Oh, you were being serious?
Nah, man. PewDiePie earned the reaction.
I don’t think any reasonable observer (ie, not stormfront) actually thinks he’s a nazi sympathizer. That’s not what this is about-- it’s about normalizing hate speech.
Vox has an article going into more detail about why that’s dangerous. They explain really well how “ironic” racism as counterculture rebellion to shock the elders is not a new phenomenon, and that it swiftly leads to the real thing.
That is quite cynical. He already made his millions (and will make many more). I am pretty sure, eventhough I don’t know him, that he is significantly more pissed off/saddened about being portrayed as racist/nazi by media than about losing some deals.
Even if you are correct, and I would not assume you are, then why should I care? If you don’t want to get painted with that brush don’t repeatedly make Nazi jokes. It’s not that hard.
I’m not saying what he said should be illegal, but I sure as hell am ok with him getting shunned for it. It’s an easy concept. If you want to make an edgy joke about Nazis? Be damn sure how you do it. Make that joke for a reason. Make that joke have a purpose and point beyond taking advantage of poor people to make racist jokes for the lulz.
PDP was an annoying little shit before, and his behavior before and after does nothing to disabuse me of that opinion. Make repeated lazy racist/ nazi jokes and get painted with that label, and lose sponsorships? Boo hoo.
Are you on fucking drugs? He literally paid people to hold signs saying things like “Death to All Jews”. You don’t get to get fucking upset when someone calls you a Nazi when you are fucking putting up signs espousing their ideology, “joke” or no.
I guess I am just not a fan of the modern day witchhunts and daily 15 minutes of hate I see online whenever someone does something that offends someone somewhere. I actually agree that making jokes like that is stupid, but I would never call someone nazi or racist because of those. Would kinda need a bit more to go on than that.
No, I never used a drug in my life. I can recognize a bad taste joke though.
I agree that he’ll continue to make money. There’s no doubt about that. He can still monetize his videos on YouTube. He still has fans. Someone will eventually offer him another deal. That’s too big of an audience to ignore.
And yes, I’m sure he’s not cool with people thinking he’s actually a Nazi, or accusing him of being a racist. I’ve watched a few videos of his prior to this, read profile articles, and watched some interviews with him. He seemed to be a fairly intelligent, sensitive guy with (IMHO) terrible humor and tastes in general, but he also kept pretty grounded despite his fame and wealth. Apparently, that’s changed over the years.
All that said, he screwed up. And not in a small way. When you work for Disney, you should be aware that there will be subjects that can’t really be covered without running it past some company folks. That’s on him if he didn’t understand that.
Plus, just on a general level, using shock humor only works if you have something relevant to say about it. Like I said earlier comics and satirists long before PewDiePie have been treading in forbidden waters but they came out clean because they had a point to their transgressions. If you’re just using Nazi symbolism to spice up some other joke, you run the risk of people concentrating on the wrong thing.
I think most people can as well. But as others have pointed out, just because it was a “joke” doesn’t make it harmless. Doubly so, given the context of resurgent fascism today.
I agree with every word. Though I also still think him roasting WSJ was deserved.
I’m not a fan of witch hunts either. But this isn’t a one off event. It was a trend, and one that a company like Disney, understandably, wants nothing to do with. So far things seem to be working as they should be.
It wasn’t. The story was newsworthy, given the massive size of his audience and the fawningly positive reaction from literal nazis. The WSJ didn’t punch down.
I cannot read the original article since it is behind paywall, but if he isn’t straight up lying in the video, how can anyone defend the kind of slander and cherrypicking they did ?
Or stuff like this:
https://twitter.com/PhillyD/status/832308782252253184
Slander is untrue, and they didn’t say anything untrue. They didn’t detail his charity work because it wasn’t relevant to the story.
His defense is basically that he didn’t really mean it, he was just making jokes and the context proves that. And I basically believe him. And that isn’t the point.
Reading that wired article, he does have a history of making racist, sexist, and anti-semitic comments for the shock value. I mean, replacing a black actress with a picture of a gorilla is not exactly under the radar low-key racism. Is it covered by a blanket LOL JK? That’s the thrust of the article, and you need to make that decision for yourself.
For me personally, the gorilla thing is way beyond acceptable. That wasn’t even shock value so much as just being nasty.
As opposed to portraying Jews as needing to be killed? WSJ article was just a prank, brah! Lighten up!
Also, PDP is the media.
Ok guys, I agree some of his jokes are dumb and offensive, I don’t consider him racist nor nazi because of them. Played enough of a Devil’s advocate for the day. Now I have some white supremacists to shoot in Mafia 3.
It’s the type of humor you see all around lately – shouting TRIGGERED at everything for example. I don’t remember him being like that in the past.
Yes, it’s ironic racism as rebellion. That Vox article sums it up nicely.
Pretty good summary:
He starts by taking advantage of individuals who are poor and don’t speak English particularly well. So we’re STARTING from a place of abuse of privilege (in comedy terms he’s starting by punching down in fact I’d say he’s going so far as to be doing a pile driver down given he’s a multi-millionaire who is taking advantage of some Indian dudes who do dances for 5 bucks a pop). He then doubles down by using the ridiculously offense “Death to Jews” sign. Dissecting that he’s making fun of their language skills AND stating a hateful remark. His “punch line” is he pulls a face and laughs. From a comedy stand point that’s not a joke, that’s a rich white douche being a rich white douche. There is no satire here, there is no comedy, he’s making fun of poor people and using them to propagate hate.
Honestly, if he had just apologized and backed off at that point it probably would have been fine. We’ve all done stupid shit at times, and he has a CNN style 24 hour YouTube LOLZ cycle to fill, so stuff will happen.
But no, this asshat triples down.
I’m pretty sure if South Park was part of Disney people would freak the fuck out.