Beef star David Choe attempts to scrub Twitter of podcast clip in which he admits to “rapey behavior”
David Choe says that the repeatedly resurfacing segment on his defunct podcast, DVDASA, was a joke
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As Netflix’s buzzy new “Spy vs. Spy” riff Beef sits at the top of Netflix’s charts, star David Choe finds himself using copyright to clean the internet of a widely shared clip in which he admits to “rapey behavior.” After the clip hit Twitter last week, Motherboard reports that Choe, who plays Isaak, the cousin of Steve Yuen’s character on Beef, has used copyright takedowns to scrub the internet of the clip. As this clip has been a repeated source of controversy in Choe’s life, he’s made numerous statements apologizing for the episode, saying he made comments in edgelord jest and they did not reflect his actions.
The clip comes from a 2014 episode of Choe’s now-defunct podcast DVDASA (Double Vag, Double Anal, Sensitive Artist) entitled “Erection Quest,” which probably tells us everything we need to know about the type of humor the show dealt in. In the clip, Choe tells his co-host and adult film actor Asa Akira about the time he forced oral sex from a masseuse at a massage parlor.
“I’m getting turned on just telling this story,” he says. “I just take her hand and I put it on my dick. She just holds it there.”
“She’s in denial,” he continues. “So I go, ‘Can I help you?’ And she’s like, ‘All right, all right.’ So now I’m holding her hand around my dick, and I start jerking my dick off. I was like, ‘Spit on it.’ She’s like, ‘Uhh, no. I don’t wanna do that.’ I was like, ‘No, spit on my dick.’ She’s like, ‘No. This is crazy.’ She’s definitely not into it, but she’s not stopping it either. She won’t spit on it, so I was like, ‘Kiss it.’ She’s like ‘No, there’s all the oil.’”
“I take the back of her head and I push it down on my dick, and she doesn’t do it, and I go, ‘Open your mouth,’ and she does it, and then I start face-fucking her.”
“You’re basically telling us that you’re a rapist right now, and the only way to get your dick hard is rape,” Akira said.
“Yeah,” Choe said. “I just want to make it clear that I admit that that’s rapey behavior, but I’m not a rapist.”
The clip has already created controversy for Choe, who apologized on Instagram for the story in 2017.
He also apologized for the story in 2014, releasing a statement claiming the show is a “complete extension of [his] art.” He continued:
I never thought I’d wake up one late afternoon and hear myself called a rapist. It sucks. Especially because I am not one. I am not a rapist. I hate rapists, I think rapists should be raped and murdered.
I am an artist and a storyteller and I view my show DVDASA as a complete extension of my art.
If I am guilty of anything, it’s bad storytelling in the style of douche. Just like many of my paintings are often misinterpreted, the same goes with my show. The main objective of all of my podcasts is to challenge and provoke my friends and the co-stars on the show. We fuck with each other, entertain ourselves and laugh at each other. It’s a dark, tasteless, completely irreverent show where we fuck with everyone listening, but mostly ourselves. We create stories and tell tales. It’s not a news show. It’s not a representation of my reality. It’s not the place to come for reliable information about me or my life. It’s my version of reality, it’s art that sometimes offends people. I’m sorry if anyone believed that the stories were fact. They were not!
In a world full of horrible people, thank god for us.
While none of this is particularly a good look for the hit show, ending an apology for really grotesque comments about rape with “thank god for us” is certainly a choice. Unfortunately, the rest of the statement is pretty awful, too. Luckily, it seems like he has another chance to say he’s sorry now that he’s on a very popular television show.
[via Motherboard]
74 Comments
I’ve been exposed to Choe’s art and Choe as a personality since he started appearing in and collaborating with Giant Robot way back when, and while I’ve been entertained by his performance in Beef, he’s always rubbed me the wrong way. It’s not because I know he’s a rapist (I don’t), but because I’ve always seen him to be a gigantic asshole around whom I’d never want to be. His Beef character seems to be close to what he’s like in real life. He’s one of those people who seems to enjoy bragging about being an asshole, talking about getting in fights, doing illegal stuff, robbing people, going to jail, generally not giving a fuck, etc. He’s also one of those people we all know whose stories tend to sit on the border between “yeah, that sounds right” and “too fantastical to be true, but it makes him look badass.” That story about raping a masseuse? I really hope it’s not true (for the masseuse’s sake, not for Choe’s necessarily) and that it’s Choe telling tall tales because he thought it was badass. But pretty on-brand.
