Big Brother’s Dan Gheesling, star of the Army’s Twitch propaganda, stunned by criticism

Shortly after being named the best winner in Big Brother history by whoever it was that voted, Dan Gheesling participated in U.S. Army propaganda disguised as a reality TV competition that was streamed live on Twitch over three days last week.

Dan won the competition, but he’s lost support of viewers and friends—especially as he pushes back against criticism.

The streamer Michael A. L. Fox, or MALF, explained his objection to Dan’s participation in “Field Tested” by writing, in part:

“Afterwards, Dan was able to take in all the negative feedback and setup a special livestream to clarify things and apologize. Unfortunately, the stream can be boiled down to ‘I’m sorry you felt that way.'”

Yep. “I regret making a decision that upset people in the community,” Dan said on Twitch, as he responded to the chat. “I don’t like disappointing people.” Reading a comment and then replying, Dan said, “That’s not real regret. Well, hey, that’s your judgment.”

My judgment is that I cannot believe Dan didn’t once think about the message he’d send by letting the Army use him and Twitch itself for its marketing at the same time the Army is under the command and control of a former Fox News host and a former Apprentice host who’ve, among other things, started an unnecessary war in Iran that’s cost $22 billion in weapons alone, and keep supporting a genocide in Palestine.

MALF also wrote:

“Dan has had a longstanding rule in his community to not discuss current events, including anything political. The hypocrisy to then take money from the military and force your pro-military beliefs on a chat that’s been conditioned to keep their political beliefs to themselves is highly disappointing.”

Kotaku reported that, online, Dan “is most famously known as the longtime friend and collaborator of beloved Canadian internet figure Ryan ‘Northernlion’ Letourneau.” Northernlion said on Twitch that:

“the stream that [Dan] did with the U.S. Army is just unacceptable. It would be unacceptable if it was just sponsored by the Army, but steeped, head to toe, in the imagery, and making it look so awesome—It’s so far beyond the bounds of what is acceptable to me.”

I won’t pretend to fully understand Twitch culture, so when Dan repeatedly called people “drive-by Andys,” I looked that up because I’d never heard that phrase. And apparently he just made it up during the live-stream—and labeling criticism that way didn’t help Dan’s case.

As lukielovely wrote on Bluesky, “I think there’s only one way Dan is going to get himself out of this one. Welcome… to my Twitch Career Funeral.”

In Dan’s second attempt to address it, he read a comment that said, “It is political. The U.S. Army works for the government,” to which Dan replied, “That’s your opinion.”

No, the Army being part of the U.S. government and under the control of politicians is pretty much the definition of a fact, Dan! How do we not know this at age 43?

Then Dan added, “I understand why you’re upset.” To see what people are upset about, watch or skim through this video, compiled by Dan’s now-former editor.

And here’s an excellent summary, with clips of Dan’s reactions and more:

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