Dungeon Crawler Carl is one of the few of the LitRPG genre that has transcended to the mainstream, and as it got its success, author Matt Dinniman tried to cancel Critical Drinker joining a leftist mob calling him an “edgelord douchebag.”
The LitRPG genre is a huge one on Amazon, catering to men’s progression fantasy readers who like to see their hero’s best quests, grow in experience points, and upgrade their stats to take on the next challenge. A lot of it is like reading a tabletop RPG adventure which is why the genre’s caught on like wildfire as both mainstream publishing and the tabletop gaming industries have circled the drain of identity politics, not providing fans what they wanted.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is one of the most popular of these, written by Matt Dinniman, following Carl, a former Coast Guard member and a cat-companion donut in a deadly, game-like dungeon after Earth is turned into a reality show for the entertainment of evil alien overlords. It’s become such a huge success it’s in the top ten of book sales for all of mainstream fantasy and even can be found in many bookstores, unlike most of the genre, which gets most of its readership through Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited.
As Dungeon Crawler Carl became a success, The Critical Drinker was brought in for a brief bit along with many celebrities to voice a character in the third installment of the audiobooks. He appears for around a minute, and as he’s got millions of followers for his excellent criticism of Hollywood movies, often calling out their woke agendas in diversity, equity, and inclusion, he gets attacked by the extreme left on a regular basis.
On Reddit, this is especially the case, as several Dungeon Crawler Carl fans showed how intolerant and un-diverse they are in throwing fits about the Drinker’s involvement in the cast and trying to cancel both him and the Dungeon Crawler Carl series as a result.
Instead of ignoring it, Dinniman did the standard thing a leftist does and threw Critical Drinker under the bus.
On Reddit, a discussion that was happening which turned negative and hostile and was deleted, to which a reader complained about the thread being deleted, also virtue signaling Drinker’s “toxic world view” to let the mods know he was one of them.
Dinniman chimed in:
Holy shit. Okay, so I rarely comment on this sort of thing. For the record, I didn't see the other thread in question at all, but if one of the mods removed it *for whatever reason* then I support their decision 100% because the mods are my people, and I support my people. That said, we don't generally delete threads outright unless there's a compelling reason. Criticism of me or the books or Jeff is not nor will it ever be a compelling reason. We're all big boys wearing our big boy panties, and we can take it. But if a thread turns into some sort of political fight, then we're going to lock it because that's not why any of us are here. There are plenty of places on Reddit and the internet as a whole where you can uselessly shriek at each other and not get even close to changing each others' minds about what you're trying to say.
The question on the Critical Drinker's role in book three has come up several times already. I've been asked about it point blank a few times at cons as well. I try to avoid talking politics, etc outside the book itself because I think it's dumb for artists to turn attention away from their art and to shine the spotlight upon themselves. Though I think if people actually read these books along with any of my other works, nothing about anything I'm about to say will come as a surprise.
I regret that my books have any association whatsoever with him. I hope one day to have his part in book three removed all together. It's a distraction, and the only edgelord douchebag I want people to think of when they read my books is the AI itself.
To expand slightly:
Sometime in early 2020 while we were prepping book three for audio, Jeff asked me if I'd like to get a guest voice for the drunk dwarf guy. He knew a popular youtube reviewer that was a Scottish guy whose persona was a drunk Scottish guy, and I said sure. I had no idea who he was, but I figured, some guy with (at the time) 500K subscribers or so could only help the series along. Back then, he was mostly known for his funny but sarcastic reviews of movies. He wasn't known as the person he is today. Clearly if this was asked of me today, I would decline.
While he keeps saying he doesn’t like to wade into politics, clearly, he’s lying as he signals how he despises The Critical Drinker because of political reasons. Dinniman doesn’t give any specific examples of what he’s found offensive about the Drinker, but name calls and bashes like a standard cancel pig leftist while trying to act morally superior.
This kind of cancel culture is still happening, as this only occurred within the last year, and one would think people like Dinniman would learn that it doesn’t go well when engaging in this kind of behavior, as most of his audience is likely white, male, and anti-woke given the genre he writes in.
Dungeon Crawler Carl remains a huge success, but it appears as it gets more mainstream love, Dinniman is more inclined to take the ticket and sell out over politics, like many who get into that position.
What do you think of Dungeon Crawler Carl author Matt Dinniman’s comments on The Critical Drinker? Leave a comment and let us know.
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Pathetic. I'm not the Drinker's biggest fan since he's very milquetoast and often misses woke propaganda in the things he reviews, but this author just self-reported to be a woke clown. He didn't mind using CD's popularity to sell his book, but now he tries to play the leftists who will never forgive him. To hell with him.
Thanks for the post, it helped me to make the decision to continue supporting the author and the book series. I didn't know anything about Dinniman before getting into DCC so I was concerned that he might be a part of the pedophilic conservative party in the US but it warms my heart that he's not.