
The Navy Says It's Not Recruiting on Twitch. This Handbook Shows It Is - tareqak
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xg847j/the-navy-says-its-not-recruiting-on-twitch-this-handbook-shows-it-is
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bitcurious
As far as I can tell this is a non-story about semantics. The Navy doesn't
recruit on Twitch, it advertises on Twitch.

~~~
refurb
That’s my take as well. It’s just marketing speak. They are raising
“awareness” not “recruiting”. Similar to a CPG company saying we’re raising
“awareness” of our product on Twitch, not “selling” our product.

For your average person, that may seem like meaningless splitting of hairs,
but that’s how it’s discussed in the marketing world.

Amazing a whole article was written about this.

~~~
mercurysmessage
OK, "raising awareness" of what, and for what reason?

It's clearly for recruiting purposes.

~~~
refurb
When you see an ad for shampoo on Youtube, do would you say the company is
"selling" the product on Youtube?

Like I said, it's splitting hairs with words, but it's not some grand
conspiracy as per the Vox article.

~~~
mercurysmessage
It's not splitting hairs, you are the only one splitting hairs here.

The vox article clearly shows that they were trying to recruit, even though
they say they aren't. It's not a grand conspiracy but it's the same as the
military using Hollywood for recruiting.

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dvtrn
I just want to thank Vice for actually bothering to include and embed the full
document they've sourced for this story, when so many outlets publish articles
about stories adjacent (memos, court opinions, rulings, etc.) and blockquote
snippets and excerpts surrounded by the authors own interpretation and
speculation, it's easy to suspect contextomy[0] absent the original source.

I wish more outlets would include the originating artifact of what's being
reported on, where allowable, as was done here.

[0]
[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/016344370505397...](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0163443705053974)

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dang
Related recent thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23880855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23880855)

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trynumber9
Is the issue that the Navy denies using Twitch as a recruitment avenue or
using Twitch as a recruitment avenue? They advertise on Twitch esports and
they advertised on TV during sports.

~~~
dx87
There is no issue, it's just more "the government is lying to you" outrage
bait from Vice. There's a big difference between actively trying to recruit
people, and just having a sailor stream on twitch and answer questions about
life in the Navy.

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DevX101
The day is soon coming when your skill level at videogames will get you fast
tracked for command in a real military. If there were a sufficiently open
ended and realistic war game simulation (I can't think of one), DoD could give
free scholarships for the top 0.1% to Westpoint.

~~~
dvtrn
Check this out:
[https://www.army.mil/standto/archive_2014-05-19/](https://www.army.mil/standto/archive_2014-05-19/)

Allegedly it's made by the same developers as the ARMA series, which if you
want to talk about open-ended military simulators... _whistles mightily_

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notRobot
How do we allow government entities in a democracy to flat out lie to the
citizens like this? Aren't democracies supposed to be " _for_ the people, by
the people, of the people"?

~~~
colinmhayes
The real question is how do we stop it?

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patjenk
You vote.

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loeg
I've voted in every election I've been eligible for, and that strategy hasn't
exactly worked, so far. ("Voting" as a generic answer for "how do we effect
change in government" is trite, oversimplistic, and doesn't actually answer
the question.)

I don't think I've ever seen a referendum on military spending, much less
specific policy, on any ballot.

~~~
pmoriarty
Voting is pretty much the bare minimum you can do to effect political change
in a democracy.

There are plenty of other, ever more effective and synergistic ways, of being
politically active:

\- educating oneself about one's rights, politics and history, and opposing
points of view

\- making connections with others at all levels of society, business, and
government

\- raising awareness through talking to others, writing articles, or making
videos

\- participating in protests or boycotts

\- encouraging others to vote

\- volunteer to be an election monitor, to make sure elections are conducted
fairly and are free from interference

\- letter writing to elected officials

\- donating to and/or volunteering for the causes, campaigns, and
organizations you believe in

\- organizing

\- running for local office

People tend to get so laser-focused on voting that they forget that there are
all sorts of other ways to get involved.

~~~
bserge
\- creating your own party

\- still getting nowhere

I don't know why I'm even writing this, I'm just really tired of seeing the
political class being untouchable (and that's not exclusive to the US).

I remember a guy in my country doing all of what you wrote, getting as far as
organizing a political party, which was promptly absorbed into one of the
three biggest parties, never to be heard from again.

This isn't democracy. It's der'mocracy (my favorite Russian portmanteau, means
shitocracy).

~~~
pmoriarty
There are no guarantees in life.

I don't know what this _one guy_ stood for, what he did right, or what he did
wrong. He might have been completely incompetent, or maybe his ideas were so
far out of the mainstream that he really stood no chance no matter how
competent he was.

How many allies did he manage to get? How many people did he manage to reach?
How long was he active for?

Also, we need to keep in mind that just because your party doesn't get elected
that doesn't mean you've failed. Sometime showing the public that there's an
alternative or moving the conversation to include your issue can effect change
in the mainstream, which can be a victory in itself, even if your party does
not achieve power.

But even if this _one guy_ failed, that does not mean that becoming
politically active in a democracy is useless for everyone and that everyone is
doomed to fail. The point is to get lots of people involved. You can't do it
all by yourself (or it wouldn't be a democracy).

That said, I agree that there are many faults in American democracy, and in
other democracies all over the world. That doesn't mean we have to give up on
democracy. They could be reformed to be more democratic, through democratic
means. But people have to become more educated and more politically active.
Simply casting a vote once every 4 years and digging our heads in the sand the
rest of the time is not nearly enough.

~~~
bserge
> people have to become more educated and more politically active

That's the key point, there has to be a critical mass of people that want to
be more educated and politically active. But there's not enough of them. And I
don't know how to get more people involved.

The current system is better than anything else we've had, but it looks like
people won't be interested in it until it's corrupted beyond repair, at which
point they will resort to violence and rapid, hopefully not violent but
definitely half-arsed, change. History repeating itself.

