Because the level of outrage is proportional to his popularity, not the actual ‘scandal.’
Has he done some stupid things? Yes. Is he a nazi? No, but dear god does the click bait want you to think he is, because his name gets views. It’s the same reason people keep trying to make drama videos about Mr. Beast, who doesn’t have enough scandal to fill a teacup.
It doesn’t help that 99% of the criticism around him devolves into ‘I hate his fans’ which is the most vapid way to criticize literally any famous person.
He's arguably the major reason YouTube started becoming steadily worse with his two sponsorship scandals leading to the tightening of language and content standards and the invention of YouTube kids.
That was always going to happen, so I’m not sure if assigning blame is warranted, though it definitely is a defining moment so I don’t disagree with you.
Fiverr is a website on which independent freelancers can advertise any type of service. Typically it is used as a host to run your small side gig, like doing video editing, making minecraft builds on comission, or doing small voice acting snippets.
On it, mr. Pie found 2 kids (like 15-ish I'd have to guess?) from some 3rd world country (I don't remember which and I don't care to look it up) willing to hold up a sign that said anything at all on it on camera. He paid them to scribble "Death to all jews" onto a sign, and put that in a video.
This was all guarded by the "just making a few jokes bro", and "I didn't think they'd actually do it" defense. Which is laughable.
He's famous and well respected amongst twelve year olds, he needs to cater to his demographic, either he started out as an immature piece of shit or he became one to survive.
The other guy is leaving out some important details, wether this changes your opinion on the event is up to you but one of the details that he left out was that the teens were also directed to say «subscribe to keemstar». The overlapping point of the video was that fiverr was filled with a bunch of people desperate for some cash, with a lot of them not speaking english either and wouldnt understand what was acceptable and not acceptable to say. The joke with the hindi bous was that it was meant to look like a false flag meant to «promote» keemstar.
Bad idea overall as he was doing the exact things he criticized the webpage for allowing and it ended up with the teenagers income being up in the air for a bit when their page was banned but I think that part was corrected (forgot if pewdiepie had a hand in rectifying it or not). Been a while since I saw the video when it released but I think thats what happened
Wait until you find out that one time he recommended people to check out a youtube channel run by a self admitted nazi, PewDiePie's excuse was "I didn't know that, i just liked his death note video essay"
Seems like an honest mistake tbh
I've definitely recommended channels based on one or two videos I thought were spectacular without delving into all their other shit to see if they might be a Nazi
yeah I had even seen a video of that guy's before and it didn't set off any alarm bells. I watched another one later and his mask slipped a bit, but from that one video he appeared normal
okay you're leaving out the other half of what happened, he also asked them to say "subscribe to keemstar"
the reason that is so important is because HE WAS QUOTING KEEMSTAR
was it fucked up and in poor taste? yea, I'd agree with that. did he know they'd do it and it's laughable to assume they'd just refuse? I wouldn't go that far, the whole vid had people refusing to do stuff alot less crazy than that, he was just trying to be an edge lord and was assuming they'd just go "fuck no", not an valid reason though
but the difference between going "what's a horrible thing I could say, oh I know!" versus "here's a horrible thing keemstar recently said, I'll make a reference to it" is pretty wide
He was also shocked the guys put it on video. He wanted to show how easy it is to let other people say outrageous stuff, just by paying some money. Yeah he crossed a line, I think he knew that, but wanted to show the bizarre outcome of 'out of pocket remarks + some bucks + the website Fiver' = apparently possible without regulation.
When did he do that?? Was it before or after he blew up? I remember watching him before he started getting big and I don’t remember this, so I (sadly) want to assume this was after?
He was showing how unhinged fiverr can get. He definitely should've chosen a different message, but I didn't think the nazi labelling and media dogpile were justified. He made a dumb mistake, but it doesn't make him a bad person. Nobody was directly harmed.
Didn't it get the people he paid show the sign get banned for that? Like it really did impact their income. And the entire "I didn't think they'd do it" holds zero water since it was on a *pre recorded video* it's not like he told them to do something on a live stream. And there's certainly a pile of other things he could have had them say without it being a dog whistle. There is a pile of chances he had to fix that "mistake" before it went to air
Exactly, that's the mistake. He shouldn't have even made the video, but with the place he was in at the time, I don't blame him for having poor judgement. The fiverr account was unbanned pretty quickly.
Hasn't he very much changed since then though? Like, in recent years when he's just the meme review guy and after having his kid he mellowed out a lot from what I can tell, don't really watch him anymore either way
He's not even the Meme review guy anymore. He basically retired to have a family. He lives in Japan and only makes vlogs of his life and experiences with his kid intermixed with occasional food reviews or reddit reacts.
People are also missing that he was struggling with Alcohol addiction for years. The whole scruffy beard era was literally because his dialy routine was play videogames, film youtube video, and get blackout drunk. He wasn't looking after himself and his behaviour online was just as self-destructive.
He had a kid?? I dunno bout all that, I just know that I’m not going to just brush off what he’s done until I see actual evidence that he’s changed - him not posting himself saying slurs anymore doesn’t mean he’s changed, nor does his several apology videos.
Edit: what, did the pdp fans find me? Fuck y’all
When have I said that? I was sceptical of Idubbs until he made his apology video. I don’t have anything against him anymore, he’s recognized the harm he caused and is reconciling.
Actual activism - not just “I don’t actually believe those things”, but promoting and donating to Jewish charities, spreading awareness and information about racism and antisemitism… But if that’s too hard for him, he could at least try apologizing *without* some excuse
That was the Bridge Incident. It's called that cause he was playing a game and got sniped while his character was standing on a bridge, then he said the slur.
And then he said he "looked for the worst thing he could say" cuz he was so mad, but like, dawg that shit don't come out that easy unless you're saying it often.
> dawg that shit don't come out that easy unless you're saying it often.
I keep on seeing this repeated for a decade now and it makes absolutely no sense. I have never seen anything related to psychology or speech science that backs this up. Do you think that people stutter when they say a word they don't usually say?
If you don't use a word often it just wouldn't come up in regular speech. It's pretty obvious, I don't think it needs a study to back it up. People use the vocabulary they use and don't tend to randomly stray away from it.
It wouldn't come out in a moment of anger, either. If a person was to sit for a bit and literally think, "what's the most offensive thing I could possibly say to this person," they might come up with a slur, specifically because they ARE so offensive; at that point, though, someone's had plenty of time to realize what a terrible thing that would be to say, and they wouldn't do it.
If it just comes out in a moment of anger, that's a word someone thinks about/uses a lot. People who don't use/think about that word regularly won't come up with that off the top of their heads. It'd be something more like, "you're a stupid POS," if they regularly use POS, or "you dumbass," if they don't. Coming up with the n-word right off the top of one's head the second they're angry means they've - at minimum - *thought* it often enough that that's what comes out.
I've certainly never come up with more than, "you asshole" (or, yes, "you stupid POS") about any race (or sexuality or gender), and most people who don't use slurs haven't, either. You simply don't use words you never would have otherwise just because you're pissed.
He said "what a fucking [n-word]" when someone greeded his teamate in pubg, this happened somewhere around 2017 IIRC and on a bridge. He has also done some very edgy fiverr content by paying people to say extreme things to see if they would do it or not. Many people claim this to be a dogwhistle for his actual beliefs, this also happened somewhere around 2017. He has since radically changed his content twice, first into a reddit review, gaming, and philosophy channel, then into vlogs about basically his retirement in japan.
Is that the one falling for obvious 4chan bait? That's pretty worthy of mockery to be frank. They were claiming basic ass English words as hate symbols
There's a difference between saying "this is ridiculous" and smirking at the camera as you do the dogwhistle. Given everything else he's done, and the people he hangs with, I think we can pretty safely say "OK yeah it's kind of weird that he did that right after apologizing for saying the gamer word and getting two kids to write it on a sign"
Like to be clear, the ADL wasn't *wrong* when they said shit like the OK hand sign had been coopted. There's a reason Rittenhouse was like "Oh I didn't realize that the people I hung out with were white supremacists" when it was pointed out that all three of them were doing the hand sign as they hung out in a White Supremacist bar. It's the same reason the Christchurch shooter did the OK hand sign. It's just that dogwhistles are...well...dogwhistles. They're meant to make you look weird if you call it out because, as you said it's "basic ass \[shit\]". So when the guy has a video where he's going at length about how the ADL is so *silly* after he's already done questionable shit....Yeah.
E: Man, I don't get why people downvote simple and true shit. I'm not saying that anyone that uses the OK hand sign is a white supremacist, obviously most people aren't because otherwise it wouldn't be a dogwhistle. Dogwhistles exist. Even when you describe it as "taking the bait" you're implicitly acknowledging that it's a correct thing to point out, but that it makes one look incorrect to the average person.
I dunno Reddit is the source of brain-worms so I'm probably going to get a lot of downvotes but none of this is incorrect to anyone that thinks for a half a second tbh
I don't think Pewdiepie is a horrible person. I don't think he's a great person or a particularly good role model either. I think he's just some Swedish dude who had the sense of humor of a teenager that had never cared about educating himself on any social issues before he suddenly got famous by playing video games.
Whether you like it or not, he has a huge audience, and I for one am glad that in recent years he's decided to use it for chill, non-problematic content instead of diving deeper into expressing any alt-right views that he's accused for having.
does tumblr hate pewds or smth? i dont see it other than like the bridge incident, man's just living his best life and playing games on the internet
edit: tumblr was probably correct for not liking him at that point, wow
This was back when stuff like the bridge incident were more fresh in people's minds and people assumed this would be Pewdiepie's first step into the Alt-Right pipeline, then there was some nazi jokes or something? I dunno but it ended up being a really fuckin weird moment of an otherwise relatively clean career.
It was a lot of stuff. He would drop hard-r slurs, make jokes that were well past “edgy”, and of course the cristchurch shooter name dropped him during the shooting.
I'll accept that some people get mislead when their biggest influence of a new culture is a bunch of edgelords who use slurs casually.
However, personal responsibility still applies.
If I fell into the company of a bunch of foreign douchebags, I should start to realise that as I become more fluent. If I didn't? Well, I shouldn't whine when I'm held accountable for saying slurs.
Ding ding ding. If you do piece of shit things, and claim ignorance because we'll "everyone else around me does it".... you still deserve consequences for your actions?? You still did the bad thing. And like, morally should have known better.
Like, you can't just rob a bank and be like "well it was me and like everyone I know, we all rob banks! Its normal for us" and expect the police to be like "oh okay nvm you right, it's fine since yall do it all the time"
I mean. Literally the only reason you don't say slurs is peer pressure. Because there are plenty of slurs most people say on a daily basis that lost their slur status due to that peer pressure being absent. The word "bastard" was a vicious slur only a few generations ago. Around old enough people that one will still get you some strange looks.
You should know better than to rob banks, but there's no way to know which "bad words" in a foreign culture are harmless vs which are considered hate speech. Especially not during a time period where those terms were very very close to being normalised. Had Trump not won/bots not fuelled the American culture war, I'm pretty sure that one would have lost a lot of its edge.
People don't remember how close to normal it was getting. We were only like six months away from people saying it on TV. I distinctly remember an interview, I think about Django Unchained, in which Samuel L Jackson was basically telling the interviewer to say it and he only didn't because of network policy. That's how close to normalised it was. I'm always surprised how few people remember this given how recent it was.
To clarify, I'm doing devils advocacy here. He probably knew better. But the specific example of subcultures I'm taking umbrage with.
> I mean. Literally the only reason you don't say slurs is peer pressure.
I mean.....No?
I don't use slurs because I know they'll hurt people, and especially hurt them in vulnerable spots. More than just a regular insult, and with way more baggage.
Besides, I'm pretty sure the n-word being a racist slur is very widely known. You don't need much exposure to Americans to determine that, I think.
Why do you know they hurt people? In fact, why are they hurtful at all?
That's what I'm talking about. According to several Swedish people in this thread, it was known as "a bad American word" no different to "fucker" or anything like that. I'm inclined to believe them.
>I'm pretty sure the n-word being a racist slur is very widely known.
Idk about this specific case but you ain't right, most people I know just use it as another word for black people, they don't know it's a slur. Especially since a lot of exposure to it comes from black people using it so they don't realize it's bad
I’m just saying, his controversies weren’t minor. I don’t think he warrants blame for what the shooter said and did, but if someone started killing people in my name, I would maybe examine what I was doing that could have inspired that.
He did address it and he did change it.
The shooter said "Subscribe to PewDiePie", so he went on cam, comdemned the shooter's horrofic actions, and officially ended the "Subscribe to PewDiePie" meme.
That and he went and did self-improvement, owned up to his faults, took responsibility for the things he did wrong, and moved on.
Throwing the shooter controversy at Felix's door is like blaming J.D. Salinger for John Lennon's death.
The name drop didn’t happen just because the shooter really wanted to shoutout his favorite YouTuber right before committing a hate crime. It happened because “Subscribe to PewDiePie” had already become an extremist dogwhistle and he was continuing it. There was a pretty long period of time where Felix could’ve come out and disavowed the alt-right backing behind that meme, yet he waited until he was being implicated in a hate crime to say anything about it.
There was also the incident of him making extremely vocal announcements about donating to the ACLU, partly as a way to disprove claims of antisemitism IIRC, only to unceremoniously drop all of the donation plans at the last minute…after constant complaints from neo-nazis in his fanbase that Felix was being pressured by “evil Jews” into giving away his money as donations or something.
When he finally gave an extremely noncommittal response to his donation withdrawal, he made the video in an outfit adorned with a symbol indistinguishable from the German Iron Cross, completely ignoring or downplaying the celebrations from Neonazis who were now convinced he was one of them.
He played the whole situation off as coincidence, which…I can’t see into his brain and say for sure that he must be lying, but at the very least, it’s concerningly ignorant when he had already been coming under fire for aligning with neonazi talking points (like *paying people to hold up a sign that said Death To All Jews*)
Felix / PewDiePie has shown time and time again that, even in the most charitable interpretation, he doesn’t care at all that his “edgy” behavior attracts far right and neonazi extremists, as long as he’s not being implicated by the community he fosters. He tolerates or even accepts the worst kinds of people calling his fanbase home, only offering disavowals when they begin to act so vile that even he has to worry about consequences.
Was fortnite and spyro the dragon right wing dogwhistles too? Considering the shooter claims both of them influenced his choices as spyro taught him ethno nationalism and fortnite taught him to floss on corpses?
Nah, I dont think so. He was an accelerationist whod say anything if he thought it would make people stressed about society in general. I think its more likely that he said «subscribe to pewdiepie» as it was the catchphrase everywhere online at the time by a youtuber that was popular with kids but criticized by adults.
The difference is that you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find alt-right spaces that are particularly strongly invested in the cultural impact of Spyro or Fortnite. But PewDiePie? Curiously enough, almost all of the super extremist corners of the internet that align with the shooter’s ideals seemed to have a really pronounced interest in Felix, constantly celebrating him and championing him as “he’s [their] guy”
The shooter was a far right extremist, who propagated far right ideals, wrote a far right manifesto, and committed a hate crime often associated with the far right, the victims of which align with the supposed enemies of the far right. The assumption that he was just an accelerationist, nothing more, and that his ties to a controversial streamer beloved by neonazis is just as coincidental as his claim of being radicalized by Fortnite emotes, is wildly bad faith.
The shooters manifesto basically confirmed that he said what he said for the sake of being controversial and cause more discord in other peoples minds. He was an accelerationist and wrote that games such as spyro the dragon taught him ethnonationalism and that fortnite taught him to floss on the corpses on those he killed. Despite that, noone assumed that those games had extremist right wing undertones, or that any reasonable person would be radicalized by them and I dont think either company made a statement on the matter either. Obviously the main difference between his mention of spyro and fortnite and him saying «subscribe to pewdiepie» is that the latter was the last thing he said before he started shooting, but i still feel that its unreasonable to say it reflects on pewdiepie or his content.
Either way, the guy was troll that wanted cause as much controversy online as he could, which is why it was all streamed, and thats why he mentioned all the modern pop culture references that he was trying to tie back into his ideology
I really don’t give a shit about Pewdiepie, I have never watched his stuff. I was just trying to explain that this guy didn’t just have some odd moments in his career, there were some pretty serious things that happened, and when he was a lot bigger and more relevant he didn’t seem to give a shit about anything unless it affected his subscriber count.
There’s another comment in this thread from someone that knows more than me, that explains what was so fucked up about his involvement with the christchurch shooting. I didn’t think this guy would have such staunch defenders, but I have always been too old to have been interested in his stuff, so I guess I’m sorry for talking shit about your guy?
I just think it's dumb that people are still bringing it up after this much time has passed. He has apologized for his actions, acknowledged why he was wrong, and made every effort to distance himself from his past. At a certain point you're just beating a dead horse.
I'm not saying his actions weren't wrong but it's just petty and stupid to hold someone's mistakes against them forever, especially when they have demonstrated that they are a changed person.
Like I said, I don’t give a shit about the guy. I know about him as a very popular streamer, he broke into mainstream entertainment, he courted neo-nazis and the alt-right, the christchurch shooting happened, he is not nearly as prominent in the zeitgeist. Literally the last major thing I heard about him was his reaction to the shooting, and that’s true for a ton of people.
Also, the shooting was *five years ago.* That is not some unfathomable length of time. You can barely even refer to that as “his past”.
What other hard-r's did he drop??
And it was 2017 plenty of people were doing well past edgy jokes that was basically the culture on the internet at the time. It was the same time period as when "Feminist triggered compilations" were the hot new meta to grow your channel.
A big thing that I’m still personally salty about is when he had fucking Ben Shapiro host his meme review segment. That directly lead me down a bad path and it took years to climb out of that hole.
It wasn’t exactly like he was being actively right wing, more that he didn’t flinch at platforming or regurgitating the same ideas for the sake of comedy to an impressionable fanbase of kids/teens. Still though that was like 7 years ago so idk he’s probably changed a lot.
It was the time Shapiro was always making it into memes by "destroying someone" and it was a big joke. Actually happened exactly the contrary to me and was an awakening realising that the right Is full of shit and Is just religious emotionalism
And yet his contemporary friends and fellow gaming/variety YouTube channels didn’t make those jokes. He wasn’t some product of an unavoidable culture, he was an active contributor to it by choice
No, it was definitely not the culture of the internet at the time. I know because I was bemoaning the loss of that kind of culture back in 2017. Pewdiepie was playing into a specific /pol/ niche.
Were *you* dropping slurs and radicalizing children eight years ago?
I feel like it wasn't actually that common and might speak to his character or how much we should trust him with social power/influence or something
Buddy I'm saying that eight years ago was a short time ago in terms of culture and could not under any circumstances be considered "another time" in terms of slur usage.
Except, you know, the "kill all jews" sign
Or when he wore a shirt with something that looked a lot like an iron cross to the video where he backtracks on his 50 000$ donation to the ADL (jewish anti defamation league)
https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/14/pewdiepie-video-sparks-fiery-debate-viewers-mistake-georgian-bolnisi-cross-iron-cross-10743104/
..I'm gonna say it, you know what the Iron cross is, right? As in it explicitly is not Nazi symbolism? it's German Empire symbolism. The joke is inherently edgy because he dresses as something mistakenly believed to be a nazi symbol. So when people call him a nazi people can go "uhm ackshually".
And that's the joke. Is it edgy? yes. Cringe? sure. It's everything wrong with 2016-2017 humour as someone who unfortunately had a big phase of that kind of humour despise not liking Pewdiepie. I'm only explaining the joke because I remember this video and I remember that's obviously what the joke was, ragebait trolling to the *nth* degree
That was intentional on his part ?? That makes it so much worse if this is true. Like he did that on a video where he said he would actually not give the 50 000$ he pledged to a jewish organisation because of his previous controversy
Oh my god!! and Australia has States too!! does that making the United States 2??? 🫢🫢🫢🫢🫢
The German Empire was a constitutional Monarchy PLEASE use Google I'm begging you.
mhm and the founding fathers owned slaves so anyone whonlikes them is a racist, of courde Britain did a lot of bad things so anyone born before the British Empire fell is an inherently evil being. Roman dress up for theatre is of course entirely off limits. God this is fun! what was my point again? Oh right!
THE GERMAN COLONIAL EMPIRE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HOLOCAUST
IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THEY DID OTHER THINGS BECAUSE THAT IS IRRELEVANT TO THEIR LACK OF THINGS DONE TO JEWS DURING THAT TIME.
Edgy fucking shit to put that down and expect the guys to not do it. That's how we discovered they don't speak English, least he did them justice after
It in no ways redeems it, but if I recall correctly it was both about seeing what people on Fiverr would actually be willing to do and he claimed he didn't expect someone to do it, and the other part of the message was subscribe to Keemstar, as in the joke being Keemstar would say that. He definitely sent a lot of kids down the bad pipeline but it seemed to me at least just to be him being an idiot, an irresponsible idiot causing harm but not malicious
> an irresponsible idiot causing harm but not malicious
Two counterpoints. First, Hanlon's Razor and it's common corollary:
> Never attribute to malice that which may be adequately explained by ignorance.
> There comes a point where the only feasible way to be sufficiently ignorant is through malicious refusal to learn.
Second, an adaptation of Clarke's Third Law:
> Sufficiently advanced ignorance is indistinguishable from malice.
Yes, it's better to consider someone ignorant than cruel, but eventually you have to accept that it's just less likely. This is doubly true in the modern day, where information is easier to spread and discover than _ever_ before in human history. At some point, the only way to _not_ learn is if you actively _refuse_ to do so, even when the information is handed to you. And if you insist that you were _so_ ignorant that you didn't _know_ that apparently-malicious actions would result in harm, then it doesn't matter if you're lying or not - if you are, you acted maliciously, and if you aren't, _you should have_.
Besides, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what reasons he had. He still _did_ those things. He still caused direct and undeniable harm. He was still _personally responsible_ for the actions he performed.
I dunno why you're being downvoted, this is literally the appropriate response. If you don't know whether a significant claim is true or not, you _should_ ask for a source on it so you can check. I'd have thought that a _tumblr_ subreddit would know how much damage can spread by people who don't _fact check major claims_, given how much it's happened on tumblr.
Didn't he make a video with Ben Shapiro or something?
He also made the creator of Darkedgebloodsword very mad for not linking to their DeviantArt where they make actually great art
basically saying the n word, and people thought some of the stuff he said about t series was racist to desis/indians or playing into desi/indian stereotypes and apparently a lot of middle schoolers internalized that stuff and started being lowkey racist
"The bridge incident" refers to when he was playing pubg (iirc) and got shot by a guy across the other side of a bridge from him and dropped the n word
Honestly that pewdiepie recived backlash and he actually changed and bettered Is surprising in this day and age where content creators usually dont get anything bad thrown at them. After the bridge incident I was like "why Is it even bad tho" that led me into studying the whole linguistic aspect of racism and other stuff, before that it was super normalized over here (LATAM) that sometimes u have a dark skinned friend that everyone knows as "yeah el negro" or using the Nword on the internet freely because it was just "some word from USA". I feel like a content creator work Is also fixing past mistakes, at least through exposure of "yeah this was bad, didn't know about it, now I do".
Also pretty surprised he didn't took refuge in the Alt Right for defense
Changed and bettered? He waged war against mainstream media, declaring them to be jealous and scared of YouTubers and accused them of making him out to be some kind of bad person just for…
- Dressing as a Nazi
- Paying people to hold a sign saying “death to all Jews”
- sharing videos from Nazis
- Inviting Ben Shapiro to host one of his videos
- Indeed the bridge incident
- So much use of the r-slur
- And more!
I think it’s pretty generous to call that changing and growing.
I'm sorry but "sharing videos from nazis" Is a very long reach. He promoted like 20 small channels, he literally passes through one and says "this one actually has a pretty nice death note video" before recomending it, withouth knowing one of the videos used as material in that video is from a far-right killing where a nazi run His car into people. Gets told "hey, this channel Is actually a far right neonazi producer", inmediatly pulls that segment of the video out, and does a video clarifing that he didn't know and that he doesn't support that, retires His support of the channel. AND I'm sorry but for someone not from the USA u dont know some of that stuff. During years Ben Shapiro was just a meme outside USA, the random guy that destroys random young students, not the far right "kill all arabs" guy.
The N-word had meaning inside the USA, from people outside it, it was just "black people word" that sometimes they use in songs and on the internet, after the bridge incident the stuff detonated and me (and lots of others) actually understood the significance of utilising that word and the historic negative meaning it had.
For the "r-slur" the same, over here it was the same as saying "are u an idiot? Is something wrong with u?" Replaceable with idiot in whatever content. Ableism wasn't a big thing as today.
All those things we're More than half a decade ago, and pewdiepie hasnt been involved in More "Incidents", has apoligized, and change. I wouldnt say it's generous
Americans seem to have a lot of trouble understanding that their specific cultural hangups don't apply to the rest of the world. I'm reminded of a similar issue involving a Christian festival celebrating the wise men that Americans could not fathom being acceptable because it used blackface to depict the king of a black nation, respectfully.
And people so concerned with racism go absolutely apeshit over it when it's not their culture and nobody takes offence at it. Though ironically American cultural influence is strong enough now that their racism and hangups around race are spreading too.
right? theres so many things in my culture thatd probably give americans a heart attack. they need to learn and understand that not everyone knows their "common sense" and we dont NEED to know
And when was that, 7 years ago? He has realized how toxic the influencer culture is and the internet in general is , and how it incentivizes hate for the sake of maximum profits, took steps to back away from the youtube life, change and become a generally better person now. And you are still stuck in 7 years ago unable to move on.
Here on r/CuratedTumblr we believe in forgiveness and people improving on themselves unless you made edgy jokes almost a decade ago.
Seriously this is so stupid, people are acting like he's the second coming of Mussolini.
The brain is hardwired to hate more than to let live and forgive. It worked with the cavemen and kept them alive (but not happy), but now it's just being used by the algorithm to keep you hooked.
is there proof that he’s changed? i haven’t been keeping up with him, but just because he stopped openly doing shitty stuff doesn’t mean he changed, he could have just stopped recording it
Yeah that’s my issue. I was a *huge* pdp fan as a kid and these incidents just made me feel nothing but vague disgust towards him. I’d *love* to see something that indicates genuine change, but multiple shitty apology videos ain’t it.
Lmao how can anyone prove they're not constantly dropping hard R slurs when they're alone? More proof than "it's not appeared on video since" is impossible
i mean things that prove that he has different beliefs. if he just stopped doing controversial stuff that doesn’t really mean anything to me. all he said is that he’s stupid and that he shouldn’t have done it. i don’t think you can make the argument that someone’s “changed and become a better person” if all they’ve done is stop publicly doing the thing that got them a ton of backlash
How does one prove they don't have racist beliefs? Anything you do honestly you could also do performatively. Hell, Harvey Weinstein donated $100k to a chair for Culture, Media, and Feminist studies two months before it became public he was a sex offender (and, immediately after the rape stories emerged, attempted to donate another $5 million to a women filmmakers scholarship).
Maybe late, but after those incidents he was part of the biggest camping donations on YouTube at the time, i remember one year counting like a million USD raised for different campaings, after Beirut exploshion, when the crazy guy used him in His manifesto (quite literally just named dropped him, along with some other crazy theories) he donated to the victims of the shootings AND other stuff. I do remember tho during that time people claiming he should Donate to the ADL to kinda "make Pesce" with the jewish community, and when he annunced he would, recived backlash from people claiming the ADL was a shitty ONG (this was after a mozque shooting if I'm not mistaken) and him choosing another one
Has he ever actually apologized? He did step back from YouTube eventually, because he didn’t like doing it as a full job anymore, but that’s a pretty different thing
Yes I recalled he did apologize for the bridge incident and apologized and compensated the fiverr guy for the mistake when he realized he didn't speak english (it wad a "social experiment" by him trying to prove that people will do anything for money, and as you knew it was very flawed). Stopped the "subscribe to pewdiepie" thing and adressed the shooter issue directly. Idk about the other ones tho.
Yeah. Plus them saying that using the word is "normalized" meaning people don't know it's "actually that bad" is... I'm sorry but ignorant. Plenty of people and communities use words and slurs they KNOW are bad but normalize them and use them anyways.
You cannot assume innocence from those who frequently use slurs in their daily language. Idgaf if it's "normalized" where they're from. Many of these people know, even if it's subliminal or deep down, that it is wrong. But they do it anyways, because they can, because others do it around them. Not all cultural language things (like swedes saying the hard R like pewdiepie did) are done in innocence. That was clearly born of racism. Like. You can't remove that from the origin of their use of the word. They can claim innocence all they want. It's feigned.
No one in their right mind could use a heavy word like that as a slur and get away with it because "everyone else does it here". But ya know, it was pewdiepie! Couldn't have really been that bad huh? 🙄
American influence reshaped how the n-word was seen in Scandinavia. Neger was seen as the allowed word up until millennials and calling someone black was seen as more disrespectful. The jump from neger to the n-word is a shorter one, especially removed from American context.
That said though. The bridge was way too late for that to matter and he 100% should not have said it. He said it because he was pissed of a pulled the worst word he could think of, not because he hates black people, but because the N-word is a bad word.
Everything has context, and ignoring the fact that PewDiePie is Swedish and not American is ignorant in its own right.
It's like how fuck is worse than frick. It's on a scale of bad, and the n-word is merely at the top of that scale.
He should've known better, but pretending that PewDiePie saying it because he's pissed off at a game, and Billy Bob from Luisiana saying it to an actual person is the same is ignoring a lot of factors.
Honestly here in sweden a lot of 30+ people are still not used to the N-word being bad. I mean we had a snack that was called N-word balls that was renamed to chocolate balls. But try convincing an old person to call them chocolate balls instead of N-word balls and you will have to listen to a 30 minute tirade.
The word literally only has racist connotations due to western culture, and that can change over time. If you've ever used the words bastard, moron, or even dumb, you've used a slur. Bastard in particular was considered a really bad slur with a ton of oppression tied up in it only a few generations ago.
You're essentially doing the same thing as complaining about the Spanish word for black. American culture has influenced Sweden to make the n word have racist connotations that it never used to have. That's not then recognising that they used to be racist, it's the word itself changing within the culture thanks to American influence.
In a generation or two, don't be surprised if the word loses all negative associations. This already almost happened once back in the mid 2010s.
I don’t remember it losing any negative associations in 2010 and I doubt it will lose negative association in two generations.
But the rest of the comment makes sense
Somehow the part I find most offensive about the old name is the fact that they want you to think about **someone's nutsack** while you're eating some snacks.
It's like making a beer and calling it "Some Guy's Piss".
Using the n word is racist no matter which way you spin it. Yes calling someone directly the word is "worse" but when pewdiepie has that much of a young audience, and many of which are Swedish themselves, him saying it and then making excuses literally condones others using the word because he "didn't mean it like that" or "it's normal here"
Please explain to me how the roots of saying that word in Sweden ISNT based in racism. Please. I'd love to know the dichotomy of swedes using the word and how it's totally not a result of racism at all. Please enlighten me. Because everything I've read leads me to believe the only reason it's "more problematic" now is because young people ACTUALLY care now and are willing to stand up against the fact that it is racist, and wrong to say the word casually, now more than ever.
No one is ignoring the context that he is from Sweden. Swedes should NOT get a pass on saying the word causally because it's "more normal" there or "normalized" it is still racist, and based in racism.
Edit to add: swedish bird scientists (ornithologists) even changed the name of 10 different species of birds because they had racist names because that used to be considered "okay" and now is not, for logical reasons. One of such being "neger" the word you said was "normal". Because even swedish ornithologists saw that shit and was like "fuck that's racist that has to go, no bird should be named that shit".
Ignoring the part where I said that the popular opinion changed with millenials growing up and that he still shouldn't have said it, I see...
No, using the N-word is not racist under any context. If it was black people couldn't use it as a term of endearment amongst themselves.
Again, in scandinavia neger was the term for black people up until basically 2000. Just like how negro is the spanish word, pretty sure it was adopted from spanish or other mediterranian languages. Calling africans black was seen as the racist term, it's all contextual.
Because of american influence it has since flipped in Scandinavia too.
If pewdiepie were to yell a racial expletive directed at a black person that would've been "din svarta fan" or you black fuck/devil.
