Celebrity streamer insists that “I didn’t do anything wrong”
Deadrop developers Midnight Society have “terminated” their relationship with studio co-founder and celebrity streamer Herschel “Guy” Beahm, aka “Dr Disrespect”, over fresh allegations about the reasons for his infamous Twitch ban in 2020.
At the time of the ban, which came just a few months after Beahm and Twitch announced a two-year exclusivity contract, Twitch commented only that Beahm had been jettisoned for acting “in violation of our Community Guidelines”. Beahm himself described the move as “a total shock” in a later conversation with the Washington Post. In August 2021, he took Twitch to court over the ban, but the dispute was eventually settled with neither party admitting any wrongdoing.
Last week, however, former Twitch strategic partnerships account director Cody Conners alleged in a Xitter post that an unnamed person “got banned because [he] got caught sexting a minor in the then existing Twitch Whispers product. He was trying to meet up with her at TwitchCon. The powers that be could read in plain text. Case closed, gang.” (Twitch Whispers is a now-retired private 1-to-1 messaging service.) According to two anonymous former Twitch employees cited by the Verge in a subsequent investigation - one of whom worked on Twitch’s trust and safety team at the time of the ban - the unnamed person in question was Beahm.
Beahm hasn’t yet addressed these latest claims about his behaviour, beyond tweeting last week that “Listen, I’m obviously tied to legal obligations from the settlement with Twitch but I just need to say what I can say since this is the fucking internet. I didn’t do anything wrong, all this has been probed and settled, nothing illegal, no wrongdoing was found, and I was paid.”
Part of me wants to give some benefit of the doubt but it’s really difficult. Maybe he was trying to meet up at the nintendo panel for upcoming Super Smash Bros Ultimate and the Twitch admins read “I can’t wait to smash with you.”
If DrDisrespect has actually been wronged then we will find out eventually after a defamation suit, part of the reason they settled it last time might be because the mere allegations being released to the public could be harmful but that cat is out of the bag.
Why? Hasn’t his official statement said enough? I have no idea who this guy is. Is he that big?
Because I think mob justice is criminal. If Dr Disrespect did wrong then he did wrong, but we don’t know anything other than the fact that he has in fact spoken to a person who was under 18, which in itself is not a crime.
Twitch banned him 3 years after the supposed contact between the two, and attempted to go without paying out his contract termination until he started a lawsuit and Twitch settled it.
Defending a pedophile isn’t a good look, Guy.
I haven’t defended him, I’ve consistently said he might have committed a crime, though that would be unlikely given it was 7 years ago.
Labeling everyone you don’t like as a pedophile isn’t a good look.
Nah, sexually texting a minor isn’t a two sided thing. There is no justification for it. There is no ‘I’m not a pedophile’ about sexually texting a minor. The sexual texting a minor is the intent to do more. You don’t simply ‘play around’ sexually texting a minor.
Then don’t sexually text any minors. Very simple. Now that I’ve helped you sort out your odd unrelated moral dilema, do you have anything to say about the Doc?