The reaction to all of this is crazy and is showing the worst side of this whole outrage-media age.
This really isn’t about hate speech or racism, it’s all about making news with a “scandal” by an internet celebrity.
If people want to take such issues seriously and actually change something they’d stop wasting the time of everyone with such “news”.
What reaction, Disney and Google dropping him? That was inevitable and completely justified. They’re giant corporations and can’t afford the controversy.
http://archive.is/bpvkz/04215341e31d4a83a46da05539afb356a48441a6.jpg
Again, it’s not Disney that is being criticized - it’s the media pile on and spinning for other political purposes and petty jealousy. The guy made offensive jokes clearly for no other purpose other than he thought they were funny - and they’re not any different than what South Park does weekly - completely legit that companies wouldn’t want to be associated with that sort of humor or controversy, whether it’s from South Park or PDP, but the media mischaracterizing his actions and distorting what he did is still wrong.
Beyond his fanbase, has there been a widespread reaction?
The general sentiment amongst internet denizens seems to be along the lines of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”. I hope he got his money’s worth anyhow.
Yeah, I think that’s fair.
Disney isn’t being criticized because they dropped him.
Hating on the media is having a moment now, due to the politics of the day. The WSJ article was completely justified and not a hit piece. I’m not going to look at every article in your screenshot; I’m sure some of them were justified and some weren’t.
You could put together a similar screenshot for every story of any note for the last 10 years. That’s more an artifact of too many news outlets and not enough news than it is evidence of a dogpile.
And that’s just, like, your opinion, man. One with which many people happen to disagree.
Instead of just repeating that the WSJ video is terrible, why don’t you pick out a few points where he was taken out of context or misunderstood and post them. Then at least we’d have something to discuss.
[quote=“stusser, post:206, topic:75038”] Disney isn’t being criticized because they dropped him.
[/quote]
That’s true too. Dropping PDP like a hot potato was definitely the prudent decision since you don’t even have to consider the underlying merits of the situation - all that matters is that people will be angry and speak negatively about the company if you don’t.
I believe you can make jokes about anything, however, it requires knowledge for comedy that PDP currently lacks.
I don’t see what’s funny about this whole joke. Even if you remove the whole Nazi angle, paying poor people to do stupid stuff and then laughing at them doesn’t strike me as particularly humorous.
I do find “Rich asshole does something so he can laugh at poor people, blows up in his face” to be funny. There’s even a Eddie Murphy / Dan Aykroyd / Jamie Lee Curtis movie about it… :D
The entire bit was him trolling people. Trolling has become a very popular form of humor.
The WSJ sure trolled PewDiePie hard. Poor sucker totally fell for it too, and went on a ridiculous “the media is out to get me” rant.
That Polygon article does an excellent job of making this point too. Borat literally sings a song about murdering Jews all the time, but it is done in a way in which it doesn’t feel racist. As it is basically poking fun at how racist his character is, and how far along people will go before snapping their head saying… “he said what?”. The butt of those jokes is the character of Borat, or the bystanders caught up in it. That and all of the ridiculous characitures of the “Jews” as weird goblins laying eggs… just makes it all bizarre, which adds a dash unreal-ism in for flavor. Which is contrasted with how the Kazakstani (correct?) are very full of themselves, when we see how gross their country is right away. Obviously this is all one weird joke.
Basically, you need to spend a good half hour providing context and subtlety to make jokes about another race land correctly. So it is “Hahaha, that character says ridiculous things, what a character” and not “Wow, I am shocked at what was just said”
I wouldn’t agree that the Media was completely unfair to PDP, but this was a really juicy story, so you had a LOT of people and outlets not familiar with youtube or PDP, who probably rushed a little bit to report this story. Because, clearly, it was very newsworthy. But, the echo-chamber feedback loop of 'tubers blaming the media is just gross. Grow the fuck up and take the hit from the press like a man. You made the jokes, poorly, you get to live with the reaction.
I think a critical component of Sacha Baron Cohen, Louis C.K., Larry David, and Matt Stone getting free passes to make offensive jokes about Jews is the fact that they’re all Jews.
I guess. But really, that shouldn’t matter at all. You don’t get a free pass to be racist about your own race. It certainly adds to the depth of background that makes the racial jokes land if you are poking fun at yourself. But those comedians aren’t the only ones writing those jokes, there are teams of people writing those jokes. You can’t fall back on “But I am Jewish” to get away with hateful stuff.
Now this song is stuck in my head.
In an ideal world, or in the real world?
No you can’t, but it does improve the odds that what you’re doing is not actually hateful (at least in that way - it’s not as if Borat, for instance, is unproblematic in its treatment of Kazakhstan).
The joke-teller’s racial background has nothing to do with the audience’s reaction to the joke. Lot’s of people don’t even know Louis C.K. is Jewish. Besides, he tells homophobic jokes all the time and gets away with it because he’s funny, and his jokes say more about prejudice against gays than otherwise.
It may be true that a person of a particular background can write/tell a racist joke better because they know better than others the truth of what they’re saying. That said, a good satirist can go beyond that.