To a scandinavian the N-word is merely big bad American word. Of course he shouldn't have said it, but calling him racist, full stop, ignores context and intent.
using the hard R n word is racist full stop. Whether it is AT SOMEONE or not. Im not talking about the soft A. That is different. Black people can and do say the soft a version all the time. Its MUCH harder to find a black person calling another black person the hard R. Because its racist. Even if not used at someone directly. The only times I've EVER heard the hard r said by a black person was a one off Uncle Ruckus-esque person i met in real life.
You can say its due to "american influence" that the word is seen as bad. But we're not talking about "neger" when we discuss what pewds said, we are talking about pewdiepie saying the Hard R N word as an expletive. it does NOT have to be AT a black person for it to be bad. The N word can be seen as "the american big bad word" okay sure. That does not make using the hard R less racist.
Words that were okay can become not okay, just like how the ornithologists changed the name of the bird from "neger" recognizing that its use is racist. You can even look up the meaning of the word, see that it is considered derogatory, and see that there are NEW WORDS to be used in its place, as the term is outdated and considered derogatory. You can fight that all you want, but the swedish language has already adapted. People need to follow. You're ignorant if you use outdated derogatory language beacause "it wasnt always considered bad or derogatory".
Change is not always bad, and if multiple sources state the word is being cycled out of use due to it being RACIST, then maybe it is racist ;) (im actually looking things up here, not just "pretty sure" by the way.)
Btw: THE OFFICIAL SWEDISH DICTIONARY recommends alternate words for things like "neger" because they are racist. There is literally records stating that the word has been falling out of use since the 60's because of its unfavorable connotation. You can say its not racist until the "2000s" all you want, however that simply isn't factually correct by any stretch of research.
Okay, listen closely. TODAY neger is INDEED RACIST. Up until RECENTLY it was LESS RACIST.
BLACK was seen as MORE RACIST back when neger was deemed APPROPRIATE.
The N-WORD DOES NOT carry the same connotations in Europe and Scandinavia that it does in America.
WE KNOW THAT IT IS BAD NOW. PEWDIEPIE SHOULDN'T have used it.
BUT he DIDN'T use it AS A RACIAL SLUR DIRECTED AT A BLACK PERSON.
He said it OUT OF RAGE because it's BAD, REMOVED FROM MEANING, and NOT because he hold any sort of hatred for Africans.
There's a fucking difference here, and implying any use of something is always on the same level is amplitudes more ignorant than Pewdiepie's use of the word ever was.
IT DOESNT MATTER IF HE DIDNT USE IT AS A RACIAL SLUR AGAINST A BLACK PERSON.
NO ONE SAID IT HAS THE SAME GRAVITY.
IT IS, HOWEVER, STILL FUCKING RACIST, DIPSHIT.
NO ONE SAID IT WAS BECAUSE HE HAS VITROL FOR BLACK PEOPLE.
USING THE WORD IS STILL FUCKING RACIST EVEN IF NOT USED DIRECTLY AT A BLACK PERSON.
See? I can type in all caps too! If you genuinely believe its more okay that pewdiepie said it because he didn't use it directly at someone to be racist, you're more ignorant than you could ever hope to claim me to be. Jesus fucking christ. The use of the hard R N word is racist as an expletive AND as a slur against others. It doesn't matter if your intention isn't to be racist when using it as an expletive.
If intention and context doesn't matter then what's even the point of anything? A boxing match is just assault then, self defence and cold blooded murder would deem the same punishment. Of course how you use something matters.
When he apologised for his use of the word and bettered himself people still chose to hate him for it, and that's just not deserved. If that's a concept too hard for you to grasp then I don't care to continue this conversation.
Have fun being mad at the world, you're the reason It'll never get better.
The dude was making videos for American audiences for years at that point. Do you truly believe he didn’t know about the “connotations” about it. Did he also not know the “connotations” of paying people to hold up signs saying “death to all Jews” lol.
Also, wtf are you talking about with calling this dude more ignorant than the guy that ACTUALLY SAID THE WORD LOL.
Fans of this guy always make me laugh bro.
His audience doesn't change who he is or where he's from, but yes of course he knew the N-word is bad, that's kinda why he used it. What I'm saying is his use of the word doesn't mean ha hates black people, which is the important part.
The death to all jews thing was an attempt at a joke. YT at the time was super into edgy humour and he was blinded by the environment he was in. In the midst of all this the critique is ignoring why things were done and judging it thorugh a really black and white view, ironically.
He's not some raging racist, he just treated his 100 million person audience like everyone else treats a discord call with the boys. It was stupid of him, and he's learned
Just look at his content now vs then
No one Is saying or even implying the word Is ok to say, just that pewdiepie said it for completly diferent reasons, was told why Is still WRONG and bad word, and when told it was a racist thing to say, apoligized, changed, and didn't say it again. That Is change, and saying that "pewdiepie Is a racist nazi and nothing Is going to change that" just makes the young audience feel "hey, i like this guy, but they are telling me he Is a nazi, but this Is not a bad guy, so maybe a nazi Is not that bad", and end things worse for everyone
He had been making videos in English for an English speaking audience for nearly a decade at that point. There is no way that in nearly 10 years of interacting with a significantly proportioned American audience, did he not pick up that the hard R N-word is a very bad thing to say. If he honestly didn't know it was bad, we would have heard him say it much earlier, and it wouldn't have been during an angry moment where things slip. He knew it was bad, no one had to tell him it was bad, and he knew he fucked up as soon as he said it.
Also beside the point, if you don't want to be compared to a nazi, don't dress like a nazi, and have people hold up a sign that says antisemitic things, for your predominantly child audience. Not saying he is a nazi, but there are easy ways to avoid the allegation.
I'm totally on board with what u are saying, even with context the second part still holds; was a shitty thing to do even with the why, still dumb from him, but actually apoligized, and removed the content.
For the first half, I think different, for lots of years i thought the N-word was just "fucker" but used by black people because it's one of those "language changes thing". Also being from LATAM in a country where we never had slavery to begin with, saying someone Is black was never a "bad thing", even if still has racist origins, it was never a bad connotation, so at the time I was like "why so much fuss about it!" And wondered why pewdiepie had apoligized. Then i read and learnt about the past of the word, and why Is a No no
[He never dressed as a nazi.](https://history.stackexchange.com/a/35576)
The 'sharing videos from nazis' was when he bundled like 10 creators together to support them, and one of the ones who made a video on Death Note turned out to be a nazi. He addressed that.
Then again, it's weird to claim he didn't change and better himself because all this happened, like 7 or 8 years ago, and he has certainly reflected on the alt-right stuff and distanced himself completely.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media across most of Europe is desperate to get YouTubers on TV to appeal to younger generations, in the Netherlands alone there have been several television shows commissioned that originated on YouTube, and music shows are consistently pulling in YouTube cover artists to take part, and roughly 5 years ago the biggest Dutch game show asked YouTube star NikkieTutorials to take part which directly led to becoming an internationally famous tv personality
I also know the BBC loves putting YouTubers and influencers into celebrity shows to try and appeal to a younger generation, like Strictly Come Dancing the past few years always had one contestant who was exclusively internet-famous, even saw that Uncle Roger guy taking part in a tv quiz one time
So mainstream media is definitely not against YouTube
I used to be a casual viewer of his upto 2018. But his fanbase being Lord Curzon levels of racist underneath EVERY video of his during the "T-series war" just made me hate him. He conflated T-series with India as a whole. Awesome bangers from his T-series diss include:
"your language sounds like it came from the mumble rap community" (mfw our country has 800 spoken languages)
"I'm a blue eyes white dragon while you're just dark magician"
...and more. I found out about the..."bridge incident" and the Fiverr episode after that, and realized the dude was always a fucking asshole. IDK what that era must have been like for diaspora Indians, esp anyone in school. Probably way worse lmao.
also ‘who the heck is bob and why you wanna kiss him? (ew)’ refrencing a viral pic where an indian guy texts a girl ‘show me your bobs and vagene’. apparently indian men with poor english being creepy texters is like a stereotype online so its basically portraying a pretty unflattering racial stereotype.
Putting a different spin on a classical myth is not poor reading comprehension. I am fully aware that hope is not presented as an unleashed evil in the story of Pandora's box, and the fact you didn't pick up on that only says bad things about *your* reading comprehension.
Ew @ all of the pewds dick riders in this thread. Y'all will really bend over and kiss the asses of any mid white guy on the internet no matter what huh
pewdiepie discourse is one of my least favourite discourses
Why?
Because the level of outrage is proportional to his popularity, not the actual ‘scandal.’ Has he done some stupid things? Yes. Is he a nazi? No, but dear god does the click bait want you to think he is, because his name gets views. It’s the same reason people keep trying to make drama videos about Mr. Beast, who doesn’t have enough scandal to fill a teacup. It doesn’t help that 99% of the criticism around him devolves into ‘I hate his fans’ which is the most vapid way to criticize literally any famous person.
He's arguably the major reason YouTube started becoming steadily worse with his two sponsorship scandals leading to the tightening of language and content standards and the invention of YouTube kids.
That was always going to happen, so I’m not sure if assigning blame is warranted, though it definitely is a defining moment so I don’t disagree with you.
hang on... context? i haven't ever paid any attention to pewdiepie, what happened? what's the "bridge incident"?
This post is a few years old. Seven-ish years ago, Pewdiepie said the n-word on stream. iirc, it wasn't the last time he said it.
Oh he did worse than that imo
like what? not attacking you, I just never bothered to watch the guy
Fiverr is a website on which independent freelancers can advertise any type of service. Typically it is used as a host to run your small side gig, like doing video editing, making minecraft builds on comission, or doing small voice acting snippets. On it, mr. Pie found 2 kids (like 15-ish I'd have to guess?) from some 3rd world country (I don't remember which and I don't care to look it up) willing to hold up a sign that said anything at all on it on camera. He paid them to scribble "Death to all jews" onto a sign, and put that in a video. This was all guarded by the "just making a few jokes bro", and "I didn't think they'd actually do it" defense. Which is laughable.
Wtf is wrong with that guy??
He's famous and well respected amongst twelve year olds, he needs to cater to his demographic, either he started out as an immature piece of shit or he became one to survive.
"He's famous and well respected amongst twelve year olds."
I hope you can taste the irony in that statement.
I could; it was lovely.
