You don’t actually know that since you didn’t ask all, or even most, Jews what they think about Felix’s jokes - your “common sense generalization” might be true or not, but neither of us know. All I know is that the Jew in the above video would like non-Jews to stop getting offended on his behalf.
And have you heard of gallows humor? From what I heard lot of self-deprecating jokes were invented by Jews to better cope with the terrible events that were happening.
Whichever the case, none of it excuses the hack job WSJ did.
Speaking as the father of two Jewish teenagers, I can tell you that the Jews I know (family, friends, acquaintances, neighbors) don’t find “kill all the Jews” jokes funny, particularly when they come from people who evidence no understanding of the culture or history in question.
One YouTube guy being ok with it doesn’t give the joke carte blanche, you know?
Further, I’m not sure why the distinction between jokes made by a minority and jokes made about the minority is so hard to understand. Do Jews joke about Jews? Do African-Americans use the n-word? Neither of those things give regular old white dudes a pass to do them too.
Finally, if PDP (or anyone else) doesn’t want the WSJ writing articles about their “kill all the Jews” jokes, maybe don’t make them.
The polygon and vox articles summed it up quite well. It isn’t about any subject being inherently not funny and inappropriate-- it’s that pewdiepie is going for cheap shock laughs. Repeating 4chan memes to millions of subscribers isn’t funny. It’s lame. If you’re gonna to make a joke about the holocaust, it has goddamn better be a good joke.
I still don’t see why the WSJ’s article was a hack job. You keep repeating that without substantiating it in any way. Do you think repeating a lie over and over with no proof will convince anyone?
It really speaks for itself. No idea how anyone can defend this. I can’t read their whole article since it is behind the paywall, but its headline and the video are enough.
I believe you and I am not saying it does.
The issue is not about WSJ writing about PDP, the issue is how they write about him.
One day we witchhunt a guy for wearing a T-shirt someone doesn’t like, another for a joke we don’t like.
I think if PewDiePie were 100% NOT RACIST NOT RACIST OMG OMG, he would leave the holocaust jokes to H3H3 and find something else do be funny about.
Is anyone really 100% not racist? Probably not. (Maybe everybody has a little NAZI in him, even if he is Jewish.) But if he can’t see how his jokes are enabling people like the Daily Stormer or whatever, then he deserves what happened to him.
53 million subscribers is a lot of power. If it is starting to become a burden to him, then he should close his channel, and Disney actually did him a favor by dropping him.
And if one Jew somewhere feels bad because they’re bros, I don’t think it matters much.
Most popular children’s entertainer in the world makes Kill All the Jews jokes. Disney decides he’s not a great fit. Somehow this is a controversial shitstorm.
In his apology he blames Disney dropping him on the media attacking him – that’s the controversy. I think even with the clips fully in context you can understand why they might do that.
Like I said, even with the full context of the jokes and understanding PDP doesn’t really hate Jewish people, it still seems perfectly understandable and expected to me that Disney wouldn’t think he’s a great fit.
The thing is, the difference between ironic anti-semitism and actual anti-semitism to the viewer is exactly zero.
There are skilled comedians and writers who can pull off satirizing anti-semitism and/or racism. Louis CK and Borat spring immediately to mind. Pewdiepie is not one of those…at least not by the evidence presented in his videos. Saying “death to Jews” and admiring Hitler in his videos isn’t even in the same ballpark as satire. That’s just wanting to appeal to the 4channers and Stormfronters who are the bulk of your audience, and then falling back into lame “Anti-semitic? Me? Perish the thought! I was only joking!” excuses when you get called on it.
I mean in his response he says he understands why they dropped him. Anyway, my issue is not with Disney dropping him, that is their prerogative if they decide to do so. My issue has been with the antisemite labeling and reputation damaging attempted by WSJ.
Of course it backfired and PDP gained like half a million subscribers since the article came out.
Wow, really? I disagree with that. Watching PDP’s videos I can clearly recognize the heavy lacing of sarcasm and satire/irony over them. I suspect most people can. Of course you will argue his main audience are kids and they can’t.
I am not going to compare PDP to Louis CK because Louie and Bill Burr are my favourite comedians alive and PDP is nowhere near them, but anyway.
Most young people that go from barely scraping by to making millions and millions of dollars and being literally famous does not know how to handle it well. That goes for a lot of athletes, musicians, actors, and yes Youtube stars.
Not one bit of this situation is surprising to me (including his non-apology and going into defensive mode). We can go round and round in circles but at the end of the day he’s not going to lost much money over this and he will still have a rabid fanbase and that is what we get for having the internet and democratization of speech.
I hadn’t seen that video, but just watched it now and it seems perfectly fine. Did it contain anything whatsoever that was untrue?
He said and did all those things. His only defense is they were taken out of context and he was trying to be funny. The aforementioned JK LOL. Fair enough, and you need to decide if that’s OK yourself.
That lack of context doesn’t render the WSJ culpable. It wasn’t a media hit job because they neglected to discuss his charity work. Once the Daily Stormer branded themselves the “#1 Pewdiepie Fansite” it became legitimate news, and was reported responsibly.
Think it was recut to add more context. Stating that PDP’s videos featured “anti-Semitic commentary” is misleading though - he wasn’t commenting or editorializing. Other than that, the revised WSJ video seemed fine.
Meh, WSJ video seemed fine enough to me. Stupid twat with an audience of millions did something extra twatish, got called on it, then Trumpeted that media bias against him was unfair. Sad.
