PewDiePie gives shout out to hateful, anti-Semitic YouTube channel - Sensationalist Headlines

People want to make a big deal out of anything these days, it seems.

I can't get over how the screws are perfectly assorted and laid out, but the cables look like a fucking rainforest. Poor guy still doesn't get what he did wrong, either.

Lenny Bruce is rolling over in his grave approaching light speed right about now.

Here's that good ole E;R just nonchalantly shitposting. Jokes are obviously some form of speech that is distinctly different from all other forms of speech and carries no consequence with it at all and so saying stuff like this is perfectly fine and dandy. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/251241/3f6c5f86-fa79-4b7f-b482-dc9a11510325/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/251241/c2c0ebaa-b8d4-4600-8127-0380ad6a4d09/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/251241/a0a52f67-9f43-486a-a911-18a4a4c1029b/image.png And PewDiePie certainly isn't aligned with the alt-right. He's only accidentally dropped the n word here and there, joked about jewish folks, expressed furthering political agenda by talking about climate change is bad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH7wMFrWYoAhttps://www.youtube.com/watcah?v=RH7wMFrWYoA, supports Jordan Peterson (whose been thoroughly discredited at this point), and not only has a history of using dogwhistle rhetoric but is recognized by the far right as a good resource as seen in a recent conference that featured Roger Stone, QAnon, and George Soros conspiracy theories by having an entire talk dedicated to why people should subscribe to him. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/251241/103cc371-668e-4305-8606-d3db02dc0b03/image.png https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/1071162131456909312 I think it's likely PewDiePie isn't necessarily full on alt-right. But I do think it's likely he's sympathetic to them through a lens of "anti-SJW" or some other superfluous right wing framing of the world. I also think it's likely that the Washington Post article from last year probably served to push him into a more reactionary space than before. As far as impact of a single person goes, his content reach is just as comparable as any celebrity, many world leaders, and most CEOs, and even then he dwarfs many of them. YouTube obviously plays some sort of limiting role but with the money he makes he could easily afford to bring even just one person on to check for basic stuff like this and with the audience he has it should really be a moral obligation considering the number of "slip ups". In all honesty this is the kind of proactive (as opposed to their reactive) content moderation YouTube should be doing on all major channels but there's no reason to believe they could handle it properly given all of their mishaps and it would be another hit to the trust of an already fragile community.

but... but the irony

You do realize Jordan Peterson is a meme, right? This entire thread is literally "the boy who called alt-right". Have some restraint so people take you seriously, please.

It's almost like the world isn't black and white

I generally enjoy E;R's content, his editing is excellent and he's good at pointing out flaws in media. That being said, if you don't notice that the guy has some seriously questionable views by watching his videos you're either not paying any attention, you're purposely ignoring it, or you're unbelievably naïve. I'm only able to brush it off because years of exposure to edgy internet humor have desensitized me to that kind of thing (despite the fact that I'm 99% sure E;R isn't joking).

I watched his Steven Universe teardown a long time ago and then forgot about him, and outside of some weird Nazi/Jew shit that I similarly took as weird 4chan-tier """humor""", it was a really good tear-down of that show with a lot of good criticism. Definitely something up with him, but I'm not convinced he's dangerous. I can also see how someone like PewDiePie could watch some of it and recommend him without getting a full picture.

You know what is black and white? Letters. Maybe try looking at them next time. You know how he became a meme right? Because people were making fun of his disproportionately large internet fandom who couldn't see through pseudo intellectual word salad and self-help chicanery and didn't notice he was just your run-of-the-mill angry old man.

Is there a point to telling me what everyone already knows?

If you try and treat everything as if it was black and white you just feed the flame of hate. You are the problem.

That being a meme magically mean something can never be taken seriously again.

We're talking about a guy that does nothing but talk about memes and attempt to kill them. Are you OK?

I don't buy the "E;R is just shitposting/making jokes" side of the argument. Just watched his Blade Runner review and he went too much into dry details on how whites will become a minority in a few decades when he started talking about it "as a joke". Even showing graphs. He does this kind of thing frequently where he randomly inserts far right ideas or /pol/ tier comments into his videos. Sure, perhaps the overall tone is humorous, but he doesn't defuse the inflammatory claim he made. You can say, he doesn't defuse it to be edgy. But showing graphs or news headlines as to double down on what he said makes the "it's just a joke bro" response less believable.

