Dee Nguyen Banned From MTV’s the Challenge and What It Means Going Forward
If you did not see, MTV recently tweeted out that they have cut ties with Dee Nguyen due to her recent actions on Social Media.
Dee competed on three straight seasons of the Challenge: Season 33, 34, and the current one 35, finishing highly on each of the seasons, and winning War of the Worlds 2. She was the first Asian winner on the show in over twenty seasons, the first new female winner of the “30s”, and was quickly the most featured character on the current season, Total Madness. Dee had a whopping 60 confessionals throughout the first ten episodes of Total Madness, the most of any female, 14 more than the second most (Nany with 46).
This a massive moment for MTV because it sets a precedence that the Challenge felt comfortable announcing they were cutting Dee off, rather than silently doing so by never casting her again. They also felt a conscious need to with everything going in the world. It’s a more significant statement when you consider the magnitude of her character on the show. MTV might drastically alter the editing of this season going forward. On Dirty 30 after Camila’s racist tirade, she went from the female cast member with the most confessionals through 9 episodes, to only having eight confessionals for the remaining eight episodes, despite winning the season. A similar erasure might happen to Dee. MTV often doesn’t have the final editing of episodes completed until the week of the episode or even hours before.
What Did Dee Do To Get Cut Off
Above are some of the tweets/social media outbursts from Dee. She attempts to state that she’s been about Black Lives Matter since day one because she lost her virginity to a Black person. Dee overshares and fetishizes to gain clout with fans and an attempt to look woke. In reality, it’s the exact opposite; she exposes her ignorance by making light of people dying and protesters with reference to her sex life.
Bayleigh takes offense to it (for obvious reasons). In response, Dee attempts to shut down a strong black woman’s rightful opinion and then diminish her by noting that she is doing community service in Bayleigh’s city. Dee is one Giant Karen who donated 20 dollars to the Minnesota Freedom Fund and decided that she is now the universal voice when it comes to Black Lives Matter. Her actions were ignorant, and her overall actions on social media reflect an unstable person.
As a whole, Dee’s entire social media behavior has been off the rails. I’ll say this, I had/have a relationship with Dee via Direct Messages since War of the Worlds 1, where she’s always been open to fans, answered questions, did podcasts, and interviews. She has always been open to fans, especially those supporting her. Dee is someone who got initially cast for the Challenge because she was fit the worldwide theme, brought diversity (Asian + Australian), and more than anything, she was dirt cheap to cast. She was a penny stock who easily could have been the first boot. Then she gets partnered with Wes, does well, wins her second season, then leaps into the central figure role her third.
Once fan backlash began to hit her, she did not respond well. It did not help she had this small cult following of fans who enabled her and supported her through some of her poor choices and tweets. Then, you add that she came to visit America and got stuck here due to the COVID19 pandemic. She quit her job to be a full-time Challenge competitor and suddenly got stuck in Kansas City with Social Media being her full-time job.
Everything Dee has posted on social media represents that of an ignorant 15-year-old looking for clout and not fully grasping everything around her. Her feed is a constant stream of her smoking weed, posting lingerie pics, drinking wine, and attempt to cling onto whatever is hot for the minute. All those things, I individually support, but the fact is, she kept pushing the same content. She kept replying under Jay’s tweets in order to create a facade of a showmance and none of it came off as genuine. She tried to use these leisure activities to create a personality and be relatable. Except if that is all you’re doing, then you seem like a kid with no actual responsibilities or genuine thoughts. Her BLM posts never felt genuine because when tensions were at their highest, she was tweeting about not getting Verified on Twitter and how successful her OnlyFans is.
There is an utter lack of self-awareness that is terrifying. Swaggy C took a shot at Dee, possibly being addicted to cocaine when he went off on Dee in defense of Bayleigh.
He went IN on Dee. It’s not shocking to hear an MTV cast member does cocaine. It is honestly safer to assume a partying reality TV cast member does; cocaine use is a taboo casual activity where many people try it, they just don’t say it, ask your cool Aunt.
Hearing that she does it so casually is the jarring thing. Dee seems to be about the party life-styles, and her mental health is not all the way there. Wes even asked her to leave his house and city because her actions reflect him and his business. An even bigger testament to it being a solely Dee issue is Swaggy, and Bayleigh still adore Wes despite this all. On Wes’s Friends and Benefits Patreon, he sent an official message stating that Dee’s dismissal from his house/city is due to her actions, and the reason she hasn’t gotten ousted is that there are mental health issues there.
What MTV’s Decision To Cut Ties Means
I applaud The Challenge for their social media actions lately. MTV actively chose to not to Live Tweet during last week’s episode of the Challenge and focused on posting links in support of Black Lives Matter and Bail Funds.
Cutting off Dee in support of Black Lives Matter draws a clear line in the sand and might be a proactive means of telling other cast members that they either need to use their voices for good or get out of the way. However, some fans have to feel as though it’s a weird move by MTV to publicly announce they are severing ties via Twitter when they never did this for Camila, Kenny, or Evan. Or with CT, Nia, or Bear when it came to assault stuff.
Likewise, there are multiple former and current cast members with far more severe racial transgressions than Dee has had. Should they retroactively punish other cast members? Bananas and his cousin Vince bullied Cheyenne on Rivals 3 and referred to her as “Chantel” in a somewhat derogatory way.
Georgia is likely to be heavily featured the next season she’s on despite performing blackface years ago.
Dee needed to get cut off from the show because of the things she said, and because her mental health is not in a good place whatsoever. I wonder if MTV will continue to ban people based on their poor actions and actively, or this was a Dee only problem. I hope they get stricter because it would show they care. If not, it will seem like they individually decided to ban the girl and then use the BLM Movement to earn brownie points with fans.
The main thing is MTV needs to keep pushing forward. Last week the elimination was Wes vs. Bananas, and they didn’t promote it in favor of focusing on what matters in the real world. I know they have to focus on the show again soon, but that doesn’t mean they can’t keep consistent energy going forward. That’s all I can hope. Also, I hope Dee gets educated and mentally recovers. She lost her shot at being a mainstay in this franchise and is a cautionary tale for both MTV production and other cast members.
For those interested in ways they can educate themselves/help with everything going on in the world, here is a link on ways to help:
