Late last year, Twitch’s most popular wig-wearing angry man, Dr Disrespect, went on a hiatus after announcing that he’d been unfaithful to his wife. Inevitably, certain pockets of Twitch turned his indiscretion into a meme. Now, many of the emotes they used to make fun of him have disappeared.
Yesterday, people noticed that a series of so-called “CD” emotes disappeared from multiple streamers’ channels. When users tried to spam the emotes in chat, only the commands for them appeared, rather than the images.
A handful of streamers — including Forsen, whose notoriously “edgy” and often mean-spirited community spearheaded the meme effort — are surprised that it’s come to this, especially given Dr Disrespect’s reputation for talking shit about other streamers.
The origin of the “CD” emote series is a rabbit hole as imagined by M.C. Escher. It began with Forsen’s community remixing a pre-existing meme — “Omegalul,” a face often used to mock funny or dumb moments — to make fun of Dr Disrespect by spamming “D Omegalul C” in the wake of the controversy surrounding Dr Disrespect’s marital infidelity. The words spell “Doc.” For a while, that was the whole joke.
If you spam it a bunch, though, it starts to look like “Omegalul CD,” which led people to just start spamming “CD.” After that, people made emotes of images of Dr Disrespect with CDs where his trademark sunglasses would normally be. The trend then spread to other channels, with popular streamers like Sodapoppin, Asmongold and even Doc’s PUBG pal Shroud adding emotes that basically overlayed Doc’s features onto their faces.
This meme-volution took months, but Dr Disrespect has really only started to show that it’s gotten under his skin in the past couple weeks. While streaming PUBG last week, he confronted Shroud about his CD emote. “What does the CD stand for?” he asked Shroud, who mostly opted to evade a procession of similar questions.
Doc eventually got around to his point. “It’s like these little chubby-cheeked wannabes like to laugh and giggle behind the scenes, right? That’s what it stands for,” he said. Then he started laughing in a way that I think was supposed to be intimidating. “Now if I’m standing next to them in person, Shroud, these skinny, dying channels wouldn’t do a damn thing about it,” he said. “Just wanted to make that point, Shroud.”
Yesterday morning, Dr Disrespect tweeted out a similar message to all of his followers. Not long after, CD emotes disappeared from multiple streamers’ channels. People are assuming that Twitch removed them, but as of publishing the company had yet to reply to a request for comment.
The disappearance has sparked debate among Twitch streamers and viewers alike. Some view it as Twitch throwing its weight around for a streamer who, rather hypocritically, regularly makes fun of other streamers, as he most notoriously did in his feud with Tyler1.
Forsen is among them. “I was a bit surprised that he got that upset… when he’s know for trash-talking 90 per cent of the big streamers on this platform,” Forsen said during a stream today as his viewers spammed commands for no-longer-functioning emotes. “That was his thing.”
Others have pointed out that situations like this are pretty well covered in Twitch’s emote rules, which state that people should “use good judgement to avoid unauthorised uses of another person’s content and intellectual property” and advises against reproducing other people’s likenesses. Further, Twitch’s new community policy expressly forbids “hateful conduct” and harassment.
In light of that, Asmongold was a bit more understanding than Forsen and his community. “Everyone knew what these emotes were being used for,” he said on Twitter. “It was funny while it lasted but removing them is the right choice.”
Of course, there are still questions about how consistently Twitch is enforcing those rules, if that’s what’s happened here. Big streamers like Doc may be more or less guaranteed protection in cases like this, but what about small-timers — especially when they’re being targeted by bigger streamers? And what about other emotes that have been used in hateful contexts, such as Trihard? Twitch has a problem with global emotes being used for racist jokes, for example, but Twitch has yet to address the problem in a way that meaningfully cuts down on it.
As for Dr Disrespect, shortly after the emotes stopped working, he did this thing:
So yeah, there’s that, I guess.
Comments
22 responses to “Emotes Mocking Dr Disrespect Disappear From Twitch”
looks like the trolls are getting to him, which is ironic as the he consistently throws the hate on other channels. My personal opinion is that he has this coming. he’s not a role model, he’s just a straight up shit dude who deserves all the trolling that he’s getting.
Funniest of all was his little idol threat that people wouldn’t say it to his face. His reputation is already shit so I don’t think anybody would hold back throwing down some comments at him if they saw him in person.
You do know he is playing a character right? He is intentionally being obnoxious.
In the beginning when he was first starting out I believe that it was a character. But as time has gone by i honestly believe that he’s embodied that character to the point that there’s minimal difference between his twitch persona and who he is in real life.
If you watch him the in h3h3 podcast, he’s playing character but he’s still obnoxious even when he breaks character. Not only that but he cheated on his wife, that’s quintessential of a straight up shit dude. You can see it in multiple videos on youtube of when people troll him over his cheating, he’s not playing a character anymore, he’s genuinely a dick.
You are making a lot of huge assumptions there. Do you have personal experience with him? No. So you cant assume how he acts outside of his appearances on camera. Nor can you judge a person on one misstep.
I barely watch him. Nor am i interested in watching him. But it seems like you are a lot of people are conflating his on camera character with his real life personality based on little to no information and inflicting your own personal Bias to form an opinion.
It would be like saying Hugh Laurie is a huge A’Hole based on his character Dr. House.
I wouldn’t call it an assumption considering I’ve watched a decent amount of interviews and his streams. I enjoyed his stuff in the beginning but now he’s just devolved into this loser.