“Rapists should be raped” is not the way to convince people you are sincerely anti-rape.
WTF are you talking about?
“I hate rapists, I think rapists should be raped and murdered”From the fucking article I assumed we all read before commenting.
You relied to a person though and they said nothing of the sort
There was only one post, and I was carrying on conversation about the exact same subject (how Choe is clearly a fucking asshole and is clearly not anti-rape), so I replied rather than making a whole other post. In the time it took you to make your “WTF” post, you could have spent five seconds thinking about things and answered your own question.
Frankly every comment in here should have a “sent from my iphone”-style signature of “sent instead of spending five seconds thinking.”
I mean, it’s pretty clear IContainMultitudes was continuing the conversation with a reference to the subject matter. It’s okay to admit you misunderstood.
There’s zero logical reason to reply to the author by replying to a comment dumbfuck. This isn’t even debatable. You literally even get a” > Author” by leaving a top level comment.
Calm down.
You genuinely sound dumb as fuck.
It’s a gigantic asshole flag, that’s for sure.
I think the person you are replying to may have edited that sentiment out of their post. I used to make “prison bitch” jokes like everybody used to, but I have modified my feelings on the matter to “rapists should have their genitals stomped upon until they no longer function”–> I’m evolved!
They’re quoting Choe’s “apology.”
oh whoops, my bad, thought guy was replying to OP
everyone did not used to do that.
It’s in Choe’s statement
my bad brah
You’re still a bit of a waggler.
An eye for an eye and a . . . well, you know.
How would that work anyway? The ones carrying out the punishment would then themselves have to be punished. He’s basically saying he wants everyone in the world to be raped.
You’d really think that even a douchebro cretin like this, when scrambling (too little too late) to save his career, would spend the tiniest bit of time considering the douchebro aspects of his apology and maybe running them by someone he knows he isn’t a fucking vile human to see how they read. But you’d be wrong.
You get people who are already rapists to rape each other and then be raped in turn by the other rapists. Maybe use some kind of roster system.
“I hate people who commit genocide. They and every member of their nationality should be wiped out.”
Yeah, I’m not buying the whole the only way to stop a bad rapist is with a good rapist argument. That’s rapey NRA logic if you ask me.
This is probably the most spot-on assessment of Choe I’ve seen. I’ve also been aware of his work since those days, and at the time something about the whole “I don’t give a fuck” attitude appealed to me as an aspiring artist. But as I’ve grown up it’s definitely worn thin and lost its appeal and these days reads more like corny edgelord stuff.
Interesting. So it sounds like the character was not much a stretch for him
Awe. Poor guy. Yeah it probably sucks being called a rapist. It probably also sucks being, you know, raped.
At least he’s crafted a legendary worst conceivable non-apology apology.“It’s your fault you didn’t appreciate my “I raped someone” art, bro!”
I clicked through to the Motherboard story and his 2017 apology is thankfully much, much better. But, eh, still seems like a douche.
Sooo we’re admitting James Gunn is pedo now too right?
Unless a victim issues a statement, I believe this was him attempting “edgy,” but ugh…
Wow, what a great standard you have.
Guy admitted he raped someone, but nobody has stepped forward, so…
“hey, dredge up the worst memory of your life so that this internet asshole gets what’s coming to him! there might even be a trial, that includes your abject humiliation at the hands of a defense lawyer and then an acquittal or mistrial!”
Newsflash: Victims don’t tend to “issue statements.”
I may not have made my point as clear as it could have been, but you knew I meant if we heard word from a victim via any means; therefore, you simply resorted to being a reactionary, petty, querulous, childish, belligerent, quarrelsome, bed-wetting, feckless, discordant, petulant, peevish, stuffy, ineffectual, feckless, fart-huffing, inadequate, and impotent toad.
Damn. I wish I could change my username to Impotent Toad.
“but you knew I meant if we heard word from a victim via any means”
Still. Irrelevant. Why do we need to hear from the victim when the perpetrator ADMITTED TO DOING IT AND WE HAVE TAPE OF HIM ADMITTING TO DOING IT?When someone confesses, we don’t need someone to come forward.
