Pewdiepie in trouble again

[madhair60]

I highly doubt that Pewdiepie is any kind of committed antisemite. I doubt that he has a serious position on matters like that. What makes these stories interesting to me is how pewdiepie represents the way the wind blows in the 'online' community at large, where all this business of using racial epithets, being a 'wage gap skeptic', recommending Jordan Peterson's book and having Ben Shapiro guest in one of your videos (all things pewdiepie has done) is all nothing to write home about, no indication of anything concerning, all irony or meme culture

More pressingly, there's also the time he just yelled the n-word on stream.

[Chollis]

More pressingly, there's also the time he just yelled the n-word on stream.

That was Zoella.

[Barry Admin]

More pressingly, there's also the time he just yelled the n-word on stream.

People do make mistakes in the heat of the moment though. I'm fairly concerned how unwilling people are to give anyone the benefit of the doubt these days, with all this "callout culture" bullshit.

Did you see the Kevin Hart thing? It seems like people aren't really allowed to make mistakes or grow anymore, not while there are digital rubbish bins to dig through and pitchforks to be wielded.

[Cuellar]

With these digital archives everything is eternally present, it's always happening right now.

That being said I think Pewdiepie is a twat.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

In the case of pewdiepie, how many times does he have to fuck up or parrot some reactionary talking point before it no longer becomes 'callout culture'. Every time one of these stories drops everyone acts as if it's the first time he's ever done anything like this and there's nothing to see here lads. This is like the sixth fuck up

[biggytitbo]

Any others? Or just those ones?

Pranny.

[biggytitbo]

There was also that guy recently, whose name escapes me, who was famous for something or other* and he was getting a lot of grief because people found some social media posts he made when he was 15 that were offensive. That is quite chilling, but it's going to happen more and more in the future unfortunately.

^{*Apologies for the vagueness, I'm sure someone knows who I mean.}

[Monsieur Verdoux]

I think that was a sportsman of some kind?

[Cuellar]

I suppose it might happen more, but there'll probably a peak to it, after which people will have realized that they probably shouldn't post racist memes using their real names in public places.

[Barry Admin]

In the case of pewdiepie, how many times does he have to fuck up or parrot some reactionary talking point before it no longer becomes 'callout culture'. Every time one of these stories drops everyone acts as if it's the first time he's ever done anything like this and there's nothing to see here lads. This is like the sixth fuck up

I agree in principle, but... this is a particularly egregious and tabloidy example.

I happened to watch the video before the articles came out, so was surprised by this. There are two possibilities 1) he deliberately decided to promote antisemetic content, and did so by promoting a channel which apparently has those values, inside a massive list of 27 other channels, trusting that his young fan base would eagerly check and subscribe to all 28 recommendations, and eventually become card-carrying nazis.

Or 2) he made a fuckup, and in trying to help people - after all the promotion he's been given recently - he accidentally listed a channel which apparently has dodgy content, and some journos exploited it to make a story and generate clicks.

I just think it's pretty obvious that the latter is true tbh, or at least seems a lot more probable.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Definitely the latter in this case, but my concern is that you don't have to cast your net too wide in that community before you're inadvertently running into some dodgy content. If you recommend 28 gaming channels, the fact that one of them seems statistically likely to be a full-on racist channel as well is a pretty worrying thing, and I think it's a trend

As I say, I don't think that anything that pewdiepie has done indicates any genuine ideological commitment on his part, but he's a pretty representative figure so the fact that he keeps brushing up against this stuff indicates that he's existing in troubled waters

[madhair60]

People do make mistakes in the heat of the moment though. I'm fairly concerned how unwilling people are to give anyone the benefit of the doubt these days, with all this "callout culture" bullshit.

Yeah, but it wasn't the first time he did it. And there was the "Death to all Jews" Fiverr thing. And then there's this anti-semetism thing. I think he's a bigoted shithead. His content is very much not for me.

I think people are tired of giving these rich dicks the benefit of the doubt, for better or worse. I tend towards paying attention and there are people who have been vilified and harangued unreasonably, but in the gaming sphere you get these people like Pewds, Jontron, Boogie, Ninja and the late TotalBiscuit who put forward these awful attitudes and seem so lacking in any real self awareness.

[JesusAndYourBush]

There was also that guy recently, whose name escapes me, who was famous for something or other* and he was getting a lot of grief because people found some social media posts he made when he was 15 that were offensive. That is quite chilling, but it's going to happen more and more in the future unfortunately.

^{*Apologies for the vagueness, I'm sure someone knows who I mean.}

A girl was thrown off Big Brother after 1 day for something she'd said on twitter when she wad 14 or 15.  But that short amount of time was enough for Lewis G to pick her up by the arse like a bowling ball and have the good grace to not sniff his fingers afterwards.

[Replies From View]

"A wanker worth 20 million quid" as my mother would definitely say. Sad to realise that loads of people do think like that. A rich person can not be a dickhead by definition for a lot of people.

By the sheerest coincidence £20 million is not the same as the $20 million that Arnold Schwarzenegger "earned" for his stint on 'Jingle All The Way', but there is a surface resemblance that I deemed worth indicating.

[Twed]

Too much of the pewing and pieing, he needs to focus more on the middle syllable.

[Replies From View]

Imagine a grown-up human thinking "What I need is a name that rhymes obnoxiously with 'Cutie Pie'."

And then some other grown-up humans thinking "This shit is well up my street!!"

[Cuellar]

From what I gather his fans mostly aren't grown up

[thenoise]

It's probably a name he came up with as a teenager that he's stuck with now. (Like most of us w Th our CAB usernames...)

