The young congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is considered a self-proclaimed LoL player and a hope for the Democratic Party in the USA. She now wanted to ban the US Army from using the streaming platform Twitch. However, her initiative failed due to resistance from her own party.
This is AOC: The US politician Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is known in the USA as “AOC”, similar to how Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is known in Germany as “AKK”, otherwise the two politicians have little in common.
AOC is 30 years old and gained attention in 2018 when she won the nomination for her district in New York against an experienced party colleague and later also won the election. She became the youngest woman ever to enter Congress.
AOC is a self-proclaimed LoL player and is happy when she reaches the “Silver” rank. Now she has also professionally engaged with the topic of “Gaming”.
The US Army should no longer recruit on Twitch
This was her proposal: AOC wanted to ensure that the US Army could no longer stream on Twitch. She said that Twitch is full of boys aged 12 and 13, and military service is too serious to be portrayed as a game.
The US Army and the Navy are accused of allowing young soldiers to play games like CoD Warzone on Twitch to appear hip and trendy, thereby enticing young gamers to enlist in military service and ultimately recruit them more easily.
There were controversies about the Army banning critical viewers in the Twitch chat and allegedly violating the Constitution.
The controversies became so loud and strong, that the US Army withdrew from Twitch for the time being.
AOC wanted to formalize this and prohibit the Pentagon from allocating money for recruiting through Twitch.
Own party members prevent Twitch ban for the US Army
This is how it ended: Although the Democratic Party holds the majority in Congress, AOC’s proposal failed. Even 103 members of her own party opposed the proposal.
One of her party colleagues, Pete Visclosky, even became the main opponent of her initiative. He argued:
- They wanted to appeal to as broad a spectrum of people as possible for the US Army to encourage young Americans to serve in the military for their country.
- Recruitment has always had violations, and recruits were given false promises. These violations were then penalized – there are clear regulations for that.
- The Twitch channel is for ages 18 and over.
- Once such rights are restricted, it is difficult to get them back.
- Although he finds media reports about the US Army’s e-sports team concerning, he must still reject the initiative.
Try explaining to congress members what Twitch is
This is how she sees her defeat: AOC hints on Twitter how difficult it is to explain to congress members what Twitch is. If politics does not respond adequately to advancing technology, there will be no way to protect people, she said.
AOC apparently believes that Congress has difficulty keeping up with technological progress.
We experience this phenomenon in Germany as well. It became clear when Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “The internet is uncharted territory for all of us.” That was in 2013: The statement caused mockery.
For many Germans who had already arrived online, it showed that politics was lagging behind the reality of many lives (via tagesspiegel).
The topic “The Army recruits gamers” also occupied the German gaming and media world in 2018. The Bundeswehr had a booth at Gamescom and addressed young gamers with offensively worded posters. For example, it said “Multiplayer at its best”:
“More open world isn’t possible” – Bundeswehr aggressively recruits at Gamescom
The title image is cut from the embedded video. It is from C-Span.
