Notorious streamer and over-the-top internet personality Dr Disrespect is going after fellow content creator xQc for playing Bloons TD 6 in front of the latter’s huge Twitch audience. Dr Disrespect is a character played by Herschel “Guy” Beahm IV online that feeds into every aspect of the common video gamer stereotype. From lusting over headshots in shooter games to looking down on mobile games and anything else not considered hardcore enough, Mr. Disrespect has accrued quite an audience that loves to see his antics three times a week on stream. Beahm is now exclusively a YouTube streamer after Twitch kicked him off the platform for reasons that still haven’t been disclosed.
By contrast, Félix Lengyel (better known as xQc) is a former professional Overwatch player who has transitioned to becoming a Twitch variety streamer for Canadian eSports organization Luminosity Gaming. Much like Dr Disrespect, xQc is not without his controversies: he was suspended from Twitch and Twitch Rivals events just last month after he was caught stream sniping during a Fall Guys event, and other temporary bans have come when he shown lewd imagery on his stream. Regrettably for all parties involved, this includes one event in June when he broadcast a video of two gorillas mating.
Just after the stroke of midnight on Saturday morning, Dr Disrespect decided to disrespect the stream choices of xQc, tweeting out a video implying that he was wasting his time playing a casual game like Bloons TD 6 for such a massive audience. Developed by Ninja Kiwi, Bloons TD 6 is one of several games in the Bloons series, which includes a crossover with Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time. The games are also popular on Android devices, which might be part of the reason why they angered Dr Disrespect enough to record a video and post it to his two million Twitter followers.
For his part, xQc responded to the tweet as soon as his chat brought it to his attention (saved for posterity by through_a_game), taking a break from the tower defense action to mock the mustachioed gamer right back. Calling the doctor a “boomer,” he preceded to mock Disrespect’s elaborate fantasy presentation where he is the owner of a mythical neon arena. While the imagined space has been used to great effect in a feud with WWE’s The Undertaker earlier this year, there’s no denying that it stands in sharp contrast to the laid back setup that many of streaming’s most popular figures utilize.
It’s hard to know if Dr Disrespect‘s reaction to Bloons TD 6 is because of a genuine dislike of mobile games or just another in-character comedic exaggeration, but xQc’ response to the video was well-received. Much like his recent collaborator PewDiePie, Beahm is seemingly from a completely different generation of creators. He’s older than many of his fellow streamers and much older than the audiences on most streaming platforms. His shtick may have worked in the days when the Angry Video Game Nerd was still the best thing going, but many online are now much more likely to respond to authenticity in their creators over satirical rants.
