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Dr Disrespect takes damage: Twitch stars chide streamer who admitted DMs with a minor

Alexandra Del Rosario, Los Angeles Times on

Published in Entertainment News

Gaming streamer Dr Disrespect is facing renewed backlash from the online creator community — this time for publicly admitting that he privately messaged a minor, which led to his abrupt ban from Twitch four years ago.

"Oh my god my boy, go take that break bro," Kai Cenat, currently one of the platform's most popular stars, said during a stream Tuesday. In a snippet shared online, Cenat can be seen unfollowing Dr Disrespect on X (formerly Twitter).

Less than a hour before, the 42-year-old streamer (real name Herschel "Guy" Beahm IV) tweeted the first version of a lengthy statement responding to a report by the Verge that detailed his June 2020 Twitch exit. The report, citing two former Twitch employees, alleged that Beahm had used the platform's now-defunct Whispers private messaging feature in 2017 to "exchange messages with a minor and initiate a conversation about meeting up at TwitchCon."

Before the report's publication, Beahm had denied the allegations by tweeting last week, "no wrongdoing was acknowledged and [Twitch] paid out the whole contract." Amid the allegations, game studio Midnight Society announced Monday that it had parted ways with its co-founder.

Amid the reports, the San Francisco 49ers, gaming headset company Turtle Beach and basketball game franchise "NBA 2K" have also reportedly cut ties with Beahm.

Then, on Tuesday, Beahm admitted exchanging messages with a minor in 2017, when he was 35.

 

"These were casual, mutual conversations that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate, but nothing more," he said. "Nothing illegal happened, no pictures were shared, no crimes were committed, I never even met the individual."

Beahm had edited the statement multiple times, according to X. In the second version, he did away with the word "minor" and swapped it with "individual." In the most recent version, he restored "minor." In all versions of his missive, Beahm asserted that he did not engage in criminal activity and that his feud with Twitch was a "civil dispute" that was "resolved by a settlement."

He continued: "Now, from a moral standpoint I'll absolutely take responsibility. I should have never entertained these conversations to begin with. That's on me. That's on me as an adult, a husband and a father."

As his message went viral, fellow streamers recoiled. In addition to Cenat, popular Twitch stars, including Valkyrae, Codemiko, Hasan Piker and MoistCr1TiKaL, condemned Beahm.

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