Dr Disrespect went on vacation after he admitted to sending inappropriate messages to a minor in late June, and has not returned to YouTube since. Now that he’s preparing a polarising comeback, we’ve looked at the numbers to see the scale of the challenge ahead.
The self-proclaimed ‘face of Twitch’ was banned from the platform in June 2020, with no reason made public. He moved his streams over to YouTube, where many of his loyal viewers tuned in.
In the years that followed, he claimed the mystique around the ban cost him major sponsorship deals, such as Nike. And it was only in March 2024 that he revealed he had turned down an eye-watering $10 million deal to move over to KICK, Twitch’s biggest rival.
But it has all gone pear-shaped since then.
Dr Disrespect Twitch ban controversy explained
Dr Disrespect had multiple partnerships with major video games, and his own game studio, before the admission.
Dr Disrespect was accused by former Twitch staff of being banned from the platform after the discovery of inappropriate messages to a minor. After stating ‘no wrongdoing was acknowledged’ and reminding fans Twitch settled with him and paid the contract out in full, the Doc later released a statement accepting responsibility.
He said: “Were there Twitch whisper messages with an individual minor back in 2017? The answer is yes. Were there real intentions behind these messages, the answer is absolutely not. These were casual, mutual conversations that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate, but nothing more.
He was dropped by his own game studio Midnight Society, who have been working on the vertical battle royale game DEADROP. They terminated their relationship on June 24, saying: “We assumed his innocence and began speaking with parties involved. And in order to maintain our principles and standards as a studio and individuals, we needed to act.”
A number of streamers condemned his actions, including TimTheTatman, NICKMERCS, and others who collaborated with him over the years. He also lost deals with several companies, with both NBA 2K and Rogue Company removing him from their games.
Since then, Dr Disrespect has been teasing a comeback. At first, he posted a photo of himself waiting to make a move on a chessboard, and has since been changing his header on X/Twitter. The latest header had a note on there about his Twitch ban, sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
So, while he might be ready to return himself, how are fans feeling about it? There are some metrics we can go off.
Running the numbers on Dr Disrespect
YouTube
YouTube is the primary platform he was streaming on, where he has 4.61m subscribers at the time of writing. Though, since he revealed the truth behind his Twitch ban, that has been dropping steadily. On the day he tweeted the chess image, July 31, he lost 10,000 subscribers on that day alone according to Social Blade data.
In the last 30 days, he has bled almost 20,000 subscribers at a rate of 660 per day. That works out at just over 4,600 lost per week. And at its worst point during this period of controversy, over 70,000 walked away from his channel.
Social BladeSocial Blade shows at his worst point, Dr Disrespect lost up to 70,000 subscribers in a matter of days.
One thing to mention here as well is he has not streamed a single minute since going on vacation at the back end of June, causing a views drop of 68%. Whether or not new live streams would boost those numbers remains to be seen but it’s a trend he will want to break.
It’s also important to say that YouTube fully demonetized Dr Disrespect’s channel following the controversy.
X/Twitter
Doc has been using X/Twitter as his way of promoting a potential return so far. His teaser racked up 114,000 likes and nearly 53 million views, which is a huge amount of exposure for his account of 2.5 million followers.
Similarly to YouTube, he has stopped posting there – generally speaking – which makes it his most inactive period of 2024. Usually you would see him promoting streams and collaborations, etc. That has stopped for obvious reasons. From a followers standpoint, you can see below on the first Social Blade graph it’s the longest period of him losing followers in years. The second graph shows it’s the lowest number of tweets he has posted since July 2020.
Social BladeSocial Blade shows Dr Disrespect has experienced the longest period of losing followers in years following this scandal.
The most followers he lost in one month was June: over 12,000 according to this dataset. In July, that was slightly lower at over 8,000 and then he started tweeting again at the start of the month. There has been no sign of a strong comeback in the metrics, yet.
With his Twitter followers falling month on month, Dexerto original data research analysed the sentiment of posts across X, Reddit and other forums regarding Dr Disrespect over the last 12 months – to see how significant a moment this was for his brand.
As you can see, Doc has had a serious backlash on his hands since admitting to the reason behind his Twitch ban, after a long run of positive posts on social media from fans. On the week of highest engagement (when he put out a statement), there was 135% more negative than positive posts about the streamer.
Negative posts trend
Dexerto There was an enormous spike of negative mentions of Dr Disrespect between July 24-30, then it slowed down, and started to spike again when he teased a return.
Positive posts trend
DexertoThe positive posts trend line was strong for Dr Disrespect before he admitted to the allegations. Positive mentions have jumped up since he teased a comeback, but remain far lower than negative posts.
Sentiment can only be read based on what is being posted on social media (X, Reddit, forums). There may be many fans who absorbed the news but did not post about it and so will not show in the data.
What next for Dr Disrespect?
Instagram/Dr DisrespectDr Disrespect’s options are limited, but a comeback at this stage seems inevitable.
There are serious challenges associated to a return to streaming, especially with YouTube stopping his channel from making money after the scandal. Away from the financial side, viewership and a loss of popularity at this scale will be a difficult thing to overcome. But he is, apparently, determined.
In his last statement on his future, Doc sent a clear message in that regard. He said: “If you’re uncomfortable with this entire statement and think I’m a piece of sh*t, that’s fine. But I’m not f**king going anywhere. I’m not the same guy that made this mistake all those years ago. I’m taking an extended vacation with my family as mentioned on stream and I’m coming back with a heavy weight off my shoulders. They want me to disappear… yeah f**king right.”
Whatever he has planned – whether it is to use his YouTube channel again, do something on his own, or negotiate a deal with KICK – this has been a disastrous situation for Dr Disrespect’s status as an influencer. Not just the loss of followers, subscribers, and deals, but also the trust of partners and in some cases friends, who he would frequently stream with.
There is every chance he tries to push on beyond this controversy and return as a “villain”, as Asmongold said, but how much of his audience will stick around remains to be seen.