The other guy is leaving out some important details, wether this changes your opinion on the event is up to you but one of the details that he left out was that the teens were also directed to say «subscribe to keemstar». The overlapping point of the video was that fiverr was filled with a bunch of people desperate for some cash, with a lot of them not speaking english either and wouldnt understand what was acceptable and not acceptable to say. The joke with the hindi bous was that it was meant to look like a false flag meant to «promote» keemstar. Bad idea overall as he was doing the exact things he criticized the webpage for allowing and it ended up with the teenagers income being up in the air for a bit when their page was banned but I think that part was corrected (forgot if pewdiepie had a hand in rectifying it or not). Been a while since I saw the video when it released but I think thats what happened
Wait until you find out that one time he recommended people to check out a youtube channel run by a self admitted nazi, PewDiePie's excuse was "I didn't know that, i just liked his death note video essay"
Seems like an honest mistake tbh I've definitely recommended channels based on one or two videos I thought were spectacular without delving into all their other shit to see if they might be a Nazi
yeah I had even seen a video of that guy's before and it didn't set off any alarm bells. I watched another one later and his mask slipped a bit, but from that one video he appeared normal
okay you're leaving out the other half of what happened, he also asked them to say "subscribe to keemstar" the reason that is so important is because HE WAS QUOTING KEEMSTAR was it fucked up and in poor taste? yea, I'd agree with that. did he know they'd do it and it's laughable to assume they'd just refuse? I wouldn't go that far, the whole vid had people refusing to do stuff alot less crazy than that, he was just trying to be an edge lord and was assuming they'd just go "fuck no", not an valid reason though but the difference between going "what's a horrible thing I could say, oh I know!" versus "here's a horrible thing keemstar recently said, I'll make a reference to it" is pretty wide
He was also shocked the guys put it on video. He wanted to show how easy it is to let other people say outrageous stuff, just by paying some money. Yeah he crossed a line, I think he knew that, but wanted to show the bizarre outcome of 'out of pocket remarks + some bucks + the website Fiver' = apparently possible without regulation.
When did he do that?? Was it before or after he blew up? I remember watching him before he started getting big and I don’t remember this, so I (sadly) want to assume this was after?
He was massive for years before this happened
He was showing how unhinged fiverr can get. He definitely should've chosen a different message, but I didn't think the nazi labelling and media dogpile were justified. He made a dumb mistake, but it doesn't make him a bad person. Nobody was directly harmed.
Didn't it get the people he paid show the sign get banned for that? Like it really did impact their income. And the entire "I didn't think they'd do it" holds zero water since it was on a *pre recorded video* it's not like he told them to do something on a live stream. And there's certainly a pile of other things he could have had them say without it being a dog whistle. There is a pile of chances he had to fix that "mistake" before it went to air
Yeah that’s what kills me the most. Why in the world did he think posting the Fiverr and n slur vids was a good idea??
Exactly, that's the mistake. He shouldn't have even made the video, but with the place he was in at the time, I don't blame him for having poor judgement. The fiverr account was unbanned pretty quickly.
Lmao same, watched ONE video of his and just didn't like it
Hasn't he very much changed since then though? Like, in recent years when he's just the meme review guy and after having his kid he mellowed out a lot from what I can tell, don't really watch him anymore either way
He's not even the Meme review guy anymore. He basically retired to have a family. He lives in Japan and only makes vlogs of his life and experiences with his kid intermixed with occasional food reviews or reddit reacts. People are also missing that he was struggling with Alcohol addiction for years. The whole scruffy beard era was literally because his dialy routine was play videogames, film youtube video, and get blackout drunk. He wasn't looking after himself and his behaviour online was just as self-destructive.
He had a kid?? I dunno bout all that, I just know that I’m not going to just brush off what he’s done until I see actual evidence that he’s changed - him not posting himself saying slurs anymore doesn’t mean he’s changed, nor does his several apology videos. Edit: what, did the pdp fans find me? Fuck y’all
What exactly would that evidence look like?
What Idubbs did. A genuine apology for past harm done and an effort to reconcile with it.
Didn't you say he already made an apology, and you don't accept it?
When have I said that? I was sceptical of Idubbs until he made his apology video. I don’t have anything against him anymore, he’s recognized the harm he caused and is reconciling.
"him not posting himself saying slurs anymore doesn’t mean he’s changed, nor does his several apology videos."
Actual activism - not just “I don’t actually believe those things”, but promoting and donating to Jewish charities, spreading awareness and information about racism and antisemitism… But if that’s too hard for him, he could at least try apologizing *without* some excuse
That doesn't answer the question about the bridge incident
That was the Bridge Incident. It's called that cause he was playing a game and got sniped while his character was standing on a bridge, then he said the slur.
That makes sense
While he was playing PUBG (one of the first battle royale games), gets sniped on a bridge and drops the most casual "What a fkin n-word"
And then he said he "looked for the worst thing he could say" cuz he was so mad, but like, dawg that shit don't come out that easy unless you're saying it often.
> dawg that shit don't come out that easy unless you're saying it often. I keep on seeing this repeated for a decade now and it makes absolutely no sense. I have never seen anything related to psychology or speech science that backs this up. Do you think that people stutter when they say a word they don't usually say?
If you don't use a word often it just wouldn't come up in regular speech. It's pretty obvious, I don't think it needs a study to back it up. People use the vocabulary they use and don't tend to randomly stray away from it.
It wouldn't come out in a moment of anger, either. If a person was to sit for a bit and literally think, "what's the most offensive thing I could possibly say to this person," they might come up with a slur, specifically because they ARE so offensive; at that point, though, someone's had plenty of time to realize what a terrible thing that would be to say, and they wouldn't do it. If it just comes out in a moment of anger, that's a word someone thinks about/uses a lot. People who don't use/think about that word regularly won't come up with that off the top of their heads. It'd be something more like, "you're a stupid POS," if they regularly use POS, or "you dumbass," if they don't. Coming up with the n-word right off the top of one's head the second they're angry means they've - at minimum - *thought* it often enough that that's what comes out. I've certainly never come up with more than, "you asshole" (or, yes, "you stupid POS") about any race (or sexuality or gender), and most people who don't use slurs haven't, either. You simply don't use words you never would have otherwise just because you're pissed.
oh he's the guy who did that i keep seeing edits of the bridge lmao
When was the next time
He said "what a fucking [n-word]" when someone greeded his teamate in pubg, this happened somewhere around 2017 IIRC and on a bridge. He has also done some very edgy fiverr content by paying people to say extreme things to see if they would do it or not. Many people claim this to be a dogwhistle for his actual beliefs, this also happened somewhere around 2017. He has since radically changed his content twice, first into a reddit review, gaming, and philosophy channel, then into vlogs about basically his retirement in japan.
There was also the video he made that was like...mocking the ADL for listing stuff as hate symbols.
Is that the one falling for obvious 4chan bait? That's pretty worthy of mockery to be frank. They were claiming basic ass English words as hate symbols
There's a difference between saying "this is ridiculous" and smirking at the camera as you do the dogwhistle. Given everything else he's done, and the people he hangs with, I think we can pretty safely say "OK yeah it's kind of weird that he did that right after apologizing for saying the gamer word and getting two kids to write it on a sign" Like to be clear, the ADL wasn't *wrong* when they said shit like the OK hand sign had been coopted. There's a reason Rittenhouse was like "Oh I didn't realize that the people I hung out with were white supremacists" when it was pointed out that all three of them were doing the hand sign as they hung out in a White Supremacist bar. It's the same reason the Christchurch shooter did the OK hand sign. It's just that dogwhistles are...well...dogwhistles. They're meant to make you look weird if you call it out because, as you said it's "basic ass \[shit\]". So when the guy has a video where he's going at length about how the ADL is so *silly* after he's already done questionable shit....Yeah. E: Man, I don't get why people downvote simple and true shit. I'm not saying that anyone that uses the OK hand sign is a white supremacist, obviously most people aren't because otherwise it wouldn't be a dogwhistle. Dogwhistles exist. Even when you describe it as "taking the bait" you're implicitly acknowledging that it's a correct thing to point out, but that it makes one look incorrect to the average person. I dunno Reddit is the source of brain-worms so I'm probably going to get a lot of downvotes but none of this is incorrect to anyone that thinks for a half a second tbh
I don't think Pewdiepie is a horrible person. I don't think he's a great person or a particularly good role model either. I think he's just some Swedish dude who had the sense of humor of a teenager that had never cared about educating himself on any social issues before he suddenly got famous by playing video games. Whether you like it or not, he has a huge audience, and I for one am glad that in recent years he's decided to use it for chill, non-problematic content instead of diving deeper into expressing any alt-right views that he's accused for having.
does tumblr hate pewds or smth? i dont see it other than like the bridge incident, man's just living his best life and playing games on the internet edit: tumblr was probably correct for not liking him at that point, wow
This was back when stuff like the bridge incident were more fresh in people's minds and people assumed this would be Pewdiepie's first step into the Alt-Right pipeline, then there was some nazi jokes or something? I dunno but it ended up being a really fuckin weird moment of an otherwise relatively clean career.
It was a lot of stuff. He would drop hard-r slurs, make jokes that were well past “edgy”, and of course the cristchurch shooter name dropped him during the shooting.
Didn’t he also “accidentally” say the n-word twice? I might be misremembering.
Yes, and tried to excuse it by saying it's normal to say it in Sweden 🙄 (as if that makes it LESS racist that people say it frequently there)
I’m swedish and I’ve only ever heard one non black Swede say it and he got a lot of greif for that.
Honestly that's good. Makes ya wonder what kind of people pewds was hanging around though 🤔
I'll accept that some people get mislead when their biggest influence of a new culture is a bunch of edgelords who use slurs casually. However, personal responsibility still applies. If I fell into the company of a bunch of foreign douchebags, I should start to realise that as I become more fluent. If I didn't? Well, I shouldn't whine when I'm held accountable for saying slurs.
Ding ding ding. If you do piece of shit things, and claim ignorance because we'll "everyone else around me does it".... you still deserve consequences for your actions?? You still did the bad thing. And like, morally should have known better. Like, you can't just rob a bank and be like "well it was me and like everyone I know, we all rob banks! Its normal for us" and expect the police to be like "oh okay nvm you right, it's fine since yall do it all the time"
I mean. Literally the only reason you don't say slurs is peer pressure. Because there are plenty of slurs most people say on a daily basis that lost their slur status due to that peer pressure being absent. The word "bastard" was a vicious slur only a few generations ago. Around old enough people that one will still get you some strange looks. You should know better than to rob banks, but there's no way to know which "bad words" in a foreign culture are harmless vs which are considered hate speech. Especially not during a time period where those terms were very very close to being normalised. Had Trump not won/bots not fuelled the American culture war, I'm pretty sure that one would have lost a lot of its edge. People don't remember how close to normal it was getting. We were only like six months away from people saying it on TV. I distinctly remember an interview, I think about Django Unchained, in which Samuel L Jackson was basically telling the interviewer to say it and he only didn't because of network policy. That's how close to normalised it was. I'm always surprised how few people remember this given how recent it was. To clarify, I'm doing devils advocacy here. He probably knew better. But the specific example of subcultures I'm taking umbrage with.
> I mean. Literally the only reason you don't say slurs is peer pressure. I mean.....No? I don't use slurs because I know they'll hurt people, and especially hurt them in vulnerable spots. More than just a regular insult, and with way more baggage. Besides, I'm pretty sure the n-word being a racist slur is very widely known. You don't need much exposure to Americans to determine that, I think.
Why do you know they hurt people? In fact, why are they hurtful at all? That's what I'm talking about. According to several Swedish people in this thread, it was known as "a bad American word" no different to "fucker" or anything like that. I'm inclined to believe them.
