I had to do a double take there. Enough internet for today.
I hate social media overreactions destroying livelihoods as much as the next guy, but this is near the bottom of the list. Unlike other meltdown victims we’ve seen, he can afford to teach everyone a valuable lesson.
It’s not an overreaction. Pewpewdie has 53 million subscribers and his videos get 7 to 13 million views per day. In comparison, Sunday Night Football gets ~18 million viewers.
You may not watch him, and I don’t either. But make no mistake-- he is immensely popular.
@Bateau: I don’t get it-- did I make a pun accidentally or something?
No, I was just reading fast and read it as “circumcised” :^). My mind was playing tricks on me because of the subject matter.
Just for shock value and “teh lulz” PewDiePie retweeted a note stating he’d joined ISIS back in August. Twitter temporarily suspended his account back then because they were cracking down on ISIS messages. It was quickly cleared up, but the guy was lucky Disney didn’t drop him back then.
Well, if 2016/17 is any indication, I think the likely next step will be for PewDiePie to replace Mike Pence as Vice President.
I’ve had talks with my kids about the slow (not so slow, lately) creep of anti-Semitism (and other forms of racism and bigotry) into the media platforms (YouTube, Twitch, Snapchat) they primarily consume. Normalizing this stuff is not ok, and not-normalizing it is going to take a lot of effort given the current environment.
He’s probably a big hit with Sebastian Gorka’s kids though.
Especially since the Trump win, hate speech, racism and religious persecution have been steadily creeping into the mainstream via the news and social media, and there is a very real danger of people becoming desensitized to it. This is not OK, and it’s important for the media, advertisers and content providers to be vigilant and crack down on it when it happens.
PewDiePie is not stupid, he knew damn well he was crossing a line. He played with fire, and he got burned. It’ll sting for a little bit, but the guy has millions of followers, so he’s not going anywhere. As someone upthread mentioned, he’ll probably make a big donation to an organization dedicated to fighting racism and hate speech, lay low for a bit (if raking in standard YouTube ad rates on millions of daily viewers can be considered laying low) and return when the outrage has passed. Hopefully he’ll have learned an important lesson, as he is watched by millions of kids, and the worst thing we could possibly do as a society is desensitize our kids to such speech and actions.
That really isn’t his job though, to monitor what his audience watches. He can do whatever he wants to do on his channel, and he should be free to do so. Free speech and all that. Kids, adults, whoever, he doesn’t pick his audience, they are just who tunes in. He needs to be him, or else nobody would watch.
Like all forms of media censorship, it should be up to the parents to say, Hey, that isn’t cool, and you should have some perspective that he isn’t going to give you. This is why these words are bad, and not funny.
Of course, while he is free to joke about nazis and jews (for the lulz, he claims) it certainly means that the advertisers ain’t gonna have to be paying for that anymore, or that Youtube even has to host his videos for him, if they don’t want to.
But, to expand on this
This is actually like a youtube thing that is growing. You have channels and personalities like Filthyfrank and idubbz slinging around all sorts of slurs, and racking up millions of views. Ian (Idubbbz) is very upfront about his use of slurs for comedy, saying that context is key. For instance, going to a popular youtuber’s live show and getting a photo, and saying “say n**ger!” to the camera. This, of course was retaliation for her telling him to “die” on twitter, after she called his channel racist. which led to him uncovering that very same performer of that live show saying the n-word all over social media in her past, in very much not a comedic way. He uses the South Park defense of “Equal opportunity offender” which means nothing is off limits.
This is all being done, of course, for the lulz. To get a rise out of people, and it is easier than ever to get people offended, which… of course makes it more funny.
This is the same shit everyone did in high school. Kids like to troll people, to bait a reaction. They don’t know any better. Of course in my high school, trolling people was putting copies of playboy in their car in the parking lot, or smashing sex-ed materials into their lockers. Or calling your friends “gay” for hanging out with the girlfriend instead of the group. This is different, it is on the internet for the world to see.
Though, as many have said, the context is something that content creators expect the viewers to get automatically. If you have 12 year olds tuning and and you say the n-word or f-word all around, they won’t get the context. It is up to the parents or possibly school to provide that context.
The newest season of South Park kind of went into this with the whole “Skankhunt42” arc. People really like getting riled up. And while I don’t think there will be nuclear war with Sweden over their troll hunting, the internet loves to blow up.