He's still a twat tho, because no one is forcing him to say it in a stupid singsongy way.

[Kelvin]

Yeah I didn't articulate that very well at all (also tired) , I guess I'm trying to say that there's a drift towards a kind of ambient reactionary politics in these kinds of online spaces, and that JonTron is the extreme end of that, while pewdiepie seems to be wading in the same stream but less affected by it.

People can disagree with me on that, but that's my read

Jon Tron suffered for it because his was a more clear cut case, surely. He made racist comments with no veil of irony or humour. It wasn't in character, or anything. Whereas PewDiePie has weathered it more easily because the instances have been more ambiguous, and more easy to explain away as either shock humour, irony, casual racism, or just stupidity, rather than out and out hatred of a minority. In other words, most people don't see PDP as an ideological bigot, whereas Jon Tron pretty clearly was. 

[Kelvin]

In the case of pewdiepie, how many times does he have to fuck up or parrot some reactionary talking point before it no longer becomes 'callout culture'. Every time one of these stories drops everyone acts as if it's the first time he's ever done anything like this and there's nothing to see here lads. This is like the sixth fuck up

I must have missed a bunch of these. I'm aware of the "Jew" banner, and the N-word idiocy, but what are the reactionary talking points? I'm not saying he hasn't made them, I just haven't seen it mentioned until now.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Pewdiepie had hundreds of hours of videos on youtube. i can guarantee you that you're taking him out of context here. where did he even say that? Have you even seen the full pewdiepie videos or just read about it on feminist new websites? Maybe you should watch them with an open mind, you might learn something. Maybe it is because you know in a debate you would lose, he has helped a lot of people with his work, a lot of young men.

I realise it's tongue in cheek but this sums up why I can't be arsed with YouTube commentators in general; it's such a lengthy, inefficient way to convey points. I've heard of people watching them on severalx speed to get through them quicker, but even that is long. The good thing about text is you can skim through it.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Jon Tron suffered for it because his was a more clear cut case, surely. He made racist comments with no veil of irony or humour. It wasn't in character, or anything. Whereas PewDiePie has weathered it more easily because the instances have been more ambiguous, and more easy to explain away as either shock humour, irony, casual racism, or just stupidity, rather than out and out hatred of a minority. In other words, most people don't see PDP as an ideological bigot, whereas Jon Tron pretty clearly was. 

yeah i don't disagree. i should clarify that when i say 'less affected', i don't mean 'has received less backlash', i mean 'he personally seems less susceptible to going full tilt racist even though the community seems to encourage it to a certain degree'

I must have missed a bunch of these. I'm aware of the "Jew" banner, and the N-word idiocy, but what are the reactionary talking points? I'm not saying he hasn't made them, I just haven't seen it mentioned until now.

talking about the wage gap stuff and the recommendation of Jordan Peterson's book

[Kelvin]

talking about the wage gap stuff and the recommendation of Jordan Peterson's book

Ah, right. I didn't know about those, and have no idea of the context. I'll have a look. Thanks.

[Replies From View]

It's probably a name he came up with as a teenager that he's stuck with now. (Like most of us w Th our CAB usernames...)

Basically people here were better teenagers than he was.

Doesn't he spend his entire life unwrapping kinder eggs on YouTube or something?  Why is he a phenomenon worth mentioning on CaB?

[Monsieur Verdoux]

representative of a broader trend in online culture of whitewashing reactionary politics by veiling them in irony

[Cloud]

Complete nonsense cooked up by The Verge. He gave a shoutout to 28 small channels, didn't do extensive background checks, and one of them apparently does have antisemetic content in other videos, which he was unaware of. He's now edited their mention out of the video.

Shhh, don't let facts get in the way of a good witch hunt.  Get 'em all on trial to prove their innocence (which they'll fail at as they're massive NAZIS).  Double plus good, yes?

I tend to think an actual antisemite would indulge in politics rather than making edgy jokes that people choose to take literally or failing to go through all 28 shout outs with a fine toothed comb in case they said something somebody might have found questionable once.  Which is why I'm more concerned about someone like Dave Rubin or Jordan Peterson who are the ones who have probably already grabbed the incident with both claws and politicised it as another example of the intolerant left and why we all need to go back to the 1950s.

he's existing in troubled waters

Existing in the same space as cunts doesn't automatically make one a cunt.   Otherwise, look around you on planet Earth, we're all guilty

[Monsieur Verdoux]

that's obviously not the point im making though

[Cloud]

I see where you're coming from, but I think it's largely a Youtube algorithm thing.  Seemingly people are usually only 1 or 2 degrees of separation away from an actual racist / antisemite / transphobe / whatever and when there's some common theme tying them together like free speech (which the left isn't exactly promoting these days) then they all come popping up on people's recommendations, snowball in popularity and get introduced to each other.

It's this automatic "recommendations based on what you've watched and what other people who've watched what you watched have watched" system that I think is a huge mistake... it creates these sort of bubble categories that people get lumped in (and, unfortunately, sometimes distilled and radicalised)

[Monsieur Verdoux]

Pewdiepie literally did a collaboration video with Ben Shapiro. You don't even need an algorithm to get from A to B there

[kngen]

If you were a professional Youtuber who was keen to make amends for the problematic 'mistakes' you'd made, you'd probably be more diligent in checking who's trying to associate themselves with you lest they tarnish your burnished image.

Or you could just be a rich shithead with dodgy views who doesn't really care about/can't be arsed to check the provenance of your supporters.

I don't really have much sympathy for him, to be honest, even if this is by far the least dodgy thing he's been accused of. It's very much of a piece.