The PewDiePipeline: how edgy humor leads to violence
83 replies, posted
I'd say the bigger a person's celebrity status is, the more social responsibility they have to consistently disengage racist ideologies, especially if their personal brand is associated with 'edgy' humour. At least in the current online political climate.
Absolutely. He platforms terrible people.
it isn't even like it's always bad to bring people from the right onto your show, the problem is that he'll refuse to challenge their beliefs in a meaningful way
When steven crowder brings up a bunch of bullshit talking points about how weed turns you into a brain dead psychopath or whatever, Joe will put up meaningful opposition. If he challenged the ideas being put forward by other guests in a similar way, I think it'd be fine to bring them on.
like, I don't think the takeaway here should be "you can't say these things" or "you can't talk to these people". It should be "you need to be responsible".
At the very least, it should be "you should be providing context". When you bring on a factually/scientifically suspect fringe political personality, there should be an expectation that you present them as such. Otherwise you're knowingly spreading misinformation which could be indirectly harmful not just to people belonging to whichever maligned group, but also to the potential susceptible young people who watch the show.
For example, imagine if a young person watches pewdiepie saying "niggers" or "death to jews" or something and then shouts it at a black person or an orthodox jewish person on the street because they think its harmless fun and then they get decked in the nose. Or if someone watches whatever political ideologue Joe brings on the show and thinks whatever they're saying is much less disputed than it actually is and then they go on to tell it to other people as if it's a fact and so on. This is how things like anti-vaccination and flat earth conspiracy movements got started.
If you watch the video he does call out joe rogan.
Other radicals with radical ideologies?
Theres a whole forum full of "sorry not sorry" idiots on 4cHan 8chan whateverchan and pol, and who knows where else.
But pewds making light ass jokes and saying the N word is apparently the straw that breaks the camel's back? Oh please... Hijacking at its finest.
Non-compete is a bit of a hardcore ideologue. I took a look at one of his live streams and his unfiltered opinions appear to be a lot more extreme.
I see a trend of pinning responsibility on everyone but the people actually at fault for perpetrating the acts.
I feel like Pewdiepie's status is overblown and he's made an easy target for blame due to his subscriber count despite the fact a disproportionately small amount of those subscribers actually watch his content, and that most of it doesn't have shit to do with the alt right, or promoting their ideals in any way.
Of all the people on youtube who actively profit from a toxic viewerbase seeking validation and proliferation, there are much, much more valid targets than pewdiepie. Presenting oneself as a cool or knowledgeable guy only to sneak in some alt-right rhetoric is a tactic used by a ton of youtubers who have a very obvious underlying motive. The professional debaters manchildren like Destiny who happily give platforms for similar shitters to promote their ideals while pretending to own them live are also a bigger problem because they produce content which fails at their core to actually discredit or dismantle bad ideologies and instead just allow them to proliferate further and faster.
That's ridiculous. Just because someone is a "celebrity", whether they're an internet celebrity, actor, or whatever, does not mean the responsibility should fall on them when some loony fan decides to start some shit in their name. What, would you hold Jodie Foster responsible for John Hinkley Jr. shooting Ronald Reagan? Is Bernie Sanders responsible for the guy who shot Scalise? Pewds isn't the youtube equivalent of Charles Manson, here. He didn't tell this dude to go shoot up a mosque in his name. He's just a guy who makes dumb jokes and saying he's some gateway drug to the alt-right is dumb as well.
From what I've seen, any connection he has from the alt-right came from the alt-right themselves. He did not invite alt-right fans, they invited themselves after seeing the media dumping on him for whatever he does (whether it's justified like the "blurting out the n-word" thing or something less so like when he started talking about books he's read). The media would respond to his shit, then people like Sargon would be the ones going "the media is attacking pewds! Alt-right defense force GO!" That's where most of his alt-right-aligned followers come from, he didn't choose them, they chose him. As for who he follows, what would YOU do if everyone of as particular political alignment decided they hated your guts and no amounts of apologies or disavowing would get them off your back (and yes, this is totally the case. Pewds has already disavowed the mosque shooter and has repeatedly said how sickened he is that the mosque guy namedropped him, and we're still seeing bullshit retarded videos and thinkpieces like this pop up)? You'd find yourself gravitating towards to the people who DON'T shit on you for everything you do. Only reason he stopped following them was because people started harassing EVERYONE on his "following" list, alt-right or no, for the crime of being followed by pewdiepie and the only way he could limit the damage was to stop following everyone.
