The year 2018 has been huge for Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and he is looking to keep that momentum rolling into 2019.
Thanks to the explosion of popularity Fortnite received Ninja found himself with the biggest spotlight on Twitch and he has been adjusting to that ever since.
Ninja got his start on Twitch with Halo and H1Z1, where he found himself being quite a bit less wholesome than he is now with Fortnite. Even the early days of Fortnite he was far less reserved than he is now on stream.
Fast forward to today and Ninja no longer swears on his channel as all of his content is designed to be family-friendly, except for when he streams “Ninja After Dark” which is when he lightens the rules on his stream.
Ninja has been in the news a lot lately, most recently when he accused a player of stream sniping and got him banned. which caused an uproar in the Fortnite community with players either defending Ninja’s behavior or condemning it.
Epic Games released a statement saying Ninja’s report did not get a player banned but instead the person was trying to set Ninja up.
All of this has led to some Ninja viewers to constantly asking for the “Old Ninja” in his channel, whether it’s genuine or just a meme is up for debate, and it looked like he recently reached his breaking point.
A Reddit thread was made with his response to wanting the old him back that had more than 13,000 upvotes at the time of this writing.
He goes on a roughly one minute rant about how he is the same person but the only thing he does differently is not swearing after every death. He explicitly calls out Reddit for roasting him, possibly indicating he read through the threads.
Ninja argues his change in behavior is caused by maturing.
“The words that I used to say, and the gaming terms I used to say, they weren’t okay,” said Ninja in the clip. “I’ve matured.”
This probably won’t be the last time Ninja hears for viewers asking for the old Ninja back but now they have a reason for why he isn’t the exact same as he was.
The spotlight on Ninja is as large as it has ever been and any little mistake or minor blowup he does will get him dragged across social media. He has become somewhat of a pariah due to his blowup on Twitch with many people either loving or hating him with little wiggle room in between.
The responses to the Reddit thread show many viewers and players feel for him which is understandable. Most players are able to rage from the comfort of their desk or couch while Ninja is not able to do that anymore considering he has a lot of eyes on him at any given time.
One thing is for certain and that’s that the old Ninja doesn’t seem like he’ll be coming back any time soon, but that may not end up being a bad thing.