EDIT: Dr Disrespect has made a full statement regarding the ban.
Twitch abruptly permabanned one of its biggest names (Guy Beahm a.k.a. Dr Disrespect) from their platform back in 2020 without explanation. Four years later, two former Twitch employees have now spoken up, alleging that he was banned for sexting with a minor through the Twitch Whispers app and attempting to meet up with her at TwitchCon.
This came two years after a settled lawsuit between Twitch and Beahm, where neither party admitted to any wrongdoing, and his contract was paid.
Other notes and links:
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The Twitter post made by former Twitch employee, Cody Conners (@evoli)
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Esports journalist Rod “Slasher” Breslau (@slasher), who previously tweeted that he had been told by ‘credible sources’ about why Beahm was banned, but couldn’t say anything due to the sensitivity of the subject, has also corroborated what Cody Conners confirmed.
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The other former Twitch employee who spoke to the Verge asked to remain anonymous.
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Response from Dr Disrespect (@DrDisrespect) via Twitter denying any wrongdoing.
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Midnight Society (@12am) announcing on Twitter that they have cut all ties with Dr Disrespect following these allegations. This is an indie game studio that the Doc was a co-founder of.
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Turtle Beach have seemingly dropped their partnership with Dr Disrespect. All of his branded merch has been removed from their website.
Shocking the guy who was ‘playing’ a dumass ragelord ‘character’ turned out to be a POS in real life.
It’s important to be said that you have to be very careful when playing a satire character, because if you’re not you will just become the satire character. Larry the Cable Guy is not even from the south. If you’re doing something ironically or you like something ironically you have to make sure that it’s something that you’re okay with doing unironically or that you really take care to separate yourself from that thing in certain ways otherwise you will start to believe, like, and/or do those things unironically
As Kurt Vonnegut put it in Mother Night: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
Allegedly.
Edit 1: Downvotes for not jumping to a conclusion with no actual proof. Okey dokey.
Edit 2: I hadn’t seen his post on Twitter that was made around the same time as my comment.
Actual proof of what? That Dr. Disrespect sent private messages to a minor? I guess I would take him at his own word since he tweeted admitting it hours ago.
I hadn’t seen the post on Twitter, I don’t use Twitter. Looks like he posted that about an hour before I commented, so it’s not like you’d expect everyone in the world to have seen it.
Having read it I’ve obviously got new information and can update my opinion accordingly.
To be clear, though, he hadn’t made this statement until today, and so everyone until now was acting based on hearsay, not proof.
Were there twitch whisper messages with an individual minor back in 2017? The answer is yes. Were there real intentions behind these messages, the answer is absolutely not. These were casual, mutual conversations that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate, but nothing more.
Disgusting.
