Vice News Reports: Hostile Territory: How The Army Got Trolled on Twitch
Waypoint Radio
VICE
4.6 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2021
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
The U.S. Army needs recruits, and they're looking to Twitch to find them. With the Army’s new e-sports team, they hope to attract young, tech-savvy enlistees by streaming video games online. But they haven’t found a fully receptive audience. And this isn’t the first time the military has slid into our gaming consoles. VICE News Correspondent Dexter Thomas Jr. digs back in military gaming history to explain how we got here.
Reporting from Dexter Thomas Jr. and Michelle R. Carney. Produced by Sophie Kazis.
VICE News Reports is produced by Jesse Alejandro Cottrell, Jen Kinney, Janice Llamoca and Julia Nutter. Our senior producers are Ashley Cleek and Adizah Eghan. Our associate producers are Sam Eagan, Sophie Kazis, and Adreanna Rodriguez. Sound Design and music composition by Steve Bone and Kyle Murdock.
Our executive Producer and VP of Vice Audio is Kate Osborn. Janet Lee is Senior Production Manager for VICE Audio. Production coordination by Steph Brown. Fact Checking by Nicole Pasulka.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, Kato here with a special episode for you all from our sister podcast Vice |
| 0:06.2 | News Reports. |
| 0:08.2 | This one's covering the moment that the US Army was recruiting over Twitch and how that |
| 0:15.5 | all played out. |
| 0:17.0 | This one's reported out by Dexter Thomas who you'll know as the host of reset, the |
| 0:23.0 | El Nathraus Guide to Video Games. |
| 0:24.6 | If you listen to any of the reset roundtable panels, he's a familiar voice. |
| 0:28.5 | We will be back with another reset panel later this week on Friday. |
| 0:33.8 | So look out for that and enjoy. |
| 0:40.0 | So one night in March or April, I was on my phone in bed and just kind of scrolling Twitch. |
| 0:46.5 | So this thing happened during the spring of 2020 on the video game streaming platform Twitch, |
| 0:53.0 | where people log on to watch other gamers play live and interact with them. |
| 0:58.3 | And at the very top of the page, there's a revolving slider of streams that they're promoting. |
| 1:05.3 | And the first one you see is typically default for everybody and it's the one they want |
| 1:10.2 | everyone to see. |
| 1:11.5 | And it was the Army Esports team. |
| 1:12.9 | I thought the why is the Army have an esports team first, but also like why is this the |
| 1:17.2 | top promoted stream? |
| 1:19.0 | This one gamer named Jordan U.L. was up late one night and he noticed something sort |
| 1:24.1 | of weird. |
| 1:25.6 | And scrolling down to see who else was on. |
| 1:28.3 | I saw in the very popular esports personality and streamer. |
... |
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