WHAT ARE YOUR OPINIONS ON THE RECENT PEWDIEPIE CONTRYVERSY?

author=Rukiri
Is the Pie a racist? No, you do have to remember he lives solely on Youtube unless that changed... So views matter, if it means pulling out the racist card for a joke so be it, I don't watch his channel tho.

That doesn't seem very relevant if he's claiming he didn't know he was being recorded in the incident related to the latest controversy, and it's not something that makes sense in context as a joke.

Also, while an entertainer making jokes which might be interpreted in some contexts as racist is not necessarily actually prejudiced, being a professional entertainer who makes jokes people interpret as racist does not mean one is necessarily not racist.

If I were s streamer, I could not guarantee that I wont swear. Even if I signed a contract that required me to not swear, I may accidentally slip up and do so anyway. However, I can guarantee that I won't use certain swear words. Swear words which I find distasteful and don't use habitually, I won't use by accident. The brain works that way. What you're used to do and don't associate with "danger" or "problem" you do without thinking, while what you're not used to do or is conditioned to think of as dangerous or problematic, requires thinking. It's a survival trait we have. This also means that if I do slip up and use a certain swear word, then it's a swear word I don't find distasteful and use habitually.

from Patrick on Waypoint
The central source of tension is whether PewDiePie casually spouting "nigger," a word historically—and currently—used to denigrate a once-enslaved population, is evidence of racism, that PewDiePie himself is racist. Even the folks who've used the "it's just a word" defense on social media have largely acknowledged what PewDiePie did is wrong, but take issue extrapolating larger meaning from the incident because of a flimsy apology.

But at what point does ignorance cross into malice, by virtue of tacitly ignoring what you know to be wrong?

After initially sharing my reaction to PewDiePie's comments on Twitter, I heard from a number of people, including a resident of Denmark—not far from PewDiePie's home base in Sweden. I've decided to keep him anonymous, but let's call him Mark. (And to be clear, he gave me permission to share this.) Despite telling me how he's outwardly progressive and part of Denmark's "most far left party," Mark admitted to saying the slur, too. At first, he was appalled, but later, it became part of his lexicon.

"I play and socialize a lot in the online gaming sphere," Mark told me. "I mainly play WoW, and I have directly witnessed how the word nigger has completely lost its historical meaning and power in the circles I operate in. So often is it simple used instead of 'asshole' or any other slur—and yes, I understand how problematic that is—that it just becomes a thing you say. Not because of some deep seated hate for coloured people, but simply from a rhetorical standpoint."

He described it as "my brain just autopilots it out there, without me giving it a single thought."

"The thing is, I don't have an ounce of hate in my body for people of colour," he said.
On paper I am ostensibly your normal progressive activist. My actions from day to day reflect that as well."

Mark pointed to the fact that Denmark's history with slavery doesn't go as far back, didn't grow up around decades of racial oppression, and went largely unexposed to the deep and systemic poverty that often plagues minority communities. These were his reasons for a cultural disconnect from such a powerful word. It became "just another foreign bad word to us, no different than fuck or shit."

"My point is," he said, "I think it would be foolish of me to say that I'd ever be capable of fully understanding the weight of the word when I've never truly experienced these things. That is probably why my gut doesn't feel the same way when I hear/say that word as yours does."

That's rationalization, not an explanation. You should know better, and so should PewDiePie.

...

Chances are we've all experienced moments where we've said something to intentionally hurt someone, then immediately regretted it, knowing we'd gone over the line. Key to such moments is not only realizing what you did was wrong, but examining how you got there.

A number of years back, while I was still working at Giant Bomb, we had a regular feature where a group of us, myself included, would try to beat this incredibly hard co-op mode in the stylish action game, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. One time, while streaming, my coworker Ryan Davis uttered a common homophobic slur in a fit of rage—the f word—as things were going badly for us. In the moment, no one said anything, but the room became incredibly tense—we knew this was bad. Ryan, who already sweated a lot, was sweating profusely as we tried to find an off ramp, a way to end the video and figure out what the next move was.

When we left the room, Ryan was immediately distraught, knowing he'd fucked up. Ryan, who tragically passed away a few years back, was a good guy, but he, like myself, grew up in an era where people casually tossed the word around as a derogatory term because, well, that's what people did. I cannot speak for Ryan, nor would I try, but I know my own experience. As a kid, even in college, that was par for the course. Publicly, I'd stopped saying that word. Privately, among my "bros," it would still come up.

It wasn't until later I would learn, by reading about the history of the term and hearing it firsthand from friends who were gay, how awful it was to hear people regularly using a homosexual slur as if it mean nothing, as if it was on the same level as, say, "asshole." It was at that point that I decided to push that word down, to fight habits because I knew better.

When something becomes part of your vernacular, it's remarkably hard to remove. (Anyone who'd recorded a podcast, for example, is acutely aware of how often they say the word "like.") And even when you've managed to extract it from regular, casual conversation, there are always moments when it bubbles up, the result of a psychological indoctrination from years of use. It might never truly go away, but you put in the effort to recognize why it's wrong.

The result of the Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet incident was, so far as I know, the one and only time Giant Bomb has edited a video to remove anything from it; the attitude had always been that whatever happens on camera, stays on camera. In this case, it was removed but not forgotten, as later that evening, Ryan wrote a post calling this that his "worst moment."

"I was shocked myself when it came tumbling out, and instantly felt like the worst piece of shit in the world. Context is meaningless, because that word comes with too much of its own hurtful baggage to ever possibly justify. I want to be crystal clear here: I'm saying this not because of some corporate mandate or some fear for my job. I'm saying this because it's important to me personally that I acknowledge the significance of what was said, and to own it. I feel miserable because that's not me, and it's horrifying to me to think that someone would take that awful outburst as some sort of implicit approval to use that word. That shit is just indefensible."

Ryan wasn't a homophobe, but he used a homophobic word. That prompted a moment of reflection about why that happened, and acknowledging how the use of hateful words, even meant without malice, can hurt people.

PewDiePie may not be a racist—we can't know what's in his heart of hearts— but he did use a racist word. So far, he hasn't given us any evidence that we should be in a forgiving mood.

source

wut how can words mean different things in different cultures, find their way into peoples' rhetoric, and be dropped without intent behind them how does that even happen???

For the record, the full article is definitively in opposition of the incident. It acknowledges the above facts, but also states that such things should be thoroughly avoided. I agree with it, and it's why I feel Pewds isn't truly racist. The long and short of it is that he fucked up, nothing more.

author=kentona
on the positive side, I like how "heated gaming moment" has become a meme unto itself.

I once laughed so hard while playing New Super Mario Bros Wii that I pissed myself. That was a heated gaming moment.

author=halibabica
wut how can words mean different things in different cultures, find their way into peoples' rhetoric, and be dropped without intent behind them how does that even happen???

Reminds me of a video I saw where a man in Japan walked up to people wearing shirts with English words on them because they thought it looked cool and he told them what they meant in Japanese. One person was wearing a shirt that simply said "diarrhea".

Shit happens.