Hey guys, it's PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW— As I'm sure... heh heh... a lot of you are aware, I make millions of dollars making videos for the internet. And the reason why you know this is because that's all the media's ever acknowledged me for. For some reason, they don't report on the inherent worth and value of my internet videos where I pretend to be scared by video games. In 2013 someone wrote an article about what it might mean that I'm the most popular thing on YouTube, and because I'm a healthy person, based on that one article, I concluded that the entire media hates me and also just the concept of internet personalities. I'm just one guy. There's no producer. There's no writer. Please ignore the script I wrote for this video that you can fucking see in the reflection the entire goddamn time, and that I'm clearly reading from. The media never comes to me for my side of the story, except all the times they do and I turn them down. And I have no other platform in which to get my message across. I want to address the biggest issue first, which would be the, uh, "guys holding up the sign" thing. I'm saying it like that because it's much easier to take my side when you forget that the sign said "death to all Jews". I'm going to try not to mention that's what the sign said. I'm just going to call it "the sign thing" from now on. A lot of people really liked the video, and some people didn't. You know, some people just think it's really funny when you write "death to all Jews" on a sign. It's... it makes a really good point about how you shouldn't say it, but I said it. It's funny! But a lot of people think anti-Semitism is wrong, and it's bad to normalize hate speech by turning it into a spectacle for fun and attention. Uh... But, you know, both, maybe both sides have a bit of a point here? Y'know? I'm very sorry for the words that I used. I'm going to use the phrase "the words that I used" because, once again, I'm reticent to remind people that the words were "death to all Jews". I admit that the joke went too far. I believe that you can joke about anything, and that means that you definitely should, especially if you're a gaming YouTuber with a large fanbase of tweens. It turns out there's a right way and a wrong way to pay someone to call for the extermination of the entire Jewish people. I found out one of the wrong ways this time. Maybe I'll get it right next time! I admit that my joke was very easy to misinterpret, and how dare the media misinterpret me! They're trying to make me look bad by— The list is huge! They've reported the things I said and did... We can all agree that the people in this situation who fucked up are the journalists who watched the things that I made and reported on the things that happened in them. I hereby call upon my fans to boycott the Wall Street Journal! Please, my core demographic: consider purchasing a different economics broadsheet in the future. We need to stop the Wall Street Journal and all other forms of pitiful, hateful, bile-spewing clickbait. Clickbait is awful. Purposefully using a catchy, attention-getting headline so people read your work? Wouldn't it be awful to live in a world that normalized people doing obnoxious, over-the-top things for attention so they could make money? Wouldn't that be fucking terrible! WOULDN'T IT?! WOULDN'T IT?! WOULDN'T IT?! Just one tiny... multiple slip-ups, and then all the media had to do was report on it! Almost as if that's their job! Now, you could say that a world where you can pay poor people to do almost anything because they're desperate and need the money has far deeper problems than the risks that will happen to a rich person if he actually pays people to do it. And you could say that maybe we should take deadly seriously the actual fascists and Nazis emerging from the woodwork to defend me and the concept of ironic racism. But you're forgetting that none of that affected me! Apart from the fact I'm fighting the realization that a literal child can do what I do, I was doing just fine. I'm fucking rich! But not as rich as I could have been... And that's the real problem, isn't it? I'd... I'd got my hair done well, and I'd learned to smile, and wink, and do the brofist. And I'd apologized for all the rape jokes. I was ready to be the face of the internet... and then that clickbait, 39 times Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism outlet smeared me by reporting the things I said! Luckily, the real faces of free-thinking rational media had my back. If they hang out long enough on YouTube livestreams, they'll surely eventually crowdsource a solution to the problem of people thinking racism is wrong. This incredibly intense overreaction to journalists reporting on things popular people say can't possibly backfire and make us look like tiny