On July 15, the DC Official Discord server (not to be confused with the DC Comics Discord server) launched, promising “exclusive content, community events, giveaways, and so much more.” The server was almost immediately overrun by people pretending to be Jesus or roleplaying as comic book characters—just maybe not the ones you’d expect. For hours, the DC Official Discord was full of people pretending to be characters from the controversial comic-turned-Amazon-Prime-series The Boys.
The DC Official Discord launched at around 11 a.m. ET on Monday, July 15, and it currently has nearly 10,000 members. One member, who goes by Shrimp Blimp, told Kotaku the roleplaying kicked off a few hours later and lasted until around 6 a.m. ET, after moderators repeatedly stated that roleplaying was banned. As one might expect from a newly opened Discord server, the chat was also peppered with racist, sexist, and homophobic language, edgy memes, and even an allegation of grooming, but its primary function, at least for a while, was as a space for The Boys cosplay.
Though there were certainly members pretending to be other fictional characters and real-life people, including one person claiming they were the Green Goblin who implored people to buy his Fortnite bundle, and another with the username OJ Simpson, by and large the DC Official Discord was a The Boys roleplay session for over 12 hours. This is at least somewhat appropriate considering the comic is published by DC, but was taken to the extreme by the server’s members. Dozens changed their names to characters from the series or variations of those characters (including “gay Homelander”) and sent messages in the chat as if they were actually those people.
A Billy Butcher roleplayer (played by Karl Urban in the show, but probably not the Discord) wrote out all their words with an obvious Cockney accent, while someone pretending to be Kimiko (a non-verbal character who communicates via her own version of sign language,played by Karen Fukuhara) sent only hand signal emojis in the chat. Someone pretending to be Frenchie, the character with a close relationship to Kimiko and the only one who can understand her signing, occasionally responded to her with hand signal emojis.
At one point, a Homelander roleplayer quoted a line from a recent episode from The Boys in which the evil-Superman-coded character demanded one of the other superheroes fellate the other. “Vought [the evil in-universe corporation tied to the superheroes] will now take control of this server. Do not worry, America. The Seven will safely moderate this server from here,” wrote another Homelander at 4:52 p.m. ET.
At around midnight ET, a moderator dropped a message in the general chat that read:
“Hi everyone!
-No inappropriate memes/jokes are allowed
-No RP or Parody accounts are allowed
- We’re muting/banning people who do not follow the rules
-Please notify the Mod Team of anything weird
Someone replied, “Half the server is getting banned.” Another member, who appeared to have been cosplaying Frenchie at one point, sent an approximation of the word “Frenchie” spelled out in American Sign Language along with the message, “we aren’t allowed to roleplay.”
Despite the warnings, the roleplaying continued—at 6 a.m. ET, a person pretending to be The Boys’ vice presidential candidate who can explode people’s heads with her mind, Victoria Neuman, asked “where’s Homelander?” A Butcher cosplayer replied, “with me,” while several other users claimed the flying hero “landed at home.” Several people changed their name to “Not Homelander” or “Not Billy Butcher” in an attempt to circumvent the anti-RP rule. Not Homelander had a profile pic of his actor, Anthony Starr in-character with a mustache Photoshopped onto his face.
The anti-RP message was shared around a dozen times by more than one moderator, the latest of which was sent at around 11 a.m. ET. As of the time of publication, the roleplaying has almost completely ceased, but many are unsurprised a DC-focused server would descend into chaos so swiftly. Kotaku reached out to an Official DC Discord moderator for comment.