WHAT ARE YOUR OPINIONS ON THE RECENT PEWDIEPIE CONTRYVERSY?

Even if it is just a joke, not meant to be taken seriously, Disney is free to say' we don't want jokes like this associated with our brand.' That's fine. PewdiePie's audience isn't Disney's audience.

Is he racist? Hell if I know, I don't know the guy. But if you don't want to be called racist, maybe don't do something that could potentially get you labelled racist and then broadcast it to an audience of millions.

author=kentona
the underlying question that is being asked isn't 'is he anti-semetic?' or 'is he racist?', it's really 'should we ostracize him forever over this?'

it is also meaningless, but geared towards 'HOW SHOULD WE ACT TOWARDS HIM AND HIS WORKS NOW?!'

and think that is part of why you get the response/play down of 'it's a joke' responses. because ostracizing someone forever over this gives a gut-feel of being extreme.

Personally, for me, it just means that I continue to not-watch his videos, like I already don't.

True, I hadn't considered the "how should we act towards him/his work now" aspect, but i actually think that IS an important conversation. In general, sooner or later every person (and community) has to answer questions like that (well, they don't have to care about "how to respond to PDP", specifically)

Without further context, or at least framing the question like that, it's almost impossible to answer imo

who "we" is always matters -- you personally? your friends? the companies he was formerly working for? rmn? the public at large? and so on

I tend to approach it from the personal standpoint of "how should I act towards <person's work> now that <I feel the work has some Bad Things> or <person has done a Bad Thing>?" This is a lot easier to answer. I already don't watch his videos so...yup. Nothing changes here. I'd probably not be a fan of someone who likes his stuff and insists he did nothing wrong, but it's not like I'm gonna tell them to STOP following his work.

if nothing else, I consume filth on a regular basis, well aware that I'm just shoveling garbage into my mouth because Pure Media is nearly impossible to find. SO. in many - but not all - cases, I won't holler at someone for doing the same.

author=OldPat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwk1DogcPmUThis whole matter pisses me off to no end. I'm talking about how it was handled by the media.

unironic thanks for linking this, I hadn't seen any updates to "how has he responded?" and wow! That's hot off the presses

I think it's a great illustration of how focusing on "is he anti-semitic?" has gotten nowhere and taught him nothing of value. He keeps framing his portrayal in the media as a personal attack and yeah, i agree. Even in the brief looking at this, I agree that a lot of what he does/has said has been taken out of context and magnified, and his other accomplishments (like donating to charity) have been downplayed.

(side note -- so what if he donates to charity? doing something good doesn't cancel out not-so-great things someone has done. it is something that affects how i, personally, respond to someone though)

Some of the things he says are really good, like...

author=PDP
I'm sorry for the words that I used as I know they offended people and I admit that the joke itself went too far

author=PDP
I've definitely made mistakes like this before and it's always been a growing and learning experience for me

that's good. That's some good apology footwork (although I dislike emphasizing "offense" part but w/e, gotta start somewhere)

And he raises a really good question with this...

author=PDP
Is it fair for the hundreds of other people who worked on his show to see their work canned?

Will he follow his "I've learned from this and know I have consequences for what I do" up with some kind of appropriate action? that remains to be seen, but I don't think he will. Why?

well... what did he learn?

• The media will distort what he says and attack him no matter what he does. He talks at length about the ways the media has misrepresented him
• this was a personal attack
• if he hurts people's feelings enough or isn't careful with what he says, it will have financial consequences

I don't think that will motivate much change for him. whether actions or thoughts or whatever. So much of the coverage has focused on the Noun (is he an antisemite? is he a nazi?) and not much on the Verb (did he make jokes that were antisemitic?) that it's hard not to see it as a personal attack. Yeah, it is, and he's reacting as such. Which means he probably won't change how he thinks or acts.

He's emphasizing Feelings and Offense. He's sorry he said offensive things. He knows they were offensive. Any time people shift the focus onto what other people feel, the apology starts ringing hollow. Also, he keeps saying the blanket term of "offensive" when we're talking like, "invoked nazi imagery/phrases as a joke". That's a specific flavor of offensive, not a generic "sorry I offended people"

He puts the blame for the loss of his media ties on the wall street journal. Literally says they forced disney and youtube in a corner. I find this idea very dubious, but more importantly, it takes emphasis off the role he personally played by making Offensive Content(TM) in the first place. He makes some mention of the vague idea of "accountability", but not enough for me to be convinced he's actually sorry about anything.

For me this comes off as someone giving an apology mostly to get people off their ass, not someone admitting they did something wrong and will make sincere effort not to do it again. It doesn't help that he has several moments that come across as "lol i'm not taking this seriously" in the captions/videos.

it's easy to parrot the right lines, and eventually media coverage will find some new scandal to cover, thus allowing this to be a temporary setback for him. <-- this is pretty much my opinion on the PDP contraversy, to get a little more back to OP's question

bonus:

It's fine to not agree with someone's sense of humor, but calling me a fascist, how is that helping anyone? Some people have been saying that these jokes are normalizing hatred, regardless if that's true or not (spoilers: it's not), unless there's 53 million Nazis watching me for some reason, a personal attack like this, to portray me as anti-semetic, is doing no one a favor.

yeah, calling him a fascist doesn't help anyone. He dismisses the idea that "these jokes are normalizing hatred" but I want to re-emphasize that I think the bigger problem is these kinds of jokes give a convenient smokescreen to people who are actual fascists. And that smokescreen can be a foothold for something more in the right conditions

(I pulled quotes from an 11min video I assume most people reading this aren't going to watch. and hey, they're even out of context - go check out the vid if you want the full context. edit: WOW I ALMOST OBLITERATED THE FORMAT OF THIS POST. also I assume like 3 people will read them when they get this long.)