Good thing Vitalogy didn't call Pewdiepie a nazi then, and instead just said he was a useful idiot repeating the occasional talking point, and was probably pushed there by the Washington Post hit piece.

Myself and I think many others here are explicitly addressing this in a nuanced light, but it feels like the counter to that has been pure black/white reactions against that nuance. Given what E;R has said, highlighted in my previous post, he's absolutely a fascist/Nazi. I don't know that PewDiePie is necessarily fully alt-right, but it seems increasingly likely that he's at least sympathetic to them, under the same "anti-SJW" online culture that the alt-right community grew out of. But even if he's not, the alt-right has become a part of his viewer base, and explicitly endorse him for political aims in the same places they discuss Q-Anon.

I don't disagree by any means but I don't think that "alt right sympathizer" is a term that should be thrown around as lightly as it is.

People need to stop thinking about ideology in such an explicit, group-oriented way. Everything operates on a spectrum. Do I know if this E;R guy is a card carrying "alt-right sympathizer"? No, and white frankly I don't really care. The rhetoric he slides into his videos indisputably carries some of the same ideas that alt-right groups espouse. That is, in of itself, worthy of criticism.

That's where I come from as well. He's a shitbag if you look into him and I completely agree pewdiepie fucked up hard by promoting him (I mean he literally used the term niglet in the description of the video Pewdiepie promoted). It's a matter of slapping the "alt-right sympathizer" label onto Pewdiepie I'm against. He clearly isn't hard left, but that doesn't instantly make him an alt-right sympathizer either. That term is something used to discredit people because people don't like to look at the bigger picture and admit that just because they disagree with someone, they don't sometimes have a legitimate point no matter how small it may actually be.

Well here's a response (from 0:30 until 6:30) https://youtu.be/ph8M_8sVOEA?t=30

At 6:10 he said he just edited his existing video so that E;R won't even appear on the video. When did youtube add the feature of editing existing videos?

It has been there for years, but you couldn't edit stuff with more than 100k views. I guess they changed that limitation. You have to use the on-site editor.

Something tangentially related that I think should be discussed is how people handle people who are being intentionally offensive. For example, if I were to make it my goal to cause emotional pain to someone -- to insult or offend them as efficiently as possible, with no regard for anything else -- I'd probably immediately jump to race, sex, or other divisive issues. This achieves the task with minimal effort on my part. Now, I don't ever get to that level of wanting to hurt someone, and being that way is in and of itself something that makes you an asshole, but that doesn't actually mean that the person saying these horrible things is actually bigoted. I don't think anyone -- myself included -- ever really factors this in with their evaluation of others' words and therefore character. If someone calls a black person a "nigger", that person is immediately assumed to be a racist. Without doubt, they're a bad person -- that part is inescapable -- but does it mean they're actually racist, or perhaps they really just hate a specific person so much that they are willing to say whatever it takes to hurt them? I think this behavior is probably more common on the Internet as well -- you don't have to tie your identity to these statements, so there are fewer consequences to just saying whatever will insult someone else. In person, you'd have to hate someone far more to be willing to self-sabotage your image in favor of causing pain; on the Internet, however, you can do so without social self-sabotage whatsoever.

Shoutout to my boys Boilrig and Tudd

So now E;R has an even bigger spotlight on him, instead of a minor one at the end of a video. Good job guys, hope that sweet sweet clickbait was worth it.

Honestly I don't think so. Compare pewdiepie to some other, smaller youtube creators. Off the top of my hat, sovietwomble has a lot of edgy race/sex based humor, but nobody really minds. This is just tabloids eager to leech of his prominence.

https://youtu.be/ph8M_8sVOEA

Like I predicted, he had good intentions and wasn't super well-versed with E;R. He admitted that he should have done better background checks. I think that's fair.

I'd say when you're endorsing Jordan Peterson and bumping people who are chumming with richard Spencer you've stopped being someone who's "views dont align with the left". Christ, wasnt there some massive backlash the last five years about how we need to be less "politically correct"? We cant call them nazis nazis or alr right sympathizers alt right sympathizers because that's too NEGATIVE? What like that'll hurt their feelings? Like it might scare advertisers? (Because they won't be bothered by the racist "jokes" right?) I'm so tired of this idea that negative attention directed at new media individuals is all "hit pieces" or "click bait". Is it so impossible to conceive that maybe PDP is ok with this shit? That he's fine with alt right CHUDs and anti-sjw nerds jumping his dick to "protect" him from legitimate criticism?