The story of Dan Gheesling is a sad though ultimately predictable one. A Big Brother winner and former football coach, Gheesling more recently settled into a niche as a Twitch streamer in the orbit of beloved bald wisecracker Ryan “Northernlion” Letourneau. Things went more or less swimmingly for the better part of a decade until last month, when Gheesling shocked his fanbase—and, by extension, Letourneau’s—by participating in a US Army-sponsored boot camp broadcast for three days. Since that dalliance with military propaganda, Gheesling’s career has been in a nosedive.
As first observed by Mike Myzak, Gheesling’s average viewership has dropped precipitously in the past month, falling by a whopping 71.5%, from 1,079 concurrent viewers in September to just 308 in October, according to third-party analytics site Twitch Tracker. While Gheesling did take some time off following the controversy in September, he’s been consistent in October, streaming several hours per day for most of this month. Where Gheesling used to regularly play multiplayer games with Letourneau and a rotating cast of friends (in addition to streaming on his own), he’s since been cut loose from that crew. One can infer, then, that the viewership drop is a direct result of Gheesling’s decision to stream with the US Army.
Following the Army broadcast in September, numerous streamers decried Gheesling’s actions during a time when the US is waging a heinously unpopular war against Iran, and the general populace is more aware than ever of the horrors our country aids and abets in places like Gaza. While Letourneau initially did not address the matter (and even seems to have playfully popped into the Army stream’s chat early on before leaving after it became apparent What It Was), he weighed in with uncharacteristic emotion a few days after it concluded, calling the stream “unacceptable.”
“You probably didn’t have to read between the lines to know how I feel about the U.S. Army,” Letourneau, who is Canadian and generally espouses left-leaning political takes in between (or as part of) jokes, said during a September broadcast. “Of course I hate the US Army; they’re threatening to take over my country! They’re actively at war overseas, and with their own citizens.”
Gheesling, who also played an outsized role in helping organize a cruise that Letourneau ultimately pulled the plug on following fan backlash, half-apologized during a September broadcast for upsetting his community but refused to clarify his politics despite requests from fans to do so. And while he added that he believes people have “no idea” who he is if they think after all these years that his actions are going to attract “alt-right chuds,” he ended up briefly wading into the chat of Zack “Asmongold” Hoyt, Twitch’s cockroach king of alt-right chuds.
The takeaway remains the same as it has for years: If you’re a content creator, don’t hop in bed with the US Army! It’s not worth the money in the short term or the reputational damage in the long run. The Army will, however, keep attempting to prey on those in and around the world of video games. We can unfortunately count on that.
“We work in this insane industry,” Letourneau said during his September broadcast addressing the Gheesling situation. “I feel like I’m on Curb Your Enthusiasm, where the first domino is ‘I’m gonna play some [The Binding of Isaac],’ and then the big domino is like, I’m denouncing the United States Army? … The whole thing is absurd. But also it’s serious. It’s very real. And you know it’s real, because this is where they’re doing the marketing.”
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Nathan Grayson