>I'm pretty sure the n-word being a racist slur is very widely known. Idk about this specific case but you ain't right, most people I know just use it as another word for black people, they don't know it's a slur. Especially since a lot of exposure to it comes from black people using it so they don't realize it's bad
Felix thinks him and his dumbass friends as teenagers used it all the time, and that means everyone in Sweden does.
I mean, I watch another Swedish youtuber a lot and he's never said it
I don't think you can blame Felix for the shooter namedropping him, really.
I’m just saying, his controversies weren’t minor. I don’t think he warrants blame for what the shooter said and did, but if someone started killing people in my name, I would maybe examine what I was doing that could have inspired that.
He did address it and he did change it. The shooter said "Subscribe to PewDiePie", so he went on cam, comdemned the shooter's horrofic actions, and officially ended the "Subscribe to PewDiePie" meme. That and he went and did self-improvement, owned up to his faults, took responsibility for the things he did wrong, and moved on. Throwing the shooter controversy at Felix's door is like blaming J.D. Salinger for John Lennon's death.
I’m just saying that he didn’t go through a period of minor controversies in a “weird moment” in his career.
The name drop didn’t happen just because the shooter really wanted to shoutout his favorite YouTuber right before committing a hate crime. It happened because “Subscribe to PewDiePie” had already become an extremist dogwhistle and he was continuing it. There was a pretty long period of time where Felix could’ve come out and disavowed the alt-right backing behind that meme, yet he waited until he was being implicated in a hate crime to say anything about it. There was also the incident of him making extremely vocal announcements about donating to the ACLU, partly as a way to disprove claims of antisemitism IIRC, only to unceremoniously drop all of the donation plans at the last minute…after constant complaints from neo-nazis in his fanbase that Felix was being pressured by “evil Jews” into giving away his money as donations or something. When he finally gave an extremely noncommittal response to his donation withdrawal, he made the video in an outfit adorned with a symbol indistinguishable from the German Iron Cross, completely ignoring or downplaying the celebrations from Neonazis who were now convinced he was one of them. He played the whole situation off as coincidence, which…I can’t see into his brain and say for sure that he must be lying, but at the very least, it’s concerningly ignorant when he had already been coming under fire for aligning with neonazi talking points (like *paying people to hold up a sign that said Death To All Jews*) Felix / PewDiePie has shown time and time again that, even in the most charitable interpretation, he doesn’t care at all that his “edgy” behavior attracts far right and neonazi extremists, as long as he’s not being implicated by the community he fosters. He tolerates or even accepts the worst kinds of people calling his fanbase home, only offering disavowals when they begin to act so vile that even he has to worry about consequences.
Was fortnite and spyro the dragon right wing dogwhistles too? Considering the shooter claims both of them influenced his choices as spyro taught him ethno nationalism and fortnite taught him to floss on corpses? Nah, I dont think so. He was an accelerationist whod say anything if he thought it would make people stressed about society in general. I think its more likely that he said «subscribe to pewdiepie» as it was the catchphrase everywhere online at the time by a youtuber that was popular with kids but criticized by adults.
The difference is that you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find alt-right spaces that are particularly strongly invested in the cultural impact of Spyro or Fortnite. But PewDiePie? Curiously enough, almost all of the super extremist corners of the internet that align with the shooter’s ideals seemed to have a really pronounced interest in Felix, constantly celebrating him and championing him as “he’s [their] guy” The shooter was a far right extremist, who propagated far right ideals, wrote a far right manifesto, and committed a hate crime often associated with the far right, the victims of which align with the supposed enemies of the far right. The assumption that he was just an accelerationist, nothing more, and that his ties to a controversial streamer beloved by neonazis is just as coincidental as his claim of being radicalized by Fortnite emotes, is wildly bad faith.
The shooters manifesto basically confirmed that he said what he said for the sake of being controversial and cause more discord in other peoples minds. He was an accelerationist and wrote that games such as spyro the dragon taught him ethnonationalism and that fortnite taught him to floss on the corpses on those he killed. Despite that, noone assumed that those games had extremist right wing undertones, or that any reasonable person would be radicalized by them and I dont think either company made a statement on the matter either. Obviously the main difference between his mention of spyro and fortnite and him saying «subscribe to pewdiepie» is that the latter was the last thing he said before he started shooting, but i still feel that its unreasonable to say it reflects on pewdiepie or his content. Either way, the guy was troll that wanted cause as much controversy online as he could, which is why it was all streamed, and thats why he mentioned all the modern pop culture references that he was trying to tie back into his ideology
Jesus christ dude.
Fucked up, isnt it?
Your reaction to my comment, yeah.
?
He did, he grew and changed. What more do you want from him?
I really don’t give a shit about Pewdiepie, I have never watched his stuff. I was just trying to explain that this guy didn’t just have some odd moments in his career, there were some pretty serious things that happened, and when he was a lot bigger and more relevant he didn’t seem to give a shit about anything unless it affected his subscriber count. There’s another comment in this thread from someone that knows more than me, that explains what was so fucked up about his involvement with the christchurch shooting. I didn’t think this guy would have such staunch defenders, but I have always been too old to have been interested in his stuff, so I guess I’m sorry for talking shit about your guy?
I just think it's dumb that people are still bringing it up after this much time has passed. He has apologized for his actions, acknowledged why he was wrong, and made every effort to distance himself from his past. At a certain point you're just beating a dead horse. I'm not saying his actions weren't wrong but it's just petty and stupid to hold someone's mistakes against them forever, especially when they have demonstrated that they are a changed person.
Like I said, I don’t give a shit about the guy. I know about him as a very popular streamer, he broke into mainstream entertainment, he courted neo-nazis and the alt-right, the christchurch shooting happened, he is not nearly as prominent in the zeitgeist. Literally the last major thing I heard about him was his reaction to the shooting, and that’s true for a ton of people. Also, the shooting was *five years ago.* That is not some unfathomable length of time. You can barely even refer to that as “his past”.
5 years is a significant chunk of most people's lives unless you're like 90
What other hard-r's did he drop?? And it was 2017 plenty of people were doing well past edgy jokes that was basically the culture on the internet at the time. It was the same time period as when "Feminist triggered compilations" were the hot new meta to grow your channel.
A big thing that I’m still personally salty about is when he had fucking Ben Shapiro host his meme review segment. That directly lead me down a bad path and it took years to climb out of that hole. It wasn’t exactly like he was being actively right wing, more that he didn’t flinch at platforming or regurgitating the same ideas for the sake of comedy to an impressionable fanbase of kids/teens. Still though that was like 7 years ago so idk he’s probably changed a lot.
also Elon Musk
Oh god I had completely forgotten about that, that was really weird. I'm happy you're not going down that path anymore.
It was the time Shapiro was always making it into memes by "destroying someone" and it was a big joke. Actually happened exactly the contrary to me and was an awakening realising that the right Is full of shit and Is just religious emotionalism
And yet his contemporary friends and fellow gaming/variety YouTube channels didn’t make those jokes. He wasn’t some product of an unavoidable culture, he was an active contributor to it by choice
No, it was definitely not the culture of the internet at the time. I know because I was bemoaning the loss of that kind of culture back in 2017. Pewdiepie was playing into a specific /pol/ niche.
Okay it was a bit on the backend but as someone also firmly in that culture I can tell you that level of edge didn't truly die out til mid 2018
“He was a man of his time bro it’s not racist bro” stop the cope lmao
Literally eight years ago lol
Were *you* dropping slurs and radicalizing children eight years ago? I feel like it wasn't actually that common and might speak to his character or how much we should trust him with social power/influence or something
The commenter you were replying to was saying that eight years ago was very recent, I believe.
Buddy I'm saying that eight years ago was a short time ago in terms of culture and could not under any circumstances be considered "another time" in terms of slur usage.
Don't care. You still shouldn't be saying slurs, ever. He was a full grown man and should of known better. Cope.
I'm saying that eight years ago was a short time ago, you are terrible at this
Except, you know, the "kill all jews" sign Or when he wore a shirt with something that looked a lot like an iron cross to the video where he backtracks on his 50 000$ donation to the ADL (jewish anti defamation league) https://metro.co.uk/2019/09/14/pewdiepie-video-sparks-fiery-debate-viewers-mistake-georgian-bolnisi-cross-iron-cross-10743104/
..I'm gonna say it, you know what the Iron cross is, right? As in it explicitly is not Nazi symbolism? it's German Empire symbolism. The joke is inherently edgy because he dresses as something mistakenly believed to be a nazi symbol. So when people call him a nazi people can go "uhm ackshually". And that's the joke. Is it edgy? yes. Cringe? sure. It's everything wrong with 2016-2017 humour as someone who unfortunately had a big phase of that kind of humour despise not liking Pewdiepie. I'm only explaining the joke because I remember this video and I remember that's obviously what the joke was, ragebait trolling to the *nth* degree
That was intentional on his part ?? That makes it so much worse if this is true. Like he did that on a video where he said he would actually not give the 50 000$ he pledged to a jewish organisation because of his previous controversy
So: same fascism different pile?
No. Because the German Empire wasn't fascist. Contrary to popular belief words have meanings.
Bruh. You call it an _empire_. Words have meanings
Oh my god!! and Australia has States too!! does that making the United States 2??? 🫢🫢🫢🫢🫢 The German Empire was a constitutional Monarchy PLEASE use Google I'm begging you.
Colonial imperialism isn't much better Honestly y'all Reddit types are such snowflakes sometimes
mhm and the founding fathers owned slaves so anyone whonlikes them is a racist, of courde Britain did a lot of bad things so anyone born before the British Empire fell is an inherently evil being. Roman dress up for theatre is of course entirely off limits. God this is fun! what was my point again? Oh right! THE GERMAN COLONIAL EMPIRE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HOLOCAUST IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THEY DID OTHER THINGS BECAUSE THAT IS IRRELEVANT TO THEIR LACK OF THINGS DONE TO JEWS DURING THAT TIME.
He also paid some people on Fiverr to hold up a sign saying "death to jews"
Edgy fucking shit to put that down and expect the guys to not do it. That's how we discovered they don't speak English, least he did them justice after
[удалено]
[Jump to 1:20](https://youtu.be/AFY7mGkmFxo?si=IpP8AfZKV3wEd924). I made a small error, the sign said "death to all jews".
I cant be bothered to track down the video, but I actually watched that video years ago, and pewdiepie did in fact do this.
It was the video that made Disney cut all ties with him
It in no ways redeems it, but if I recall correctly it was both about seeing what people on Fiverr would actually be willing to do and he claimed he didn't expect someone to do it, and the other part of the message was subscribe to Keemstar, as in the joke being Keemstar would say that. He definitely sent a lot of kids down the bad pipeline but it seemed to me at least just to be him being an idiot, an irresponsible idiot causing harm but not malicious
We’ve gotta stop excusing racism and antisemitism
Agreed Though I think we should also stop lumping in stupid people with actual racists
You’re doing it right now. He’s not stupid, he’s racist.