babies! And what am I supposed to do about this slander? How am I supposed to defend my image? All I have is more money than most people will ever fucking see, 53 million subscribers, and journalists asking me to give my side constantly, which I refuse to do! I'm almost as downtrodden as those poor Indian people who were so desperate they were willing to write racial indecencies on a sign for five dollars, BUT I KNOW WHAT THE REAL OPPRESSION IS HERE. J.K. Rowling even called me a fascist! Well, she didn't. She made a pithy comment about the proliferation of ironic fascism for the sake of edginess, but I don't need to read and parse the words properly! WHO AM I, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL?! Personally, I think "THEY"— that's right, "THEY", all of the bad people— are the ones normalizing hatred, because I'm sure everyone hates me AND I'M NOT PARANOID!!! Instead of focusing on my show getting canceled, why don't we focus on some real issues? I'm not going to say what those are, but hopefully it doesn't involve wondering why Nazis love my videos so much. I'm still here, Wall Street Journal. You tried to destroy me, but you failed... which is what you were trying to do, apparently? I'd like to say a very special thanks to everyone in the YouTube community for coming out of the woodwork to vocally support me so people would click on their videos for money. Let's brofist. Also, I'm really sorry about the rape jokes, okay? Can we please just forget about this and go back to loving me again? ♪♪ ♪♪ [PLAYING THROUGH LAPTOP SPEAKERS] [MUSIC STOPS] Alright, I recognize that this video might offend some people. I recontextualized some of the stuff that Pew said, added a couple of things he didn't say, and of course, I, uh, titled the video "PewDiePie Is A Nazi." So while I've got you here, I just thought I'd defend myself by saying... It was just a joke. Y'know, like those things PewDiePie does? Surely, in the name of freedom of speech and expression and being able to joke about anything—nothing is off-limits—surely, I can jokingly say "PewDiePie is a Nazi"? Right? And while I'm being super obvious about what the point is of this video, I do think it's a little bit disingenuous for Felix to imply that the Wall Street Journal put Disney in a corner and forced them to sever ties with him. Disney are a, you know, big company? They can make their own decisions in life. And they're also a little bit afraid of looking like anti-Semites, because it's bad to do that, and also they have a history of maybe making a couple of mistakes on that front, and they kind of got to correct that. No, I think Disney severed their ties with him because they... saw what he was doing, and thought about it, using critical thinking. If I recall, a similar thing happened with Levi's, where they saw that PewDiePie was making a bunch of rape jokes, and they stopped wanting to advertise on his videos. That's a business decision. That's not repression or censorship. That's a company saying, "hey, maybe we shouldn't advertise on this guy's page. Maybe it makes us look bad." That's just a business decision. Disney have something of a reputation to protect. They make films that are usually for almost all ages; they make Star Wars now. I'm pretty sure at no point in a Star Wars film does a character pay someone to hold up a sign saying "death to all Wookies," or at least if they do, they turn out to be the bad guy, or in the midst of a massive nervous breakdown, in which case, I am really sorry, Felix. It's pretty clear from how the discussion is unfolding on YouTube that the real problem isn't some impending corporate monopoly. [OFFSCREEN NOISE] Sorry, there's a train. The actual monopoly is inherent in how the discussion is being had. For example, look at the treatment jacksepticeye, another gaming YouTuber, is getting for daring to say that he thinks maybe Felix got some things wrong. Jack is a fan of Felix. The two have known each other for a very long time. He very clearly looks up to him. And he made some fairly light criticism. But the internet is calling him a backstabber. Like, the most subscribed person on YouTube can't even be mildly criticized by someone who admits they look up to him without them being accused of backstabbing him, and a massive shouting match emerging between their respective fan bases. And from what I can gather, that's the real problem here. Comedy on YouTube, as well as most forms of discussion, can't really develop beyond a fairly juvenile stage because it's impossible to provide a nuanced critique without being regarded as a threat. Supposed attempts to defend freedom of speech have ended being defenses of the most popular person's speech from other people's speech, because they're using it to criticize them. In place of fighting for some actual freedom or