Tragic Details About Disguised Toast
Some streamers start their careers with a solid idea of what they want to play and how they will play it. Many such content creators, like Dr Disrespect and Ninja, entertain their viewers with preternatural gaming skills and larger-than-life reactions. Disguised Toast is not like them.
Jeremy "Disguised Toast" Wang entered the streaming landscape as yet another faceless content creator — literally. Even though a lot of people tuned in for his "Hearthstone" videos, nobody knew what he looked or sounded like; they only recognized him by his logo (a piece of toast with sunglasses and a dandy mustache) and his encyclopedic "Hearthstone" knowledge. So when it came time to compete in an actual tournament, he used his logo as a mask. While he eventually abandoned that disguise for his real face, he never abandoned his fans, no matter what problems he faced. And he has faced many problems.
From Twitch and game bans to attacks on his character, and even dealing with other barriers long before his streaming career, Disguised Toast has seen his share of tragedy in his time. Not that he's let any of that get in the way of his career or smile, though.
He's Had Trouble Befriending People
Anyone who has tuned in to one of Disguised Toast's videos knows he's a very friendly guy. He always smiles and is easygoing, and he also frequently makes videos with his OfflineTV pals. But he wasn't always like this.
According to Disguised Toast, he had trouble making friends when starting high school, so he ate his lunches in the corner of a hallway. Alone. According to the streamer, his mother packed him sandwiches instead of more traditional Asian lunches. She was afraid the other students would mock him for Asian cuisine's unique smells. He just didn't know how to start making friends.
Disguised Toast went friendless for about a year. He didn't really start making any headway until sometime around the summer of 10th grade. Toast started making friends by, well, trying to make friends. Sometimes it's as simple as that. Also, he apparently Googled how to make conversation. Disguised Toast also had a few magic tricks up his sleeve to sweeten the deal. Word eventually spread, and he became known as "the guy who does magic." Not much of a title, but at least it attracted people who wanted to see him do tricks, which gave him an opportunity to make new friends. Plus, magic gave Toast a taste for performance, which he uses every day on stream.
The best tragedies in life can be the ones that you overcome and use to become a better you.
Disguised Toast Never Finished College
College is widely considered by society to be the default gateway to a well-paying and fulfilling job. Even Dr Disrespect and TimTheTatman graduated from college before stumbling into their current careers and passions. However, these stories are far from the norm. Many other streamers never graduated college, let alone attended. Disguised Toast sits somewhere in the middle.
Disguised Toast studied at the University of Waterloo and pursued a degree in Computer Science — coding to be specific. At the time, this decision made sense; he'd previously developed Flash games, one of which was so popular that a company purchased it for $1000. For Toast, every college summer was filled with coding internships. He produced apps for companies like the Royal Bank of Canada and the NFL. He even worked on "Farmville" for a while. But even Toast knew how to create fun games, he didn't know how to properly code them.
According to Toast, the basics of coding eluded him, especially when it came to program efficiency (i.e., Big O Notation). Toast dropped out of the Computer Science program and tried to get a degree in math. Unfortunately, he dove into the deep end of that program and quickly sank; fourth-year math was beyond him, despite his successful completion of third-year math. After Toast dropped out of that program, he settled for a three-year degree.
Even though Disguised Toast doesn't use his degree while streaming games like "Among Us," he is proud to say he has one.
He Once Lost a Match Over Sleep
"Hearthstone" is a game with a low bar of entry (it's free, after all) and a skill ceiling of almost infinite height. With the right cards and an unholy amount of luck, a player could win on their first turn. That's truly wild, but have you ever heard of a player losing before the match even starts?
Disguised Toast began his career making videos about "Hearthstone" cards and their overpowered interactions, which made him uniquely qualified to go far in "Hearthstone" tournaments. Even though he wasn't as popular with audiences back then, he competed in numerous competitions, including the ONOG Major Circuit at PAX East 2017. He brought a ton of life to the competition by destroying opponents with decks that were as effective as they were hilarious, and he progressed further than anyone dared imagine. But then he faced an opponent he couldn't defeat: sleepiness.
After making it to the Top 32, Disguised Toast's first match of the day would have been against Brian "Th3RaT" Courtade. Fans were on the edge of their seats, wondering which deck Disguised Toast would use. Then bad news hit the viewers like an 8/8 Sea Giant: Disguised Toast had been disqualified. What had he done wrong? According to Toast, he just overslept and failed to check in.
What makes this outcome so tragic is it was so mundane. He missed a chance at receiving part of a $10,000 prize pool over a few extra winks.
Blizzard Rewarded a Bug Report With a Ban
"Hearthstone" might be a fun, balanced game (or it once was, depending on who you ask), but it is not flawless. It is still a video game subject to the occasional bug. You might think Blizzard would reward (or at the very least, thank) players who uncover devastating glitches, but that's not always the case.
Since Disguised Toast started his content creation career with "Hearthstone" coverage, some fans would occasionally ask him to look into more insidious card combinations. During his stream on June 8, 2017, an audience member asked Toast to test what would happen if he used a Mirage Caller to copy a minion that had been buffed with Power Word: Glory. The result was a creature that was half-Mirage Caller, half-Murloc Tinyfin, all game-crashing bug.
When Disguised Toast recorded the glitch, he discovered that it locked the game, and the only way to "progress" was to close the client altogether. To make matters worse, Toast discovered that anyone who used the combination was awarded a win, and several other card combinations yielded similarly exploitative results. So Toast did what any honest player would do and filed a bug report. Instead of thanking him for his diligence, Blizzard suspended Toast's account for three days. The company's rationale? He streamed the bug, thus essentially publicizing it and teaching players how to pull it off.