Incorrect, I can definitely judge him, him cheating is one hell of a misstep. Anybody can be judged, it’s just a matter of if that person actually cares or not. Nobody is free of judgement.
Dude, you’re attempting to lecture me on someone I’ve consistently watched while you yourself admit to know nothing about him. We’ve both interjected our bias into this, as we both have varying levels of knowledge about him, i.e. you know minimal while I know more considering I’ve consumed enough of his media.
Difference between Hugh Laurie and Guy Beahm, is that Hugh is genuinely a nice person in his interviews and public persona, while Guy is still a straight dick.
Feel free to have an opinion my dude, but you just admitted to having minimal education on this topic.
Him cheating is entirely an issue for him and his partner to deal with, noone else.
I don’t disagree with this, it is purely for him and his wife to discuss. But the moment he announced that in public he allowed that part of his life to be judged. Shitty behaviour is shitty behaviour. What I’m saying is the fact that he did it is a clear judge of who he is as a person.
I’m not going to take the puritanical stance and judge that aspect of his relationship, I don’t know enough about his and his wifes situation and I really don’t wish to. He quite frankly never should’ve said anything about it in public, the guys a bit of a tosser in general and doing that made him even more of one in my eyes personally.
Because no one has gone from a nobody to getting a fairly large amount of fame without there being a serious incident before. I am not even excusing it, just saying that you can’t extrapolate a potentially singular incident to be an example of how someone is day to day.
That being said, his having a cry about people taking the piss is a bit rich considering the last year has been him just shitting on everyone.
“…started laughing in a way that I think was supposed to be intimidating.”
Ye, that’s about right. I checked out the video… it’s a manbaby who’s apparently afraid to get as good as he gives. He certainly seems precious for a guy who goes by “Dr. Disrespect.” And yes, I would say that to his (utterly unintimidating) face.
Again. Just like above. He is playing a character. He is intentionally being obnoxious. You are literally getting twisted up over a fictional person.
There’s a point at which ‘it’s just a character’ stops being a valid excuse for being a dick. The people he’s a dick towards aren’t characters, and it stops being fiction when it involves having real effects on real people. ‘It’s just a character’ is his version of ‘it’s just a prank bro’ – an excuse to deflect consequence more than an appeal to artistic expression.
Yeah, but because it’s being done in a social setting, it doesn’t get away with the “artistic merit” of character acting. If I performed the same behaviors on the street or in a coffee shop towards others, I’d get my life beaten out of me by at least someone. Just cause it resembles television, doesn’t mean it’s the same entity. Also, there’s a lot of psychology involved in taking delight at negative social behavior. I’m not even going to bother with the etymology of “fictional” versus “played” though, then I’d be giving away too much about the Great Work…
There’s a difference between playing a character and hiding behind one, he stopped being a character the moment his personal feelings seeped in to the persona.
(Which isn’t always bad, we all remember him losing it when a fan said he loved him, it happens)
It’s also highly hypocritical to get upset with something and then take swings at folks with the safety net of his fictional character, he’s well within his right to ask or expect Twitch to remove the emote but he should’ve avoided bringing it up at all as the Doc and showing that it bothered him.
Sone of the folks he attracts will only be more motivated now.
See, I think the problem here is that the character might be fictional, but the getting emotes removed from twitch was not fictional. That’s probably why people are putting stock in the words of a “character”.
Its just manufactured drama between streamers. Because thats what gets you viewers these days.
Drama > anything else
The “it’s a character” defence is so worn thin I can see through it. The guy (in character or not) is glorifying being a shitty person. In fact, why do we only get stories about the scumbag streamers and not streamers who are genuinely good people and still manage to be thoroughly entertaining, Kotaku? I’d rather know when a streamer is doing a 12 hour charity stream (so I can contribute and/or just enjoy the show) than “this cretin makes racist emojis to butthurt that cretin” (or whatever “scandal” is on this week). Kotaku, you and other media outlets influence who poeple go check out. If I’d never seen twitch before but was curious, well now I’m probably off to see Dr Dickhead. Just to see what the fuss is over. How about you guys start covering more Streamers and You Tubers doing good deeds and arseholes less? Stop stroking the egos of morons and use your position and influence for positive outcomes?
I’m pretty sure Doc has a charity stream every month, last month donating like 17grand.
And theres a reason so many people watch him, hes extremely good at what he does, his streams are super high energy and entertaining for a lot of people. I can see that even tho i dont watch his streams.
i think you’re being a bit precious when you say he’s glorifying being a shitty person. Sure hes egotistic and shit talks a lot but he also wears a mullet wig and a flak jacket so you probably shouldnt take him THAT seriously. just a thought.
Thats some totally fair points you got there… I just have no respect (pun intended) or time for people who cheat on their partners. And there’s plenty of streamers out there who don’t need to talk shit about others as their schtick.
Because most kotaku readers dont watch or get twitch and outrage articles get more clicks than feel good articles.
Sadly I know you’re right there. Silly me with my ideals…
If your going to dish it out you have to take it to.
I love how Twitch streamers who hit number one actually think a) this is something big in real life and b) that they’ll be number one next week.
The ego surrounding some of them is ridiculous and the Twitch house of cards will tumble eventually. It’s only a matter of time before someone does something drastic ‘live’ that brings attention to the whole streaming thing and s@&t gets real legally for them and the whole platform.