Come on, surely we’re not just letting Dr Disrespect come back to streaming

Over the last few weeks, Dr Disrespect has slowly been building back to a streaming comeback, less than two months after he admitted to inappropriately messaging a minor on Twitch in 2017. First, it was images, then teaser posts, and, finally, a rapid-fire assault on social media aimed at everyone who spoke out against him.

The disgraced streamer, who last appeared on YouTube in late June, shared a two-minute video on X (formerly Twitter) on Sep. 6 that boiled down to one thing: He’s now returning.

My question is⁠—why? I understand the “why” behind Guy Beahm (the man behind the Dr Disrespect Prototype Scopes) wanting to make his return. Streaming and video content creation has been his career since as far back as 2010—when the Doc character was birthed behind several Call of Duty commentary videos. He would be leaving millions on the table if he walked away from his Champions Club fan community.

My question to the wider gaming world and the streaming fandoms littered across Twitch, YouTube, and Kick: Why are more people not opposing this comeback?

Okay, so Dr Disrespect hasn’t been publicly charged with anything. While slimy and disgusting by any measure of the imagination, his messaging of a younger streaming fan over Twitch Whispers (a now-defunct messaging application on the Amazon-owned site) hasn’t actually resulted in any legal action that we’re aware of today.

Allegedly, he did, however, know he was talking to a minor, according to a report from Rolling Stone shared when everything first broke in early July. The report claims he sent some of these messages⁠—which an ex-Twitch staffer described as “egregious” and “severe”⁠—after learning the girl was underage. The same report also claims he had “no problem” with her age. (Beahm described the 2017 Twitch messages as “leaning too much in the direction of being inappropriate” in a now-deleted apology.)

The bottom line is that Dr Disrespect “continued to send sexually graphic messages to a minor he knew to be underage,” according to the Rolling Stone.

That‘s not the kind of streamer we want in this entertainment space. A May 2020 study from Stacy Jo Dixon at Statista.com suggested three-quarters of Twitch’s active app users in the U.S. were in their teens and twenties. The same viewership study had streaming users under 19 years old at closer to 37.8 percent. Then, over on Dr Disrespect’s most recent video site of choice YouTube (where he’s now demonetized), 9.29 percent of all video watchers are 18 or younger. Even if they never directly come in contact with the 42-year-old entertainer while watching, it’s concerning that any younger viewers could find themselves exposed to a streamer who has admitted to sending messages to a girl that were “sometimes bordering on inappropriate.”

From some of his early messaging pre-September comeback too, it looks like the Doc is going to burst back into the scene leaning far further into an alt-right ideology; he’s already lambasted other streamers last week, poked fun at X users with pronouns in their bios in early August, and then last month called someone who implied he was a pedophile a “little brainwashed woke boy.”

I don’t know about you, but so far that’s all been fairly repulsive and it feels like it’s just the beginning of whatever rerun campaign the Two-Time’s cooked up while he was busy “vacationing”—his words, no one else’s⁠—after the controversy exploded publicly in June.

Everyone knows the Doc’s first big stream back (wherever it happens) will draw mega numbers. Some will watch out of morbid curiosity, while others will happily pretend nothing happened. Disappointingly, some might even actively support him, which would shake my faith in streaming ever being a safe space.

No matter how big Dr Disrespect’s return is this week, though, let’s just hope everyone comes to their senses sooner rather than later and turns their back on this streamer.