Was Blizzard's decision unfair? Yes. Was it justified? Well, since some of Disguised Toast's viewers used the exploit after he unintentionally showed them how — maybe?
Disguised Toast Grew to Hate Hearthstone
Disguised Toast started as a "Hearthstone" card reviewer of sorts and eventually graduated to "Hearthstone" card wizard, but all things must fade eventually. When it came to disliking "Hearthstone" and Blizzard in general, Disguised Toast was ahead of the curve.
The event that started draining Toast's love of "Hearthstone" was, fittingly enough, when Blizzard suspended him for reporting that game-breaking bug. As time went on, Toast's opinion of the game steadily dropped. In July of 2019, Toast reportedly refused to reveal a card for the then-upcoming "Savior of Uldum" expansion, citing personal feelings towards "Hearthstone" and possible community backlash. One month later, Disguised Toast published a video in which he stated that Blizzard wasn't doing enough to support the game. However, some personal experiences also probably factored into the mix.
During a 2020 OfflineTV Podcast, Toast claimed that he once attended events held by Riot and then Blizzard back-to-back. Riot paid Toast to attend and even gave him $500 worth of bonus Uber credits, but in order to attend Blizzard's event, Toast needed to spend some of the Uber cash that Riot had given him. Toast also participated in the infamous #BoycottBlizzard controversy, during which fans decried Blizzard's decision to ban "Hearthstone" pro player Blitzchung for his statements on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Instead of boycotting "Hearthstone" and Blizzard, however Toast tried a different approach, offering to resume playing "Hearthstone" if the company unbanned Blitzchung.
The irony of Disguised Toast's disintegrating relationship with "Hearthstone?" Despite his opinions of the game, he thinks he's at his "most entertaining" when playing the game.
Disguised Toast's Twitter Addiction
Virtually everyone in the entertainment industry has a Twitter account. Disguised Toast, as a huge content creator, needs his Twitter account to stay in touch with over one million followers, advertise his latest videos, and wish his friends birthday greetings. However, Toast once wanted to quit the site for his own sanity.
In 2021, Disguised Toast lamented the state of his mental health, and he blamed Twitter. As he explained to fans, he was addicted to the attention he received whenever he communicated with people through Twitter. However, that is part of the price of doing business. Twitter is a vital component of the content creator/streamer lifestyle, and Toast admitted as much. Still, he wanted to find a healthier way to use the site, as it helped him stay up to date with goings-on in the world, even if most of it was just drama.
Twitter wasn't Disguised Toast's only vice back then. He felt just as addicted to Twitch and Reddit, and if he had any spare time, he would idly browse these three sites nearly constantly. He realized this was a problem and asked his fans how to deal with his addiction. One viewer suggested "delete Twitter," which could have meant either delete his account or the entire site.
While Toast has kept his account intact, he has apparently gotten the better of his addiction.
Twitch Made Him Famous, But He Thinks Nobody Should Start There
Everyone has to start somewhere, and since Twitch is such a popular streaming platform, many would-be streamers probably think that is the best place to begin. Disguised Toast disagrees, however, perhaps because of how poorly the site treated him in the past. In the past, Toast has claimed that anyone who begins their streaming career on Twitch will find it very difficult to earn any viewers due to the platform's poor discovery system. This might sound like Disguised Toast is turning his back on the platform that made him famous, but it sounds like Twitch turned its back on Toast first.
In 2019, Disguised Toast split with Twitch and signed an exclusivity deal with Facebook Gaming. At the time, he didn't regret swapping platforms, but only two years later, he found himself back at Twitch again. Fans were left wondering for a brief period as to why Toast left Twitch only to return after a brief stint, but he revealed that he left Twitch because Facebook offered way more money. According to Toast, Twitch's proposed contract was 30 times lower than Facebook's proposal and was even less than what he already earned through streaming. Toast's agent tried to negotiate a better deal, arguing that Disguised Toast was one of the biggest Asian content creators on a platform. Twitch representatives reportedly disagreed and claimed Faker was bigger, despite his less-frequent streaming schedule.
Disguised Toast was understandably insulted by Twitch's words and offers. Can anyone blame him for advising streamers to avoid Twitch, at least when starting out?
Disguised Toast's Rust drama
Disguised Toast has clout few people could dream of. He once used this influence to arrange a huge Twitch Rivals contest with $100,000 on the line. But, what should have been a fun competition ended in disaster, and everyone was to blame.
In 2022, Disguised Toast organized a Twitch Rivals "Rust" competition that pitted 40 North American streamers, led by Toast, against a team of 40 Spanish/Latin American streamers, led by Alexby11. The goal: to kill opposing players and collect the most dog tags. At first, the competition ran smoothly, but things quickly descended into controversy — and seemingly got a little rule-breaky.
Though the Spanish team got an early lead, they soon started throwing around accusations of cheating and favoritism. The North American team destroyed the Spanish base, which was against the rules, and Alexby11 also claimed the North American team crafted guns, grenades, and other weapons that should have been beyond their tech level. One of the biggest arguments for cheating was a clip of Disguised Toast thanking an admin after an MP5 spawned behind him. However, Toast claimed this conversation happened after the Spanish team forfeited. However, even though that team was so incensed by the event that they quit early, it was far from guiltless. North American participants and viewers accused many Spanish team members of hurling racist remarks, many of which were allegedly aimed at Disguised Toast.
Despite everything that happened, Disguised Toast has taken the event in stride and apparently hopes to organize a second Twitch Rivals "Rust" battle that is more fair and enjoyable. Fingers crossed!