And instances like this just feed the flames. Now his fans are going to over-react all over the internet about the very fair distancing of a corporation from a racist jokester. It is a crazy feedback loop.
I would like to mention that I in no way advocate what he did, or what the whole culture of trolls baiting reactions out of people are doing, but it is a real big thing now on youtube.
Is it simply Jews he rags on, or is it a South Park level of “everyone is fair game”?
I don’t really follow Pewdiepie, so I wouldn’t know. I gotta assume he is the “everyone is fair game” mindset, but who knows. Most of the ‘shock’ youtubers run like that. It is worse if that wasn’t the case. I can’t make fun of gay people or black people, but ragging on jews is ok? That is much worse.
Means different stuff when “millions of kids” are watching. There are actual laws that protect kids, particularly those under 18, who make up a sizable part of Pew’s audience. This is akin to:
Fuck yeah man Barney the Dinosaur can say whatever! Free speech, asshole!
Also, as a famous person, different rules apply. Something that you or I could get away with and everyone would shrug their shoulders over – not so for someone watched by millions.
Of kids.
And then the usual reminder that free speech is about the government blocking what you say, not the local drugstore, commercial website, neighbor’s house, whatever.
But it doesn’t though. He isn’t marketing to kids, his audience created itself around him. If Youtube’s algorithms put him that way, it is what it is. He isn’t illegally promoting gambling sites to minors, he is just saying stupid shit that makes 12 year olds laugh. This is the wild west of Youtube and the internet. I am sure we will see issues like this rise up more as Youtubers gain more popularity.
This isn’t like Toon Disney aired a cartoon where Mickey dropped the n-bomb casually a few times. It is the internet, and it is free and open. His videos don’t run on some kids channel, or played at schools. It is up to Youtube’s policies to age-gate and restrict videos. (Which they do) And it is the responsibilities of the parents to be knowledgeable about what their kids are watching and tell them not to watch Pewdiepie or any of the quasi-porn on youtube.
It isn’t up to an artist to decide who watches their art, but it is up to the people viewing it or hosting it to make a decision if it should be restricted.
I think you missed that part. He should be free to create whatever he wants on his channel, whether or not anyone will advertise or host it, is up to them.
In the end, this is Youtube’s call. Do they do enough to age gate or restrict their videos? Many smaller youtubers would say that they certainly have many issues getting videos monetized that big names like Pewdiepie don’t have trouble with. Clearly they have made the first move here by dropping his sponsored paid content.
I agree that parents own primary responsibility for what their kids watch. He can legally say whatever he wants, as long as it doesn’t incite violence, but when he crosses the line YouTube should stop monetizing his videos, and the advertisers should run away too.
Also I’ve got to imagine that hate speech violates the YouTube TOS somewhere. It doesn’t matter if he means it, or is actually a racist in his heart. The speech itself is harmful.
I’m just pointing out that your casual “why, this is akin to some 40 year old rando saying scary words on YouTube, like anyone else!” statement isn’t correct.
- lots of under 18 viewers
- huge audience
- “most famous” youtuber
He’s getting a shitload of bad press for this, so we’ll see what happens.
That’s like the argument that famous athletes have a responsibility to all the kids that look up to them not to beat their girlfriends or smoke heroin or whatever the latest athlete scandal is these days. Obviously they should act better, but that expectation really just doesn’t align to reality.
That picture of him guffawing next to a picture of two shirtless brown people holding up a “kill all jews” sign is pretty damning. As they used to say in Washington, “the optics are poor.”
“I’m not a role model. Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”
Charles Barkley
I am going to have to agree to disagree with you there Wumpus, I understand where you are coming from, as he does have a very large impressionable audience. I don’t think it is up to him to be “safe” for kids, his job is to created “Pewdiepie” content that gets views. He got where he was today with his immature humor, he wouldn’t be the same as he is now, and might not have the following he does now if he thought about being safe for his audience. It isn’t his job to be a role model, it would be nice if he was, but it isn’t his job to protect kids. That is the job of the parent.
That being all said, more evidence in the massive pile telling me not to watch any of his videos.
I can’t wait to see which cabinet seat Trump is going to give him
White supremacists start out young too.