> an irresponsible idiot causing harm but not malicious Two counterpoints. First, Hanlon's Razor and it's common corollary: > Never attribute to malice that which may be adequately explained by ignorance. > There comes a point where the only feasible way to be sufficiently ignorant is through malicious refusal to learn. Second, an adaptation of Clarke's Third Law: > Sufficiently advanced ignorance is indistinguishable from malice. Yes, it's better to consider someone ignorant than cruel, but eventually you have to accept that it's just less likely. This is doubly true in the modern day, where information is easier to spread and discover than _ever_ before in human history. At some point, the only way to _not_ learn is if you actively _refuse_ to do so, even when the information is handed to you. And if you insist that you were _so_ ignorant that you didn't _know_ that apparently-malicious actions would result in harm, then it doesn't matter if you're lying or not - if you are, you acted maliciously, and if you aren't, _you should have_. Besides, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what reasons he had. He still _did_ those things. He still caused direct and undeniable harm. He was still _personally responsible_ for the actions he performed.
I dunno why you're being downvoted, this is literally the appropriate response. If you don't know whether a significant claim is true or not, you _should_ ask for a source on it so you can check. I'd have thought that a _tumblr_ subreddit would know how much damage can spread by people who don't _fact check major claims_, given how much it's happened on tumblr.
Didn't he make a video with Ben Shapiro or something? He also made the creator of Darkedgebloodsword very mad for not linking to their DeviantArt where they make actually great art
basically saying the n word, and people thought some of the stuff he said about t series was racist to desis/indians or playing into desi/indian stereotypes and apparently a lot of middle schoolers internalized that stuff and started being lowkey racist
The what?
"The bridge incident" refers to when he was playing pubg (iirc) and got shot by a guy across the other side of a bridge from him and dropped the n word
Honestly that pewdiepie recived backlash and he actually changed and bettered Is surprising in this day and age where content creators usually dont get anything bad thrown at them. After the bridge incident I was like "why Is it even bad tho" that led me into studying the whole linguistic aspect of racism and other stuff, before that it was super normalized over here (LATAM) that sometimes u have a dark skinned friend that everyone knows as "yeah el negro" or using the Nword on the internet freely because it was just "some word from USA". I feel like a content creator work Is also fixing past mistakes, at least through exposure of "yeah this was bad, didn't know about it, now I do". Also pretty surprised he didn't took refuge in the Alt Right for defense
Changed and bettered? He waged war against mainstream media, declaring them to be jealous and scared of YouTubers and accused them of making him out to be some kind of bad person just for… - Dressing as a Nazi - Paying people to hold a sign saying “death to all Jews” - sharing videos from Nazis - Inviting Ben Shapiro to host one of his videos - Indeed the bridge incident - So much use of the r-slur - And more! I think it’s pretty generous to call that changing and growing.
I'm sorry but "sharing videos from nazis" Is a very long reach. He promoted like 20 small channels, he literally passes through one and says "this one actually has a pretty nice death note video" before recomending it, withouth knowing one of the videos used as material in that video is from a far-right killing where a nazi run His car into people. Gets told "hey, this channel Is actually a far right neonazi producer", inmediatly pulls that segment of the video out, and does a video clarifing that he didn't know and that he doesn't support that, retires His support of the channel. AND I'm sorry but for someone not from the USA u dont know some of that stuff. During years Ben Shapiro was just a meme outside USA, the random guy that destroys random young students, not the far right "kill all arabs" guy. The N-word had meaning inside the USA, from people outside it, it was just "black people word" that sometimes they use in songs and on the internet, after the bridge incident the stuff detonated and me (and lots of others) actually understood the significance of utilising that word and the historic negative meaning it had. For the "r-slur" the same, over here it was the same as saying "are u an idiot? Is something wrong with u?" Replaceable with idiot in whatever content. Ableism wasn't a big thing as today. All those things we're More than half a decade ago, and pewdiepie hasnt been involved in More "Incidents", has apoligized, and change. I wouldnt say it's generous
Americans seem to have a lot of trouble understanding that their specific cultural hangups don't apply to the rest of the world. I'm reminded of a similar issue involving a Christian festival celebrating the wise men that Americans could not fathom being acceptable because it used blackface to depict the king of a black nation, respectfully. And people so concerned with racism go absolutely apeshit over it when it's not their culture and nobody takes offence at it. Though ironically American cultural influence is strong enough now that their racism and hangups around race are spreading too.
right? theres so many things in my culture thatd probably give americans a heart attack. they need to learn and understand that not everyone knows their "common sense" and we dont NEED to know
And when was that, 7 years ago? He has realized how toxic the influencer culture is and the internet in general is , and how it incentivizes hate for the sake of maximum profits, took steps to back away from the youtube life, change and become a generally better person now. And you are still stuck in 7 years ago unable to move on.
Here on r/CuratedTumblr we believe in forgiveness and people improving on themselves unless you made edgy jokes almost a decade ago. Seriously this is so stupid, people are acting like he's the second coming of Mussolini.
The brain is hardwired to hate more than to let live and forgive. It worked with the cavemen and kept them alive (but not happy), but now it's just being used by the algorithm to keep you hooked.
is there proof that he’s changed? i haven’t been keeping up with him, but just because he stopped openly doing shitty stuff doesn’t mean he changed, he could have just stopped recording it
Yeah that’s my issue. I was a *huge* pdp fan as a kid and these incidents just made me feel nothing but vague disgust towards him. I’d *love* to see something that indicates genuine change, but multiple shitty apology videos ain’t it.
Lmao how can anyone prove they're not constantly dropping hard R slurs when they're alone? More proof than "it's not appeared on video since" is impossible
i mean things that prove that he has different beliefs. if he just stopped doing controversial stuff that doesn’t really mean anything to me. all he said is that he’s stupid and that he shouldn’t have done it. i don’t think you can make the argument that someone’s “changed and become a better person” if all they’ve done is stop publicly doing the thing that got them a ton of backlash
How does one prove they don't have racist beliefs? Anything you do honestly you could also do performatively. Hell, Harvey Weinstein donated $100k to a chair for Culture, Media, and Feminist studies two months before it became public he was a sex offender (and, immediately after the rape stories emerged, attempted to donate another $5 million to a women filmmakers scholarship).
Maybe late, but after those incidents he was part of the biggest camping donations on YouTube at the time, i remember one year counting like a million USD raised for different campaings, after Beirut exploshion, when the crazy guy used him in His manifesto (quite literally just named dropped him, along with some other crazy theories) he donated to the victims of the shootings AND other stuff. I do remember tho during that time people claiming he should Donate to the ADL to kinda "make Pesce" with the jewish community, and when he annunced he would, recived backlash from people claiming the ADL was a shitty ONG (this was after a mozque shooting if I'm not mistaken) and him choosing another one
A sorry would help…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/29/i-didnt-want-hate-win-pewdiepie-ends-subscribe-meme-after-christchurch-shooters-shout-out/ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/12/pewdiepie-apologises-racial-slur-im-just-an-idiot-youtube
Has he ever actually apologized? He did step back from YouTube eventually, because he didn’t like doing it as a full job anymore, but that’s a pretty different thing
Yes I recalled he did apologize for the bridge incident and apologized and compensated the fiverr guy for the mistake when he realized he didn't speak english (it wad a "social experiment" by him trying to prove that people will do anything for money, and as you knew it was very flawed). Stopped the "subscribe to pewdiepie" thing and adressed the shooter issue directly. Idk about the other ones tho.
Yeah. Plus them saying that using the word is "normalized" meaning people don't know it's "actually that bad" is... I'm sorry but ignorant. Plenty of people and communities use words and slurs they KNOW are bad but normalize them and use them anyways. You cannot assume innocence from those who frequently use slurs in their daily language. Idgaf if it's "normalized" where they're from. Many of these people know, even if it's subliminal or deep down, that it is wrong. But they do it anyways, because they can, because others do it around them. Not all cultural language things (like swedes saying the hard R like pewdiepie did) are done in innocence. That was clearly born of racism. Like. You can't remove that from the origin of their use of the word. They can claim innocence all they want. It's feigned. No one in their right mind could use a heavy word like that as a slur and get away with it because "everyone else does it here". But ya know, it was pewdiepie! Couldn't have really been that bad huh? 🙄
American influence reshaped how the n-word was seen in Scandinavia. Neger was seen as the allowed word up until millennials and calling someone black was seen as more disrespectful. The jump from neger to the n-word is a shorter one, especially removed from American context. That said though. The bridge was way too late for that to matter and he 100% should not have said it. He said it because he was pissed of a pulled the worst word he could think of, not because he hates black people, but because the N-word is a bad word. Everything has context, and ignoring the fact that PewDiePie is Swedish and not American is ignorant in its own right. It's like how fuck is worse than frick. It's on a scale of bad, and the n-word is merely at the top of that scale. He should've known better, but pretending that PewDiePie saying it because he's pissed off at a game, and Billy Bob from Luisiana saying it to an actual person is the same is ignoring a lot of factors.
Honestly here in sweden a lot of 30+ people are still not used to the N-word being bad. I mean we had a snack that was called N-word balls that was renamed to chocolate balls. But try convincing an old person to call them chocolate balls instead of N-word balls and you will have to listen to a 30 minute tirade.
Damn, Sewden sounds racist as fuck lmao
The word literally only has racist connotations due to western culture, and that can change over time. If you've ever used the words bastard, moron, or even dumb, you've used a slur. Bastard in particular was considered a really bad slur with a ton of oppression tied up in it only a few generations ago. You're essentially doing the same thing as complaining about the Spanish word for black. American culture has influenced Sweden to make the n word have racist connotations that it never used to have. That's not then recognising that they used to be racist, it's the word itself changing within the culture thanks to American influence. In a generation or two, don't be surprised if the word loses all negative associations. This already almost happened once back in the mid 2010s.
I don’t remember it losing any negative associations in 2010 and I doubt it will lose negative association in two generations. But the rest of the comment makes sense
Somehow the part I find most offensive about the old name is the fact that they want you to think about **someone's nutsack** while you're eating some snacks. It's like making a beer and calling it "Some Guy's Piss".
Using the n word is racist no matter which way you spin it. Yes calling someone directly the word is "worse" but when pewdiepie has that much of a young audience, and many of which are Swedish themselves, him saying it and then making excuses literally condones others using the word because he "didn't mean it like that" or "it's normal here" Please explain to me how the roots of saying that word in Sweden ISNT based in racism. Please. I'd love to know the dichotomy of swedes using the word and how it's totally not a result of racism at all. Please enlighten me. Because everything I've read leads me to believe the only reason it's "more problematic" now is because young people ACTUALLY care now and are willing to stand up against the fact that it is racist, and wrong to say the word casually, now more than ever. No one is ignoring the context that he is from Sweden. Swedes should NOT get a pass on saying the word causally because it's "more normal" there or "normalized" it is still racist, and based in racism. Edit to add: swedish bird scientists (ornithologists) even changed the name of 10 different species of birds because they had racist names because that used to be considered "okay" and now is not, for logical reasons. One of such being "neger" the word you said was "normal". Because even swedish ornithologists saw that shit and was like "fuck that's racist that has to go, no bird should be named that shit".
