Ninja Deletes Controversial Adidas Tweet Following Backlash

Controversy is seemingly impossible to avoid these days, especially when you're as big as Tyler [...]

By Tyler Fischer

Controversy is seemingly impossible to avoid these days, especially when you're as big as Tyler "Ninja" Blevins, one of the world's biggest streamers who rose to prominence alongside the meteoric rise of Fortnite. Once the biggest streamer on Twitch, Ninja is now on Mixer and has been expanding his brand quite a bit recently. Part of this expansion has been his collaboration with Adidas, which sounds like it will be his first of many Adidas launches. For the first creative collaboration, Ninja and the clothing company have released limited edition Ninja-themed sneakers.

In the build-up to the launch of the sneakers, Ninja was -- as you would expect -- going hard on the promotion front. In this wave of promotion, Ninja posted an official promotional tweet for the shoes. At first glance, the tweet seems like normal promotional material. And depending on who you ask, it is, but others were quick to point out that the photo and language used made the tweet seem like a suicide tweet. How valid this critique is, well that's up to you, but Ninja was quick to pull the social media post once this interpretation surfaced and started making the rounds. Below, you can view fellow streamer ConnerEatsPlants explaining why the tweet was deleted:

Controversy aside, the launch was apparently a massive success. According the man himself, the shoes sold out in 40 minutes. It's unclear what this means in terms of sales or money made, but I suspect Adidas is just as happy about the collaboration as Ninja is.

Anyway, as always, feel free to leave a comment or two or three letting us know what you think. Was this tweet an oversight by Ninja and Adidas? Was Ninja right to pull it or did the Internet overreact?

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