You can’t really trust famous people. I know this because you can’t really trust people, and famous people are just people but with adoring fans, piles of money, and the very concept of consequences expunged from existence. Everything that’s been happening this week with Dr DisRespect has reminded me, amongst other things, ofan article my colleague Eric Switzer wrote about Jirard the Completionist.
While the accusations levied at Jirard (not donating the $600,000 earned during a charity stream) andthe sexting of an underage girl that Dr DisRespect has admitted toare very different in a variety of ways, they share one distinct similarity - they resulted in the removal of the content creator from a video game. As Eric writes, it’s a lesson that should have been learned a while ago to not add real people to games.
Dr DisRespect’s Sponsors Are All Dropping Him
Aside from the immersion breaking, tacky feeling of trying to glom onto someone else’s fame in the hopes of ensnaring some of their fans, it leaves studios open to situations like this.NBA 2K24, the game with Dr DisRespect’s cameo, has nowhere to go. Everyone else is dropping him,including his own studio, as he flat out admitted to inappropriate conversations with a minor.
Reports have even emerged since that he was made aware of the girl’s age and was unphased by it. It leaves games looking a little foolish, sheepishly reminding everyone that they tried to soak up Dr DisRespect’s fame and now have to untangle themselves from this mess, but it’s the only thing you can do, right? Right?
It seems not. People tend to treat the expression ‘innocent until proven guilty’ as flexible. The bar for what constitutes ‘proven’ tends to raise or lower depending on whether you like or agree with the political sentiments of the person at the centre of it. So when severalTwitchsources confirmed Dr DisRespect was let go for sexting a minor, some considered that proof, and others felt he was worthy of the benefit of the doubt - especially after Dr DisRespect initially denied these claims.
However, three days later, he went back on his denials and admitted that he did in fact have inappropriate conversations with an “individual minor”. Thus he was no longer innocent until proven guilty, but just proven guilty. A full confession is the highest level of proof you can achieve. But for some, it’s not enough.
As I wrote about recently,many anti-woke gaming influencers feel this could be “locker room” talkand that admitting he was inappropriate with a minor does not necessarily make him guilty of being inappropriate with a minor. But now, rival streaming platformKickhas also emerged asthe only company to stand behind Dr DisRespect.
Kick Is Giving Dr DisRespect A Safe Haven
Having been removed from Twitch when the company discovered his actions in 2020, Dr DisRespect moved toYouTube. In the wake of everything, YouTube seized his channel. So if he wants to stream now, the only credible place is Kick, who are clearly banking on enough people either believing that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ stretches so far that it goes beyond a full confession and requires full access to the chat logs, which will then be minimised and/or dismissed as fake news if they ever are revealed.
It’s not particularly surprising that Kick is keen to platform Dr DisRespect. Its entire business model is built around controversy, fromtargeting figures with multiple Twitch bans like xQc, Adin Ross, andAmouranth, to most notably, the time IcePoseidon hired an escort live on stream with the intent of streaming sex acts between her and his friends, only for her to leave when a text message notified her of the set up, and IcePoseidon’s crew physically blocked her from leaving. A Kick co-founder was in the chat throughout this incident and did not intervene.
When Ross joined Kick, he told his viewers they could say whatever they liked as there were “no terms of service”. That’s not quite true, but there are only two rules at Kick - no pornography, and no hate speech. The latter of those rules has not always been applied as stringently as it should in any case, but the main distinction there is that unlike Twitch, Kick allows for completely unregulated gambling.It has leaned heavily into courting controversy, and Dr DisRespect is the latest step.
That should set off alarm bells. What Dr DisRespect did are not the actions of an edgy provocateur. They’re not even part of the same naive and dangerous political talking pointsAdin Ross swallows from Andrew Tate then vomits up to his impressionable viewers. His actions are the actions of a predator. He admitted toknowingly grooming an underage girl, while he was 35 years old and married with a kid. He has not been cancelled by the woke agenda. This is criminal behaviour.
Kick should consider its next move very carefully. There is some temptation in being the destination for Dr DisRespect to crash land in, and he will likely cling to some of his audience, especially if he leans harder into the idea that he has been unfairly targeted and cancelled. But once you become a safe haven for predators like this, you can’t go back. We should not be allowing these people in our community, and Kick is the last place in gaming yet to close its door on Dr DisRespect. Hopefully it slams it shut before it’s too late.
