The US Army is losing the war in Discord

On Tuesday, chat app Discord announced an initiative to make the service more open and inclusive to communities beyond gaming. On Twitter, the U.S. Army’s esports account —which has its own professional team of gamers — made the mistake of responding to the news with “UwU,” followed by some heart emojis.

This marked the start of an onslaught against the Army group, which for some, occupies a morally gray area because it is seen as a method to recruit gamers for war through video games and cutesy internet speak. One top response to the Tweet, for instance, reads, “uwu pwease enwist and commit waw cwimes uwu.”

Since then, folks have started to try and speedrun how fast they can get banned from the Discord, in a troll-ish attempt to protest its existence and recruitment efforts. The most popular method, as showcased by Twitter user @Aurum_Corpus, involves linking the Wikipedia page for war crimes committed by the United States. But it’s not the only thing folks are using to bait bans as fast as possible; it seems that anti-army jokes, or memes in general, are fair game for folks trying to troll the Discord. Some outright reference the unfortunate “UwU” post that set all of this off.

The dunks on social media are endless. It must have gotten bad in the Discord, because as of this writing, the esports team — which has been around since 2018 — shut down access to the chat channels by new users. When you try and agree to the rules to get inside the Discord, nothing happens.

The U.S. Army Esports’ Discord’s “welcome” chat channel currently shows a message from an admin (with the display name UwU, no less) saying “Temporarily disabled. Thanks for the fun tonight!”

Image: Discord via Polygon

Reached for comment, the admins for the U.S. Army Discord did not respond in time for press. Given this state of affairs, whatever is the current world record for getting banned from the chat group won’t be toppled anytime soon.