Jesus, be less fucking stupid and less of a fucking moron and less of a condescending cunt. How about that?
“I may not have made my point as clear as it could have been, but you knew I meant if we heard word from a victim via any means”
Yeah, your point was that you don’t believe he did anything unless this anonymous person comes forward. Therefore, fuck you, you fucking asswipe.
Almost impossible at this point to meet that condition…a lot of women don’t come forward. I do think it sounds made up but the dude comes across like such a sleezebag that it’s not so far fetched he did assault somebody
One of the problems is he’s the source of the story. So was he lying about it the first time or is he lying about it now to cover it up? I’d hope it was fake but it also kind of sounds plausible.
Well regardless of your intentions before, Dave, you fucked up and Streisand’ed yourself by trying to scrub the internet of something.
His intention was to force this woman to suck his dick, so I don’t know why the fuck you’re giving his intentions a pass. Fuck you.
“It’s my version of reality, it’s art that sometimes offends people. I’m sorry if anyone believed that the stories were fact. They were not!”
If he is saying the encounter with the massage therapist never happened…then why isn’t he saying it never happened? The story is a description of things that were said and actions, not of impressions. If those things happened, there’s no way around it. And if he’s going to say something like that the massage parlor was actually a front for a brothel…most of those poor women are being abused or have been trafficked so it’s not the get-out-of-canceled card he might think it is.Regardless, the “thank god for us” line makes me really really really not like this person. Good casting!
Assuming it was really meant as a joke…what’s funny about that? Dafuq.
THIS. That’s not a humorous story. It’s the story of a rape. Fuck him.
“I take the back of her head and I push it down on my dick, and she doesn’t do it, and I go, ‘Open your mouth,’ and she does it, and then I start face-fucking her.”…….. hilarious.
He should have called his podcast The Aristocrats.
art!
…who said it was funny? It’s the attempt at being funny that makes something a joke, not the outcome.
“It’s not so much that he raped, it was the way he raped that made it funny.”
Don’t know ask James Gunn.
It’s dickhead edgelord asshole “humor” assuming it is made up. Yeah it’s not funny but these guys seem to think saying things that are really wrong is some funny taboo to break. And it always seems like the guys who like are probably the ones who would really do the things they claim are just a joke.
i’m old enough to remember when he was canceled for this back then.
So you’re at least 9? Did you go to Chuck E. Cheese for your birthday?
c’mon i wasn’t forming memories at 0, i’m 11. (and yeah i actually think i did spend my 11th birthday at chuck e cheese)
Animatronic handjobs are the best part of that place.Yes, I will be apologizing for this comment during my election campaign.
“hilarious”
https://medium.com/thelma-louise/sixty-one-percent-of-us-have-rape-fantasies-326b2689054fI have never had a single rape fantasy, but for some people it’s a thing. It’s WAY more common among women than I ever imagined. I started to hear women talk about it in our neighborhood drinking group. Freaked me the fuck out. I left the room, I don’t want to be anywhere NEAR that talk. Recipe for disaster. But hey, don’t kink shame. It’s not edgelord of more than half of people fantasize about it.
“But I was doing it ironically! Don’t you get it?”
Beef was a good show leave the dude alone.
No
Well I’m gonna leave him alone twice as hard so I cancel you out.
Ok you’ve changed my mind.
Sooo, he was hired as an actor on Beef AFTER they knew this?Yeah. I’m not gonna watch that. Sorry. I’m not giving him the benefit of the doubt, nor am I willing to excuse a lapse in judgement on the part of whoever was responsible for hiring him for that show.Fuck. All. Of. That.
Thanks for letting us know.
“I think rapists should be raped and murdered”Yikes. That isn’t the defense he thinks it is.
Who’s going to carry out that punishment knowing that they will be next?
In a world full of horrible people, thank god for us.the fuck
What is that hanging round his neck?
I’ve seen some terrible non-apologies before, but I think this is the first one O’ve seen that veers into self-congratulation at the end.
I think rapists should be raped and murdered.
“I hate rape so much, I want there to be more of it” is a pretty weird defense.
this guy sounds like a real piece of work, sort of a Joe Rogan/Howard Stern type but w/o Stern’s self-deprecating schtick.