

I'm a Navy veteran. The moment I heard about the army esports team, I immediately recognized it as a recruiting tool. Anything to connect to the youth and seem "Hip" or "Cool" or what ever. I mean it's no different from how the Navy recruiters were (and likely still are) when I was in high school. Basically they just talked about partying and getting laid in foreign parts while peppering in bits of information about things like college tuition and hyped up descriptions of what each job does.

It's not any different than any other advertising aimed at kids from toys, games, or colleges in my mind. They're basically just another team sponsor trying to plug their product. I really don't understand the disproportionate push-back.

Plot twist: US Army Esports is ran by Roblox Military groups.

*sees Barely Sociable youtube notification* *sees UwU in thumbnail* ok.

On a scale of 1 to10, this ranks a 1 on the crazy/weird/interesting shit I expect from barely sociable.

About as questionable as schools convincing kids to drop 40k on college when they have no idea what to do or even need the degree

This feels like a distopian cyperpunk movie... "Hey kids, join the army and get the chance TO WIN AN XBOX 720 WOO!!!

yet another way to """ soften""" the idea of anything associated with the army 🤷‍♀️ not surprised

I get that on a one-on-one level I'm supposed to respect veterans and active military members- but I don't agree with their institutions or careers. I respect them people they're working class people. After being harassed via phone and email by the army recruiters as a PSEO (a high school student in college), I was really frustrated. A lot of students at community college are low income and it felt like the perfect place for them to throw around big numbers to recruit marginalized young people, specifically people of color, who were just trying to pay their way through a degree. I shouldn't have to explain why this is unethical. I have seen young people make life-altering choices to work for these institutions without even taking the time to question the ramifications of signing a contract for an institution that can exploit them. Not to mention the other helpless people around the globe and within this very nation. If a 17 year old can not make the informed decision to join the military, why can an 18 year old? You can't drink, you can't even smoke a god damn cigarette anymore in this country, but you can join the army. Infact, if you're poor, recruiters will coerce you into joining. (my opinion)

Former Army here, competed against USAE guys in multiple tournaments while I was in. The guys actually on the eSports team likely have little to do with the recruiting aspect. To my knowledge before the Twitch account went up, the eSports team was more of a retention tool than a recruitment tool. Morale in the Army is extremely low and as a result people join and do one contract and leave because of how shitty it is. What it has “evolved” into today is a tool to try and convince kids to join on the false premise that their job in the Army can literally be to play video games, which isn’t even remotely true. EDIT: Even before this, recruiters going to high schools in HMMVs with Xbox 360 consoles and Modern Warfare 2 setups in the back were pretty common, at least in Colorado and Missouri.

The army has a long history of "grooming"

FaZe: It is forbidden to use drugs on e-sport tournaments US Army Esport team: Well this gun says something different

I feel like this is situation where sort of similar to, marketing and sales Marketing is designing or getting people interested In a product while sales is the process of selling the product itself,

Army recruiters have been targeting high schoolers for years with what most of the vets I've spoken to say are pretty shady recruitment tactics. US Army Esports is shady, but about as shady as existing recruitment tactics. It's just higher profile so people who don't actively know former soldiers are seeing it for what it is.

AOC was trying to get legislation passed to limit recruiting through twitch, but the other congressional members didn’t really understand what twitch was which was pretty sad.

it’s not weird that they’re trying to relate to younger people. they come to our school all the time. it is weird how unprofessional they are though. the army shouldn’t be taken lightly.

The background is neat 👌

Who else remembers in the late 1990s and 2000s when they straight up made US Army video games? Some were free, but others you legit had to pay for and it was just a giant recruiting effort.

"Hi guys, I'm not here to do an advertisement for this organization, but I am going to tell you how cool it is to be in this organization so if you want to join it you can" "So it is an advertisement?" "No no we are just trying to uh.....connect with you"

Recruitment has always been shady, when I was high school a recruiter straight up told me that the Navy ( the Navy!) would teach me to be James Bond.

I mean my high school gave us an "aptitude test" that just turned out to be a recruitment scheme for the army so this stuff isnt new.

This sounds like a "Joe Camel" type of advertising like when cigarettes were being charged with "targeting children" HMMMM!!!

Get them while they're young and fool otherwise they might come across the truth and realize they're not fighting for freedom, they're not defending the country or some other BS.

"guys were hip and relatable please help me commit war crimes and give you lifelong ptsd"

Join the army they said. It will be worth it they said. Now I have crippling mental health issues :>

i agree with a lot of points you made , thrn disagree with a few. love the content you make my man!

Tale as old as the military. They've always been doing shit like this. (Though I've never seen it done so brazenly.) As I'm sure other comments have mentioned, they've had contracts with game devs for positive representation in the past, using gaming hardware (like VR etc) to get young people interested, games like COD have literally been used as propaganda. As you say, some people get good experiences out of the military, and I don't personally take issue with people joining. Hell, I was thinking about it when I was in high school. But we can't ignore that it's a serious commitment that can have major consequences (not to mention the garbage things they do abroad and even to their own soldiers). Regardless of how pro or anti-military you are, I don't think it's hard to see that this is completely inappropriate. At worst it's manipulative and shady af, at the absolute best it's in extremely poor taste. No organization which has access to weapons and force on the scale of the U.S. Military should be posting memes, or streaming let's plays on twitch.

I’m an executive at an up-and-coming esports org. I’m glad this is getting attention, as I find this issue to be incredibly disturbing. On one hand we’re telling kids that video games are fantasy, and war is a terrible thing. Yet groups like these are doing quite the opposite: video games are just like being in the army, and war is fun! They’re condoning people bringing video game violence into reality, by suggesting that kids should take their love of shooting and explosions in video games, and apply it to being a soldier. In other words, they are attempting to have video games cause real world violence. Is this not an idea that gamers have been fighting against for decades? This needs to stop.

I have always been bothered by the branches of the US Military advertising at young individuals. I hate when my younger brothers (both middle school age and younger) see recruiting advertisements on RU-vid. I hated when we had a recruiter sitting in our high school cafeteria. I knew a few kids in my grade who were dead set on joining the military from their first year or two of high school. I remember them saying they felt like they didn't have anything else going for them, so why not throw their lives away in honorable combat? I live in an area that is full of opportunities for all walks of life. A lot of those kids made the decision before they were considered fully mentally mature. I understand that the military can help people who feel that way, it gives people a purpose who feel like they don't have one. But it's also been shown and proven that branches of the US Military aren't very good at helping soldiers with metal health. If other people are thinking the same way my peers were when joining, it's likely they need some mental health support.

The minute u started talking about this I remembered that simpsons episode, you know where bart is in a boy band. Still hear that yvan eht nioj in my head.