Ignoring the part where I said that the popular opinion changed with millenials growing up and that he still shouldn't have said it, I see... No, using the N-word is not racist under any context. If it was black people couldn't use it as a term of endearment amongst themselves. Again, in scandinavia neger was the term for black people up until basically 2000. Just like how negro is the spanish word, pretty sure it was adopted from spanish or other mediterranian languages. Calling africans black was seen as the racist term, it's all contextual. Because of american influence it has since flipped in Scandinavia too. If pewdiepie were to yell a racial expletive directed at a black person that would've been "din svarta fan" or you black fuck/devil. To a scandinavian the N-word is merely big bad American word. Of course he shouldn't have said it, but calling him racist, full stop, ignores context and intent.
using the hard R n word is racist full stop. Whether it is AT SOMEONE or not. Im not talking about the soft A. That is different. Black people can and do say the soft a version all the time. Its MUCH harder to find a black person calling another black person the hard R. Because its racist. Even if not used at someone directly. The only times I've EVER heard the hard r said by a black person was a one off Uncle Ruckus-esque person i met in real life. You can say its due to "american influence" that the word is seen as bad. But we're not talking about "neger" when we discuss what pewds said, we are talking about pewdiepie saying the Hard R N word as an expletive. it does NOT have to be AT a black person for it to be bad. The N word can be seen as "the american big bad word" okay sure. That does not make using the hard R less racist. Words that were okay can become not okay, just like how the ornithologists changed the name of the bird from "neger" recognizing that its use is racist. You can even look up the meaning of the word, see that it is considered derogatory, and see that there are NEW WORDS to be used in its place, as the term is outdated and considered derogatory. You can fight that all you want, but the swedish language has already adapted. People need to follow. You're ignorant if you use outdated derogatory language beacause "it wasnt always considered bad or derogatory". Change is not always bad, and if multiple sources state the word is being cycled out of use due to it being RACIST, then maybe it is racist ;) (im actually looking things up here, not just "pretty sure" by the way.) Btw: THE OFFICIAL SWEDISH DICTIONARY recommends alternate words for things like "neger" because they are racist. There is literally records stating that the word has been falling out of use since the 60's because of its unfavorable connotation. You can say its not racist until the "2000s" all you want, however that simply isn't factually correct by any stretch of research.
Okay, listen closely. TODAY neger is INDEED RACIST. Up until RECENTLY it was LESS RACIST. BLACK was seen as MORE RACIST back when neger was deemed APPROPRIATE. The N-WORD DOES NOT carry the same connotations in Europe and Scandinavia that it does in America. WE KNOW THAT IT IS BAD NOW. PEWDIEPIE SHOULDN'T have used it. BUT he DIDN'T use it AS A RACIAL SLUR DIRECTED AT A BLACK PERSON. He said it OUT OF RAGE because it's BAD, REMOVED FROM MEANING, and NOT because he hold any sort of hatred for Africans. There's a fucking difference here, and implying any use of something is always on the same level is amplitudes more ignorant than Pewdiepie's use of the word ever was.
IT DOESNT MATTER IF HE DIDNT USE IT AS A RACIAL SLUR AGAINST A BLACK PERSON. NO ONE SAID IT HAS THE SAME GRAVITY. IT IS, HOWEVER, STILL FUCKING RACIST, DIPSHIT. NO ONE SAID IT WAS BECAUSE HE HAS VITROL FOR BLACK PEOPLE. USING THE WORD IS STILL FUCKING RACIST EVEN IF NOT USED DIRECTLY AT A BLACK PERSON. See? I can type in all caps too! If you genuinely believe its more okay that pewdiepie said it because he didn't use it directly at someone to be racist, you're more ignorant than you could ever hope to claim me to be. Jesus fucking christ. The use of the hard R N word is racist as an expletive AND as a slur against others. It doesn't matter if your intention isn't to be racist when using it as an expletive.
If intention and context doesn't matter then what's even the point of anything? A boxing match is just assault then, self defence and cold blooded murder would deem the same punishment. Of course how you use something matters. When he apologised for his use of the word and bettered himself people still chose to hate him for it, and that's just not deserved. If that's a concept too hard for you to grasp then I don't care to continue this conversation. Have fun being mad at the world, you're the reason It'll never get better.
The dude was making videos for American audiences for years at that point. Do you truly believe he didn’t know about the “connotations” about it. Did he also not know the “connotations” of paying people to hold up signs saying “death to all Jews” lol. Also, wtf are you talking about with calling this dude more ignorant than the guy that ACTUALLY SAID THE WORD LOL. Fans of this guy always make me laugh bro.
His audience doesn't change who he is or where he's from, but yes of course he knew the N-word is bad, that's kinda why he used it. What I'm saying is his use of the word doesn't mean ha hates black people, which is the important part. The death to all jews thing was an attempt at a joke. YT at the time was super into edgy humour and he was blinded by the environment he was in. In the midst of all this the critique is ignoring why things were done and judging it thorugh a really black and white view, ironically. He's not some raging racist, he just treated his 100 million person audience like everyone else treats a discord call with the boys. It was stupid of him, and he's learned Just look at his content now vs then
No one Is saying or even implying the word Is ok to say, just that pewdiepie said it for completly diferent reasons, was told why Is still WRONG and bad word, and when told it was a racist thing to say, apoligized, changed, and didn't say it again. That Is change, and saying that "pewdiepie Is a racist nazi and nothing Is going to change that" just makes the young audience feel "hey, i like this guy, but they are telling me he Is a nazi, but this Is not a bad guy, so maybe a nazi Is not that bad", and end things worse for everyone
He had been making videos in English for an English speaking audience for nearly a decade at that point. There is no way that in nearly 10 years of interacting with a significantly proportioned American audience, did he not pick up that the hard R N-word is a very bad thing to say. If he honestly didn't know it was bad, we would have heard him say it much earlier, and it wouldn't have been during an angry moment where things slip. He knew it was bad, no one had to tell him it was bad, and he knew he fucked up as soon as he said it. Also beside the point, if you don't want to be compared to a nazi, don't dress like a nazi, and have people hold up a sign that says antisemitic things, for your predominantly child audience. Not saying he is a nazi, but there are easy ways to avoid the allegation.
I'm totally on board with what u are saying, even with context the second part still holds; was a shitty thing to do even with the why, still dumb from him, but actually apoligized, and removed the content. For the first half, I think different, for lots of years i thought the N-word was just "fucker" but used by black people because it's one of those "language changes thing". Also being from LATAM in a country where we never had slavery to begin with, saying someone Is black was never a "bad thing", even if still has racist origins, it was never a bad connotation, so at the time I was like "why so much fuss about it!" And wondered why pewdiepie had apoligized. Then i read and learnt about the past of the word, and why Is a No no
[He never dressed as a nazi.](https://history.stackexchange.com/a/35576) The 'sharing videos from nazis' was when he bundled like 10 creators together to support them, and one of the ones who made a video on Death Note turned out to be a nazi. He addressed that. Then again, it's weird to claim he didn't change and better himself because all this happened, like 7 or 8 years ago, and he has certainly reflected on the alt-right stuff and distanced himself completely.
Him dressing as a historical soldier and watching Hitler speak is him dressing as a Nazi, I don’t care what the costume *technically* is.
Wow, did you get homeschooled? You sound like you got homeschooled.
theyre just looking for something to be mad about ig
Meanwhile, the mainstream media across most of Europe is desperate to get YouTubers on TV to appeal to younger generations, in the Netherlands alone there have been several television shows commissioned that originated on YouTube, and music shows are consistently pulling in YouTube cover artists to take part, and roughly 5 years ago the biggest Dutch game show asked YouTube star NikkieTutorials to take part which directly led to becoming an internationally famous tv personality I also know the BBC loves putting YouTubers and influencers into celebrity shows to try and appeal to a younger generation, like Strictly Come Dancing the past few years always had one contestant who was exclusively internet-famous, even saw that Uncle Roger guy taking part in a tv quiz one time So mainstream media is definitely not against YouTube
Also during his beef with T Series he posted a diss track that was built entirely on racist stereotypes of Indians
Well he drew for 100 days and got better at it. Anyways just give him time.
He's literally just am edgelord, not much more to it
People still care about Pewdiepie?
Apparently. I used to watch his videos, but havent thought about him in years.
He's a father now. Just checked and it looks like all weekly vlogs now, sometimes with the kid.
The video about drawing is pretty cool tbh, it's great to see his progress to become better at it
Idk, I haven't cared about him, ever
Yes.
If I may act like my username about this, Pewds also seems like the reason racism towards Indians has gone just way up
I used to be a casual viewer of his upto 2018. But his fanbase being Lord Curzon levels of racist underneath EVERY video of his during the "T-series war" just made me hate him. He conflated T-series with India as a whole. Awesome bangers from his T-series diss include: "your language sounds like it came from the mumble rap community" (mfw our country has 800 spoken languages) "I'm a blue eyes white dragon while you're just dark magician" ...and more. I found out about the..."bridge incident" and the Fiverr episode after that, and realized the dude was always a fucking asshole. IDK what that era must have been like for diaspora Indians, esp anyone in school. Probably way worse lmao.
also ‘who the heck is bob and why you wanna kiss him? (ew)’ refrencing a viral pic where an indian guy texts a girl ‘show me your bobs and vagene’. apparently indian men with poor english being creepy texters is like a stereotype online so its basically portraying a pretty unflattering racial stereotype.
you're not wrong and I think it doesn't get discussed much/at all, even in the "PewDiePie pipeline" discourse
Absolutely. Was in school as a Desi during that period, it was annoying to say the least.
It's surreal seeing people come out of the woodwork to defend him.
This is a really weird post, afaik Pewdiepie hasn't done anything controversial recently
It’s totally wild that saying some bad words has people acting like he robbed a seven eleven or some shit
The title goes surprisingly hard tbh.
Are you people still angry at him lol
"Lesbians for Boromir?"
...what the hell happened with pewdiepie??
If only
Rent free.
Hope was not the last evil. The absolute reading comprehension of this hellsite.
Well they never had them catch the thirteenth ghost, so who gives a shit.
Putting a different spin on a classical myth is not poor reading comprehension. I am fully aware that hope is not presented as an unleashed evil in the story of Pandora's box, and the fact you didn't pick up on that only says bad things about *your* reading comprehension.
BECAUSE IT DIDNT ESCAPE THE BOX. JUST LIKE HIS CHANNEL WASNT DELETED. YOURE CRUEL 😭
Hope all you want.
The title goes surprisingly hard tbh.
Ew @ all of the pewds dick riders in this thread. Y'all will really bend over and kiss the asses of any mid white guy on the internet no matter what huh
Me fighting my boyfriend: [https://youtu.be/yajquwpNaLA?si=G5DSH6o3OLg9shdq](https://youtu.be/yajquwpNaLA?si=G5DSH6o3OLg9shdq)