Nickmercs Remains Unphased By Attempts To Cancel Him Over ‘Call Of Duty’ Controversy: “Rule Number One Is Do Not Miss, And You Whiffed”
Spencer Baculi
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In the opinion of Faze clan co-owner Nicholas “Nickmercs” Kolcheff, the recent attempts to cancel him over his personal belief that LGBT activist groups should “leave the kids alone” were by far some of “the corniest” and most toothless he had ever seen.
Nickmercs is ecstatic at seeing his own skin in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022), Activision Blizzard
The popular streamer first drew widespread ire on June 7th when, in response to a video depicting a physical altercation between pro- and anti-LGBT demonstrators outside of recent a Glendale, California school board meeting in which officials were set to vote on a district-wide proposal to formally recognize June as ‘Pride Month’, he opined that the former group “should leave little children alone. That’s the real issue.”
Archive Link Nicholas “Nickmercs” Kolcheff via Twitter
Nickmercs soon faced a torrent of public backlash for his comment, all of which eventually culminated in Activision Blizzard pulling his then-recently-released Call of Duty Operator Bundle – which included two different in-game skins modeled on the streamer himself – from the online stores for both Warzone and Modern Warfare II.
“Due to recent events, we have removed the “NICKMERCS Operator” bundle from the Modern Warfare II and Warzone store,” announced the series’ official Twitter account of this decision. “We are focused on celebrating PRIDE with our employees and our community.”
Archive Link Call of Duty via Twitter
Elaborating on his tweet on June 8th in his first livestream since its publication, Nickmercs explained, “I do not feel [anti-LGBT], I just simply feel that I want to be the one, and my wife wants to be the one, to speak with our child about stuff like that.”
“And that was the tweet,” he continued. “You can take the tweet if you want, and you can spin it, flip it, flop it, quote tweet it, you can put 10 paragraphs on top of it, you can do whatever to it to make you feel better if that’s what you want to do. But that was the tweet.”
However, Kolcheff would ultimate refuse to back down from his initial tweet, adding, “I didn’t mean to upset anybody, I know that I did. I’m not apologizing about the tweet because I don’t feel like it’s wrong.”
“I’m gonna stand by what I said,” he affirmed. “I’m not gonna delete the tweet. I just want to make sure everybody understands the point I was trying to make by tweeting my response.”
Nicholas “Nickmercs” Kolcheff checks out his bundle in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022), Activision Blizzard
Reflecting on the situation on June 19th in his first livestream since the controversy began, Kolcheff asserted [Time Stamp: 00:37:00 “I feel like a lot of people are in the same boat as me man. We’re just confused. Things are moving super quick in some of these areas and we just want to slow it down and kind of get a better understanding of like, what the f–k we are doing as a people. The decisions that we’re making. Just slow it down. I think that’s where we’re at.”
Met with a message of support from a gay individual, the streamer would then clarify, “Hey, if you’re gay, you don’t have no problem here man. I’ll f–k with you man. And I support you. Chill, don’t let them tell you that I don’t. That’s not what I said. I got zero problem with you man.”
Nicholas “Nickmercs” Kolcheff shows off the main skin from his bundle in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022), Activision Blizzard
Eventually turning to the fallout of the incident itself, Kolcheff observed, “They really did try and come for me, man. They tried to change my ass up. They wanted me gone. Isn’t that crazy?”
“They shot and missed,” he continued. “That’s like rule number one in cancellation. It really is. If you’re really going to cancel somebody, you can not attempt and fail. God d—–t, you motherf—ers, that just made it so much worse for you.”
A player scopes up in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022), Activision Blizzard
“You can’t do that,” Nickmercs then laughed. “Rule number one is ‘Do not miss’, and you whiffed. You air balled. That was the corniest attempt to cancel f—ing anybody I have ever seen. For saying leave children alone. Come on man.”
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