[quote]To me, Kjellberg's statement fails to acknowledge that his massive audience is thought to be, in large part, young and impressionable. As he said in the video, he has "so much influence and such a large voice," and when he does something like this, joking or not, it has an impact. He has 53 million subscribers: If just one percent of that base takes his comments at all seriously, that's more than a half-million people running around with those messages in their heads.
You can't have it both ways: Either you are influential, or you're not. Kjellberg clearly understands that he is, yet he seems just as clearly determined to disavow any responsibility. It's an attitude that bears a faint echo of his 2016 troubles with the FCC, in which he received a warning for failing to adequately disclose that he was being paid by WBIE in exchange for positive coverage of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor: Admitting that he's done something wrong, while at the same time insisting that he hasn't really done anything wrong.[/quote]
I think this fails to understand where this sort of humor is coming from. When people online like us make Nazi jokes or anti-Semitic jokes, it's partly because of the shock value of irreverent humor, but I also think it's coming from a place that is actively mocking the people who hold the genuine beliefs; you take "death to all Jews" and play it up and make it absurd and you're basically making Nazis into a big joke. By making these beliefs ones that can be openly mocked you're taking power away from them, by exposing how ridiculous they are.
So yes, context matters. If PewDiePie makes a Nazi joke that is ostensibly making fun of Nazis and degrading them and condemning them, it's not really his responsibility that people misinterpret it. Take the Stephen Colbert show for example; he used to use this hyperbole to say some outrageous things at times in order to shine a light on how ridiculous the things he's lampooning are. If a few young kids (or in fact some actual right-wingers) are impressionable and take him seriously and don't get the joke, that really isn't Colbert's responsibility either. In the case of the kids, it's the parent's responsibility to know what their kids are watching, not the entertainers' to not make more neutered content.
Not to mention that this is more of the same "Think of the Children!" bullshit that was used to target music, or video games, or comics, or TV, or movies, or even books long long ago. Something is irreverent or new or different, so it shouldn't be, and people don't get it. It's the same old fearmongering that people have tried time and time again, and it will continue to fail time and time again.
So, nice try, Andy Chalk of PC Gamer.
But but but nothing is ever anyones' fault. Its always someone else's.
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