And before anyone says anything, I don't even like Pewdiepie. To me he will always be the guy who popularized "exaggerated screaming at mildly scary video games" as a Let's Play format. But I've been practically a first-hand witness to how this whole retarded culture war started up from GamerGate and beyond (and I still follow some of the people who were big voices from way back then) and hot takes like "pewdiepie is responsible for radicalizing the alt-right" does NOTHING to lessen this bullshit. It just further amplifies and divides and makes everyone involved look like a goddamn fool.
This video is not ideological tho.
You are not alone a lot of ppl dont watch before posting
Not all edgy or crass humour is the same, even though they may appear so at first glance. On the internet it may be difficult to know your audience when it's virtually everyone but
...Humour is recieved differently by different people. A racist may think it's funny because it reflects reality. A non-racist may find the same joke funny because it reflects a comically absurd world view.
Jokes on Facepunch aren't radicalising by the virtue that Facepunchers are mostly not radicals themselves. Based purely on the memes posted here, someone might miss that fact, but not when you consider how vocally fascism and racism are opposed here.
With PDP, we don't really know what values he holds or subconsciously imparts through his content. Screaming racial slurs as a random example would be a clue of that.
Huh, striking. Funny thing is, I've been throwing around the term "post-irony" to describe how I see people who started doing something uncool ironically, now grew into it and do it unironically.
Myself even started wearing socks and sandals ironically, because people found it so shocking, for one, until I started doing it post-ironically.
It seems the same process happens with things of much grander scale and graver implications. I don't know what's the impetus to get into ironic edgy racist things in the first place, but I do believe the irony itself is a factor in people accepting that world view.
ironic fascism is still fascism
This doesn't really have anything to do with fascism, it's related to respecting other people and how not doing so can have negative, albeit indirect, consequences when someone has a large enough audience.
There's a much longer trend of wanting to solve problems without addressing their deeper roots because it's easier.
I feel like while Pewdiepie is a light, very early first step for some alt-right people, Joe Rogan crowd is very firm alt-lite. Libertarians, people who share the South Park ideology of "hates conservatives, but is reeaally fucking tired of liberals" (so functionally conservative), the people who voted for Trump not because MAGA, but because "literally anyone but Clinton, fuck her." If anything they'd put up some MAGA thing or two just to "piss off those dumb, annoying liberals" but weren't really on board with Trump. They just literally don't care about anything he says, because it'll never affect them. The liberals, though, are the ones saying to everyone "aren't we all being a little fucked up? maybe do something about it?" and these people don't want to have to take the responsibility that maybe they're doing something wrong.
This is going on a little bit into projecting because I know people exactly like that (who shrug and go "hey, maybe they should build a wall" instead of loudly complaining about immigrants and instead laugh at the crying liberals), and they're another important demographic to worry about. Not everyone is a confederate alt-right, but we have a lot of people who are complacent with that alt-right.
And that's where I put the Joe Rogan crowd. Definitely not far right radicalization, but nowhere near concerned with any of that radicalization. At all. And those damn liberals just need to shut the fuck up about it.
How can you lie so brazenly?
The shooter was 28 years old, he wasn't raised on the internet. There is no signs to indicate he was addicted to technology. Of all the ways I've seen to deflect from the clear Islamophobic motivations, this is probably the most ludicrous.
Right, I don't think the video is saying that PDP is those people, they are saying that PDP serves as a pipeline to those people.
I honestly couldn't disagree harder. Have you ever seen Destiny debate a right-wing person? He makes them look like absolute fools. He completely discredits and dismantles several right wing talking points. