"People gotta understand. You gotta attack, attack, attack."
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"Certain individuals you don't attack. You run from."
"I'm talking if I see you, and believe me I will. I'll put you down quickly."
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"Whatever game that I'm playing. Make sure you're not playing that game."
"What Dr. DisRespect's talking about, is some pain deliverance."
"And if you don't wanna approach me."
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"I'll be real serious with ya."
"If you wanna approach me. I will kill you immediately."
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Guy “DrDisrespect” Beahm wasn’t always the two-time champ,
"I'm the two-time 1993 1994 blockbuster video game champion in the online gaming community."
the face of Twitch, and
a man with self-proclaimed venomous gaming athleticism who kinda resembles an 80s style
action star.
He was born on March 10, 1982, and his life in video games started as, well
a joke.
"My gamertag was diarrhea panic, and I was online with a few buddies and they have ridiculous names as well."
Guy was a Varsity basketball player in university,
who spent his free time dominating in Halo and other first-person shooter games. He birthed
his now-heralded alter-ego “DrDisrespect” while playing Halo 2 on Xbox with friends.
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Back then, game developers still believe proximity comms were a good idea, so if you were close
to an enemy you could actively taunt them as you killed them.
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And it was in Halo 2 where that gravely, 80’s action-star voice was born. The doc started
his assault on the online gaming world by uploading short YouTube clips of him, well,
disrespecting his opponents.
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And like any top content creator, it didn’t
hurt that he was absolutely lethal at the games he was playing.
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It was on Jan. 5, 2010 that he first started posting to YouTube in conjunction with his
college roommates.
"Just as blessed to be around good friends that we always had a camera around us
you know we could just shoot at all times.
I could just cut it up, throw it up on YouTube. Boom. We got something."
He’d generally post gameplay footage and perform voice-over in his doctor
persona.
At the same time, he changed his Halo in-game username to “DrDisrespect” and that’s
where the lines between Guy Beahm and the doc began to blur.
"So I guess with the creation of that gamertag, came the creation of the character."
Perhaps maybe the most apt thing about his moniker is the word disrespect — because
that’s how he’s built his brand. The entire origin of his alter ego stemmed from him making
plays in-game in order to best embarrass his opponent.
The doctor was about disrespect from the beginning.
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On Jan.11, 2010 DrDisrespect began to up his
content creation game by creating his own YouTube channel.
"What Dr. DisRespect's talking about, is some pain deliverance.
He was playing Call of Duty:
Modern Warfare 3 at the time, and built his content around, well, flaming his opponents.
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He’d also “collaborate” with other YouTube personalities with larger followings by calling
them out and playing with them.
"I reached out to Mr360Games. Said "Hey check out my video, if you don't I'd cut you up."
You know one of those type of emails. He actually viewed it, liked it, and did a shout out in one of his
videos. That sort of jump started my run."
Dr.D immediately started to foster attention.
His antics were the intensification of the way the world looked at the male gamer stereotype
of the time and his flame-first approach was pretty hilarious.
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The Doc started creating content for a popular gaming channel called Machinima after his
first wave of popularity and it was then when his following started to balloon for the first time.
But, then, almost as quickly as his Youtube success began — DrDisrespect disappeared.
On Feb.22, 2011, his YouTube channel and the followers of his impeccable venomous video
game athleticism were left without the content they were hungry for.
Guy Beahm put down his second life as the doctor to fulfill dreams of his own — a
career in the game design industry.
"I didn't really know what was where I wanted to go. I just know I've always wanted to get into the
video game industry, the interactive entertainment industry. But like, I had no experience."
Beahm joined Sledgehammer Games on March. 16, 2011 — the game development company
responsible for multiple Call of Duty titles — as its community manager.
"I mean the only thing that really made sense to me, possibly become and community manager."
But even in
this new path in his life, it was the Doctor that built his name in the gaming community
to bolster his application at Sledgehammer.
"My experiences that I've gained in the creation of the Doctor character
from a social media perspective, in terms of growing the Twitter and the Facebook and how
to grow a YouTube channel, how to read feedback, engage with your fans your audience.
And at the same time, to be able to be involved in all of this, and understand video games.
It just made sense."
After some time as community manager, Beahm was promoted to level designer for Call of
Duty: Advanced Warfare, where he participated in the development of seven of the maps in
the game.
"I designed half the maps for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, multiplayer and also helped create a lot of the
high level pillars for the studio."
During his time at Sledgehammer guy created
a Justin.tv account and tried streaming a few times as the Doc.
Now, as you might imagine, when you’ve built a personality as more or less a a second version
of yourself like Guy Beahm did with DrDisrespect, it’s kind of a challenge to keep that guy
locked away.
So, in 2015 Guy Beahm quit his job at Sledgehammer, and unleashed Dr. Disrespect
"Hello!"
It began with some Youtube warnings about his return.
"I'm Dr. DisRespect, and as you know we've been away from the YouTube community for quite a while
now but, I'm here to tell you. I'm back, and I ain't messin around."
And then on March 21, 2016 — the man we’ve come to know as the Face of Twitch began streaming
full-time.
"The Doctor's been preparing himself, for his re entrance into the online gaming community."
Maybe more than any other streamer, Doc’s popularity skyrocketed with the development
of the Battle Royale format.
Doc was given early access to H1Z1, the zombie-themed Battle Royale that was the first of the genre
to make headway. And it’s here where Doc’s love for BRs began.
They were challenging, had enough down-time to support streaming and he could make his
signature bad-mouthing a big part of his play-style.
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"Cause I like to remind these little chubby cheek wannabe unathletic pigeon toed sprinting gamers
what the two-time's all about."
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While streaming H1Z1, Doc was averaging around 5- to 10 thousand viewers
at a time and his stream was growing rapidly.
But, if H1Z1 was the surprising-opener of DrDisrespect’s jumping into streaming celebration,
Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds was the main attraction.
It’s hard to understate the impact that PUBG had on the streaming landscape. BRs,
and specifically PUBG rewarded streamers with flashy highlights and clippable moments for
maximum social media content.
And to that extent, PUBG and DrDisrespect couldn’t be a better match.
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During the summer of 2017, Doc’s
average viewership reached as high as 30,000. He had acquired his nickname as “the face
of Twitch.” and received industry awards for both streamer of the year and gamer of the year.
The internet, Twitch, gaming and DrDisrespect were now synonymous.
"Let's climb the mountain, let's dominate. Violence, speed, and momentum. And guess what, we're at the
tippity top of the mountain. But we're really only half way up."
"Let's do it baby. Thank you. Thank you.
He dawned a thick moustache and dollar store sunglasses — and people
loved it.
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But the one day, Guy Beahm broke character.
"As you guys know I have a beautiful family. And a wife and kid.
I want to be transparent that I've been unfaithful."
His admission was of course devoid of the pompous charisma of the doctor and featured
bashfulness far-removed from the usual attitude that people have come to expect from
the Twitch channel.
"And I'm probably gonna be taking some time away. Time off."
So after his short frank admission of guilt. Dr. DisRespect left Twitch.
"That's it."
Dr. DisRespect has spent a lot of his time, as Twitch's darling.
but even at the height of his success he’s been the target of heavy scrutiny.
In the same way that he acts as a mirror image of the archetypical gamer, he’s also a symbol
of some of gaming’s most criticized characteristics.
His on-stream personality is hyper-masculine in nature, he’s been criticized for being
racially insensitive on multiple occasions and called offensive on countless others.
It’s often hard to get a read on The Doc, but despite his persona’s brash nature,
he’s not devoid of flashes of empathy, kindness and the familial community-building we see
from many top streamers.
"I've realized that I've provided an outlet for a lot of people that are dealing with a lot of hardships.
And, it makes me proud."
As 2018 began, more than a month had passed since the Doctor's
last stream and the Twitch’s hero was nowhere to be found.
Late January brought signs of Doc’s return and rumblings around social media and small
YouTube teaser marked his return for early February.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the Doc is coming back."
And then on Feb. 5, 2018 — DrDisrespect returned.
"I haven't played in a long time, I literally just woke up out of the water bed.
press the start streaming button, and here we are."
And he broke Twitch right in half, setting a new mark for concurrent viewership on an
individual’s Twitch channel at 388,000 viewers.
"You're looking at the Face of Twitch. And ladies and gentlemen the arena is wide open!"
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During that hallowed February, the Doc was
at full capacity, Guy Beahm was a thing of the past. He had gimmicks, he had flash and
it was all on level 100. He averaged a career high of more than 50,000 viewers at a time.
Since then he’s stayed steady around 20-25k. DrDisrespect has become an integral part of
the modern day Twitch ecosystem. He’s joined the likes of Shroud and Chad who’ve stayed
loyal to PUBG while the mainstream has shifted gears to Fortnite.
"I don't necessarily play it all the time I just haven't gotten into it enough yet but,
"I'd hate to play a guy who's as good as me, or as equal as me. And he has the same weapon as me
but guess what he has the gold weapon."
He’s a moniker for the old-guard of the video game world, and his loyalty and consistency has
produced a massive following.
"You know I get excited when the Doc looks like he's ready to actually murder somebody."
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His fame, impressive aim, ups and downs
aside. One thing that’s under-appreciated about DrDisrespect is his ability to juggle
two personalities day in and day out.
To his own admission, Guy Beahm and Dr Disrespect don’t share many personality traits.
Guy is very literally morphing into the doctor when he goes live on Twitch every day.
"Do you have a difficulty transitioning between yourself and the Doc. Cause you're in character for so long."
"And for so intense amount of time."
"Do you have trouble being like, okay now I'm just a guy, literally Guy"
"No, no we shut it down, we approach it as a business."
When we tune into his stream every day, we are witnessing an impressively long piece
of performance art.
That webcam flicks on, and it’s you and the screen and you better be entertaining,
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good at your game of choice
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and handle it all with calm and collected.
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At first glance DrDisrespect looks wild — just an aberration within the normal tame world
of Twitch.
"Ladies and gentlemen trickle in."
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