Digital Drama: Tfue vs. Ninja - A great rivalry

Jessica Blevins
In the blue corner: Ninja. In the red corner: Tfue... Fight. | © Instagram/Jessica Blevins

The internet has become the world’s greatest and longest-running drama series, to which gamers & streamers are no exception. So in our ‘Digital Drama’ series, we will go in-depth on the biggest gaming-streaming dramas. Today, it's Tfue vs. Ninja.

There have been a number of great rivalries over the years: Pepsi vs. Cola. Ali vs Frazier. Britney Spears vs. Christina Aguilera. Justin Bieber vs. the world. But we have now reached the pinnacle of the biggest rivalry of them all:

Tyler "Ninja" Blevins vs. Turner "Tfue" Tenney

What started off as a battle to become the king of Fortnite, quickly got personal. Anyone who’s ever played Street Fighter or FIFA with their best friend-now-worst-enemy, knows the feeling: It's more than just a game.

Thus, the battle for Fortnite supremacy soon turned to Twitter, where all great modern stories originate.

Ninja tfue twitter
Deleted, but the internet never forgets. (Image credit: Twitter,@Ninja, @TTfue)

Tfue must be more confident in his fists rather than his twitter fingers though because he promptly challenged Ninja to a fight. Doesn’t he know that ninjas are masters of martial arts? He must not care, because the challenge to do fisticuffs in the ring, with a combined weight of 150kg and all kinds of digital athleticism, was further detailed on Tfue’s YouTube channel:

“I know he doesn’t like me. And I know that he’s been trying to tear me down forever, and I’m giving him the opportunity now to tear me down in the ring. I don’t care, UFC, MMA, whatever. The KSI-Logan Paul sh*t went down, it went well, like, why don’t we do it? Like, let’s run it, I’m not scared. If anything, he’s scared.”

Like any good shinobi, though, Ninja refuses unnecessary battle. So… no in-ring fighting. But is the beef done? No. This beef is still on medium-rare. We’re just getting started.

Enter: MrBeast

MrBeast must also be a practitioner of the peaceful arts, as he hosted a rock-paper-scissors charity tournament. Why battle with gloves on when you can do it barehanded without anyone getting hurt? We love it, and we think it’s better than digital athletes stepping into the ring for… well, let’s call them lackluster Gladiator bouts. Like all things MrBeast touches, the coronavirus-charity-event got some serious hype. As with most charity events, it was dependent on the eyes that are on it - in this case, streams and views. Thus, MrBeast had one rule for all participants. Allow us to paraphrase:

I know you love your views and attention, but: Do not stream the event on your personal channel. Redirect to the charity stream for maximum views and exposure.

Simple, right? Well, well, well: Enter Tfue. As we noticed, he is not a man of words but a man of action. Thus, the streamer promptly did what he was not supposed to do:

He streamed the YouTube charity event on his own Twitch channel.

Now, this is where things get spicy: While live-streaming the event, Tfue accidentally leaked MrBeast’s phone number and the invite code to MrBeast’s rock paper scissors tournament. Yes, the code that all participants and creators are using to communicate with each other. The internet being the internet, quickly ruined the tournament with people trying to join in, spamming, and ultimately freezing the back-end system. The tournament was immediately put on hold in order to attempt emergency salvation.

Ninja, ever the practitioner of the Art of War, hadn’t forgotten Tfue’s past challenge for fisticuffs though and, again, made use of his preferred choice of combat, the twitter fingers:

Ninja tweet
Image credit: Twitter, @Ninja

Now, Tfue’s tweeted response to that sounded nice at first, but we really had to read between the lines to find out that it wasn't: He called Ninja a cute-sounding word that’s a synonym for cat… yeah.

Cute cat
According to Tfue, Ninja is also a pussycat, only without the ‘cat’ (Image credit: Twitter, @PicsOfCuteCats)

Ninja stayed classy though and simply pointed out:

“We’re not supposed to be streaming this bro! The 50k you have can be directed to the main stream where people can donate to the charity :)”

We’re not sure if that smiley face at the end of the tweet defused the situation or triggered Tfue even more, but we’re guessing it’s the latter.

To be fair though, Ninja isn’t wrong. What he wrote is literally what MrBeast asked participants to do: Redirect your traffic to the actual charity stream, aka: Don’t be click-greedy.

Tfue’s mistake did potentially cost the charity some money, but that’s not what was on his mind. His mind was on Ninja. Amongst other things, Tfue called Ninja synonyms for a cat yet again, as well as busting open the dictionary to call him a synonym for the word butt and a word that rhymes with glitch.

After the stream debacle, Tfue stayed live to insult Ninja on his stream:

“If MrBeast is like: ‘you’re a [impressive insults]’, I’ll take it. Like, I deserve it. I’m a f’ing idiot. But, like Ninja shouldn’t be talking [synonym poop] because he’s an f’ing [cat-synonym] and he needs to keep his f’ing mouth shut.”

It didn’t stop there. Turner kept on going at Ninja live on stream, alternating between insults and wishing, yet again, that Ninja would fight him.

“He’s lucky this is rock-paper-scissors, because if this was a f’ing fight or something bro… I wish.”

Oh, this is fun. We’re getting Mike Tyson flashbacks over here. Only 30kg lighter, slower, less strong, less scary, less dangerous, and a couple of other minor differences.

Welcome to Family Feud

It’s not even that Ninja was the only one to call Turner out on his mistake. Many, many streamers and content creators called him out or roasted him. But… Fortnite rivalries can run deep and Tfue had his tunnel vision set on Tyler Blevins. He seemingly blamed Ninja calling out his mistake as the reason for… actually we don’t know what Tfue is blaming Ninja for. Tfue leaked the code and Ninja just pointed it out. Tfue saw himself targeted by Ninja though and that didn’t sit well with Mrs. Blevins who jumped to the defense of her man, saying that Turner was being selfish and trying to just attract viewers to his channel rather than helping selflessly.

Now if you’re thinking this is only missing a couple ingredients to be a straight-up telenovela… you’re not alone: Tfue’s brother happily agreed to be that missing ingredient and jumped in to make this a Blevins family vs. Tenney family beef.

Yes. He’s spinning this for his brother Turner to be the victim here. Gotta love family. We fail to see how Tfue streaming a YouTube event on his Twitch channel was supposed to help that YouTube event get the active viewers it needs, but… we’re also not family, so there’s that.

Now Jessica Blevins wasn’t about to lose this episode of Family Feud and fired right back:

Jessica blevins jack
Twitter @JessicaBlevins

Yes, that's right: Tfue is also, casually, engaged in a million-dollar lawsuit with the FaZe Clan, particularly with FaZe Banks, who used to be so close to Tfue that he had his named tattooed on his body. But that’s ancient Digital Drama history, you’re gonna have to watch the prequel of this Tfue controversy series to catch up on that:

Ninja vs Tfue - Summary:

Tfue accidentally leaks a stream code to blow up a charity event. Former Fortnite rival Ninja is one of many to point this out and it gets Tfue’s warrior blood boiling: Tfue challenges Ninja to yet another battle in the boxing ring, while Ninja’s wife believes that Tfue is doing all of this just to get attention and create revenue from it because he’s involved in the losing side of a million-dollar lawsuit.

We love it. It’s on cliffhanger right now, but we can’t wait for the sequel.

To find out how this episode of Digital Drama ends, check back soon. In the meantime, catch all your esports needs right here on EarlyGame.

Amidu Njiemoun

Amidu is a Brunel University graduate, and former published novel & screenplay writer turned gaming journalist and show host. He was a Senior Content Creator and Content Co-Lead at EarlyGame....