some genuine discussion, people are basically arguing for a pseudo-populism in which the most subscribed person has to be right because he has the most. In the words of Keemstar— and I actually wrote this down when I saw it because it was ridiculous— He then goes on to say: Already decided he's innocent, because of likes. I certainly hope it goes without saying at this point that the idea that a person can't be wrong because a lot of people clicked a like button on their favorite gaming YouTuber is a really bad idea for speech and discussion. Freedom of speech is a very important thing and it should be defended from people who seek to limit it. For example, actual literal fascists. But who in this equation needs defending the most: the guy with the most subscribers and the farthest reach on the fucking platform, or the smaller people who actually dare to criticize him and are being treated like dog shit for it? Somehow, I think this video with a bunch of dumb jokes in it, and a couple of bits of light criticism where jacksepticeye says he thinks Felix got some things wrong, are somehow more revolting than a video of someone paying people to hold up a sign saying "death to all Jews". Doesn't something seem wrong about that? Just in case it wasn't obvious, no, I don't think Felix is actually a Nazi. Which, admittedly, is a pretty low bar. But then again, I have quite a lot of experience with Swedish fascists, so maybe I just know what they look like. I didn't think the Wall Street Journal thought he was either, though. I've read their article. They just pointed out that he relies on one joke too often, and that's because when people criticize him for overusing jokes, or relying on sloppy joke editing as a crutch, people jump down their throat and call them a backstabber. The structure of YouTube doesn't just hurt people who happen to not be as popular as PewDiePie and have different opinions. It also is bad for PewDiePie, because his comedy can't evolve, because people can't criticize him without being called backstabbers, so they don't bother. Unless we actually raise the discourse by treating everyone in the equation better, especially the people who criticize PewDiePie and have less of an audience, then we're going to keep encountering this same problem over and over again, because nothing will actually change. Also, I really have to reiterate: I don't think Felix is a Nazi. Now I've said it, you can't sue me. ♪♪ Thank you very much to all my patrons, for helping to validate this dumb garbage that I make. In addition to the names scrolling past the screen right now, I'd especially like to thank: [READING NAMES] DON'T FORGET TO SUBSCRIBE
I don't believe PewDiePie is a nazi (I watched this and I believe HBomberGuy said the same thing too) but functionally he still spreads some of what they believe and acts as a gateway, hence the pewdiepipeline stuff
I 100% agree with all of that and it's kinda painful to have to see the anti-media stuff in a new light
I love it when I post this vid and people respond with "pewdiepie isn't a nazi!"
Yes, this one did it too.
What happened this time?
This is the passage from the shooters manifesto mentioning pewdiepie:
It doesn't matter what pewdiepie's personal beliefs are. The problem is, he is very stupid. He has stumbled in to a culture that allows a few people to fail upwards.
Here is an example of how stupid he is. His entire job is producing digital videos. He knows almost nothing about digital video. Recently he unironically showed his video encoding settings in response to the constant comments he receives about the poor image quality of his videos. He encodes color at 4:2:0. That means the color resolution is 1/4 the video resolution. YouTube samples color that low to keep bitrates low, but no professional would use that as the source video to send to an editor. Garbage in, garbage out. One obvious consequence is that it makes green screens look terrible because there are fewer green pixels to work with. He also only hires editors as underinformed about digital video as he is. They should catch something basic like this. None of this is on purpose.
The other part of his stupidity is the format of his content. Pewdiepie is a react channel that reacts to meme compilations made by others. And occasionally he reacts to e-drama. He is the king of no-effort content.
He is somehow a novice at digital video after all these years and he uses those remedial skills to make no-effort content. He parrots incel and biggoted language, because like everything else, it has been a fundamental part of him failing upward. I honestly don't think he is capable of knowing better. I don't think he understands much of the dog whistle code he uses. And by chance, his fellow retards have made him their king. He is a failure made king by other failures.
