September 12th, the official US Navy went live on Twitch to play Among Us and featured names that glorified the World War II bombing of Japan and a racial slur. While the names were used by others who may not be in the US Navy, they were allowed on the stream for around an hour. Both the streamer and another Navy member he was speaking with on discord (who was moderating the chat) never condemned or addressed the heinous names, and even made jokes about them and warned the chat that they'd be banned if they kept "saying the same thing," indirectly preventing them from bringing up the problematic names.
In the game Among Us, players create their characters' names and customize their outfits before the game starts. In the very first game, two players featured problematic names, while the rest of the group unified to troll the streamer. "I like how you all changed your name to Brandon," the Navy streamer said. "We had some more colorful ideas, but we wanted to keep it a little tame," one friend responded, despite two of the names already being "Japan 1945" and "gamer word." The "gamer word" is slang for a racial slur, and the crewmember using that name chose the black outfit for his character. The streamer never addressed the names other than to laugh when he was put in a situation where he needed to use one of them.
When one of the streamers' friends brought up former Twitch streamer, Dr Disrespect, who has since returned to streaming on YouTube, the US Navy serviceman said, "You can't talk about [Dr Disrespect] on Twitch!" before acknowledging that you can as long as he isn't featured on the stream, signifying he clearly understands Twitch culture and the nature of streaming live. However, meanwhile, his stream still featured multiple problematic names, which would not be expunged until the problem got worse.
In the next game, one of the others in his party changed their name to "Nagasaki," one of the cities targetted by the US military in the bombings. A few games later, the three names still remained. When the serviceman died in a game, he asked his friend on Discord how chat was doing (he claimed he couldn't read chat, but his friend was moderating the Twitch chat for him). His friend reported that they "were chill for a bit," hinting that they were no longer chill because they had started to address the names used in the game. When a chat member asked about why the moderator used homophobic and ableist language and profanity on his own stream, the moderator replied with, "What I do on my off time is what I do on my off time. I don't have to answer you guys, I just have to look at you."
A bit later, that same friend spoke directly to the chat when they increased their rate of calling out the stream's behavior, saying, "See chat, one thing you don't understand is this is a numbers game and you guys are just helping us with the numbers." This implies their call-outs against the offensive names used in the game were actually benefiting the US Navy and their stream.
The chat continued to address the names, and they finally paused the stream to "make a new lobby," and changed chat to emote only, preventing them from bringing up the names. When they restarted the stream a few minutes later, all the names had been changed. When chat was turned back on, everyone again addressed the names, and the moderator friend said, "The last two guys have been deleted, everyone. Shush." "They have been excused," the Navy streamer said, backing him up. But they then made jokes about the members they kicked, laughing off the situation.
The streamer never addressed the names directly, nor explained why they were allowed in the first place. The use of these names is intolerable in any stream, but ever more so in the stream of a government-run organization that is on Twitch to promote the military. The Navy and Army Twitch channels were under fire recently, and AOC had a proposed amendment that would ban them from streaming. However, the bill failed to pass, and the Navy made their return to streaming. A month later, their channel features the promotion of racism and bombing to increase their metrics.
