Ninja’s “it’s just a game” tweet is just thinly veiled gamer rage

02/26/2020 Opinion, Sports

Popular “Fortnite” streamer tries to justify why he has the self control of a 12 year-old.

Top Mixer streamer Ninja, aka Tyler Blevins, turned to Twitter to let everyone know his secret to acquiring that sweet victory royal. According to Blevins, the secret weapon that has allowed him to climb to the top is his unrelinquished gamer rage.

The line that caught the most attention in the tweet he posted Feb. 18.

He goes onto say that being okay with losing means that “you’ve lost twice.” Someone needs to tell Ninja to chill out. Encouraging kids to keep screaming into mics and banging their heads against the floor when they get one shot in 50v50 or when they can’t perform the perfect defensive build isn’t going to solve any problems.

Ninja has a big audience comprised of mostly younger viewers and he knows this. In 2018, Blevins decided he was going to stop swearing in his streams as he felt the responsibility of creating content for his younger audience. So he is well aware of the influence he has over the mob of squeakers that tune into his streams every day.

It’s also worth pointing out that not everyone is trying to become a professional competitive “Minecraft Hunger Games” player. There are people out there who just play casually to blow off steam, kill time, or spend time with friends.

No one is going to want to play a game with someone who has a “strong mindset” like Ninja suggests.  A person who screams and whines and claims stream sniping doesn’t have a “strong mindset” they’re just a sore loser.

Blevins ends the tweet with reminding everyone that “There’s always something to learn, and always room for improvement” which is all great but what he fails to realize is that you can still straighten your aim in a game without getting into a screaming match with a 7 year-old on stream.

You don’t need to have a mental breakdown and dye your hair blue when your entire squad gets dropped. Instead, maybe take a few breaths and try to analyze what went wrong and improve on those aspects of your game.

Ninja tends to take an opinion or argument that might have some value in it, and twist it around and make it his own very bad take. We’ve seen this before with his take on e sports vs. more traditional sports. He was quoted saying that esports is a lot more difficult than the NFL.

Of course playing a few rounds of “Apex Legends” isn’t as nearly as straining as training to be a professional NFL player, but what I think Ninja was trying to get across was that e sports can, emphasis on “can,” be straining in a different kind of way.

Jacob Laliberte is a competitive “Super Smash Bros. Melee” player nd could speak on some of the physical strains competitive gaming can take on a player.

“After playing ‘Melee’ for a while I started to get a pain in my wrist. That’s when I found out about RSI, Repetitive Strain Injury, from doing the same motions over and over again,” said Laliberte. “I also tend to grip my controller pretty hard while I’m playing which doesn’t help. People who play with a looser more relaxed grip tend to have less problems.”

Ninja’s exaggerated and bad takes do a lot more than just get his face plastered on every Youtube drama channel thumbnail. What he fails to consider is that he is the face of e sports and streaming, so he has a lot of responsibility not to just the kids that watch him as mentioned before, but also the entire streaming community.

Traditional media is becoming less and less relevant to the younger generations because of places like Youtube, Twitch and Netflix, so they are going to take any swing they can to discredit the digital creator. Ninja is presenting his head on a silver platter when he makes dumb public comments like this, no one is going to take him or streaming seriously.

So in close, I think Ninja needs to consider becoming an “Animal Crossing” streamer. Something more fit for his temper.

Comments

comments

About The Author

Courtney Ann Baclawski