I have spoken about this for a long time privately but I suppose now is as good time as any to make a post about this. I believe that Felix is not a nazi, but a useful idiot. Literally.
I am not a fan of him, so this isn't me defending an idol. What I do feel however is a sense of empathy, which stems from reasonably similar backgrounds between him and I. He is a swede who likes 4chan, I am a finn who browses 4chan. I believe I can see where things went wrong.
Let's start with racism. Sweden, although a bit more multicultural than Finland, is quite homogenic in terms of population. For them, racism is not a "real" issue to be aware of in day to day life. Sure, there are roma people and somalian refugees from the 90's, but all that is marginal compared to, say, the US. Now I don't know what kind of a place Götheburg is so I may be projecting my own experiences, but whenever people made racist jokes, they got away with it because there was no fear of reprocussions and they weren't personafied. You weren't making fun of Kareem from school, you were making fun of the nebulous "other". People who made racist jokes or straight up were racist, more often than not couldn't cite actual interactions with the race they were demeaning. 4chan didn't seem hateful, but rather just obscene like South Park. A haven of humor that held nothing sacred. Because of his surroundings, he wasn't aware of the potential damage that his words had and have to this day.
What exasperated Felix's ignorance, was most likely his family background. He's from a rich family of executives, and to my ears that doesn't exactly spell "wokeness". It is evident that Felix has not been paying attention to politics, and thus he is unaware of the damage that he is causing. What little politics he may have heard, judging by his class background, was propably economically liberal (european definition of the word) first and foremost. That is strike one against getting him to lean left, "because aren't those guys the no-fun baddies?" I have been raised in a very politically active family, so thankfully I managed to dodge the pitfall Felix has slipped in ie. lack of awareness to the political nature of 4chan humor.
Strike two is the reaction we in the left have had when faced with his ignorance, immidiate condemnation. True, what he has done over the years has been stupid, but we have repeatedly attributed to malice that which can be attributed to ignorance. We attacked him as a nazi, rather than educate him like the idiot (literally, in the original sense of the word) he is. Strike three was what the right did after all these instances, they welcomed him with open arms. They weren't like "those triggered leftists calling for your head." They, unbelievably, manage to time and again seem like the calm and rational option. Felix is now leaning very hard on the wrong side of the fence he has sat on for his entire life. He espouses right wing because he most likely doesn't even realize it. "They call me a nazi? But I am a moderate! What a bunch of idiots, right my totally moderate friends who don't take these stupid jokes seriously?" "Ach, right you are mein aryan friend!" "Ha ha, great joke!" "Ja, a joke..."
Felix isn't even an isolated incident. There must be more public examples, but one that does come to mind is Jontron. Another idiot with obscene humour but just that. We denounce him, so he packs his things and joins his new friends who for some reason really like Pepe the Frog meme.
Most important take away from this is that although Felix and Jon are famous people, same stuff can happen in much smaller scale in our daily life. We may have a friend or an acquaintance who says stupid shit. Instead of immediatly grabbing the guillotine lever, look at the person speaking carefully. Can they be saved from their stupidity? Could you pull them down from the fence where they yell out obscenities? Are they trying to joke around or do they actually have a tiki torch and a polo shirt? If they are an idiot in literal sense, educate them. If not, fight them.
TL;DR: Pewds is most likely a literal idiot with no first hand experience of the harm his kind of jokes cause. Many people are idiots in fact, and we shouldn't attribute to malice what can reasonably be attributed to ignorance. We should try to pull fence sitters to our side rather than make them do a trust fall on nazi hands. If however they are without a shadow of a doubt on the other side, do what you want.
PS: We can say that Felix is showing willfull ignorance. That may be true, but it is still idiocy nontheless. With a person as big a platform as that, we have to try.
The fact that this is posted again makes me think Pewdiepie did something shitty again, is this true?
When will youtube grow up and realize Eric Andre is where it's at?