One of the things that I learned in high school was about the representation of people who are deemed 'heroes' to others and how they are put on a pedistal, and how easy it is to fall from that pedistal.

I did a lot of research on this particular project and what I learned was this: The more you appear to be someone who children look up to, the more you will be demonised for every little mistake you make. A cricketer caught smoking? Literally Hitler. A man who used drugs to score a win in a big event? Remove all his gains and strike his name from the history books. An entertainer sets up a racist 'joke'? Pull all support and throw his name to the four corners of the earth.

Quite frankly, the media do this often when it comes to people they deem as idols to not only children, but 'the common man'. They push it higher and make it out to be worse than it is, then invite the public to have their say based on a highly edited and misframed introduction as to what happened.

PDP's status as someone who is a youtuber and thus falls under the banner of 'children watch' (even if his content is definitely usually not for kids - it's a perception thing) means that he gets worse treatment than others who have done the same or similar things. Especially since he is in a position to influence peoples' views on various subjects.

Should PDP have made that video? Not really, no, but he couldn't have forseen that things would blow out in such a way, especially based on what does seem to be an experiment (I watched the video. I don't like judging things with only what I've been told is the 'truth'.) Disney reserves the right to remove their name from his, which is fair enough. They can't go slip-sliding when it comes to anti-Semetism. The media, though, blew it completely out of proportion, I think. Or, at the least, sensationalised it because he does have such a big following and people like to tear down the big guy.

What does this mean for me, personally? Not much. I don't watch his videos and I wouldn't have watched his shows either.

What does it mean for his fans? Some might leave. A lot will probably stay since they probably saw the video as it was initially intended - a prank experiment about how far people would go for money.

What does it mean for the media? Another juicy story they can refer back to in slow times or whenever PDP does anything even remotely news-worthy in the future.

What does it mean for the common man? Not much. Just another story to judge without the full facts if they just go by what the media reports. Just another normal bullshit day full of stories that whip people into a fervor in order to make them feel righteous about demonising someone who made a stupid mistake just because they happen to have made more money than most and maybe kids watch him and could be influenced by his views.


Honestly, there are actually people on youtube who spit all kinds of racist, fucked-up hate and they don't get a blink of an eye. Like I said, I watched the video and it's a whole 10 seconds of seeing what someone would do for $5. Could he have proven the point another way? Probably, but anti-Semitism, especially when it comes to the Holocaust, is such a huge no-no to support that seeing if someone would say such a thing for such a small amount of money was a pretty good test of the theory. Because it is such a huge flash-warning, don't do this shit yo, people gonna shank yo ass for it type thing.

PDP is pretty stupid in a lot of ways, but frankly I think that video did it's job in proving that to some people, money is worth much, much more than being perceived as politically correct or doing the right thing.

I think everyone here should watch this video. It might change your perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17lUTNdkOuk

One, all of these celebrities are all hypocrites anyway. Half of them are telling us how to live because they are paid to entertain. How can we know what they actually believe or feel? They just follow their handlers.

Two, we don't know these people, so why should we care if they're racist?

Three, what kinda stupid name is PewDiePie? Is he an infant? Anyone above the age 10 has a better nickname than this.

author=bulmabriefs144
I think everyone here should watch this video. It might change your perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17lUTNdkOuk

One, all of these celebrities are all hypocrites anyway. Half of them are telling us how to live because they are paid to entertain. How can we know what they actually believe or feel? They just follow their handlers.

Two, we don't know these people, so why should we care if they're racist?

Three, what kinda stupid name is PewDiePie? Is he an infant? Anyone above the age 10 has a better nickname than this.

I couldn't watch more than a few minutes of that video because of how whiny and condenscending he was.

EDIT:

Pewdiepie's joke was pretty dumb but I doubt he's actually anti-Semitic. I've never watched a video of his though so I can't really say.

Before reading the topic my opinion was "what the fuck's a pewdiepie". After reading it, I'm less interested in whether or not PDP's a racist/facist/isis terrorist/whatever than I am in a) why the hell Disney thought they could count on a let's player for Family Friendly Entertainment, and b) why the hell PDP thought he could tell a joke with more edge than a balloon while working in some way with Disney.

author=TangledLion
He was with maker before Disney bought it, he was kinda grandfathered in.

Ah, that makes more sense.

As a classic liberal I support his right to free speech, especially if it's speech I don't like.

As an educated gentleman and probably one of the few with a degree that isn't garbage in my age group, there is no correlation between telling a joke and whether or not you are racist. Jokes cannot be racist because jokes cannot have feelings about race. The idea they may be invented by racists is silly because considering racism is the epitome of stupidity I find it unlikely that a racist would ever be able to come up with a single "racist" joke we know today, since they are pretty fucking hilarious and that takes some degree of intellect.

As an American, it just shows me who not to trust and who my enemies are.

As a capitalist it tells me Disney caters to the whims of their audience, no matter how loathe they may be to do so.

I somehow doubt this will impact Pewdiepie as much as Totalbiscuits fallacious outrage impacted his own channel.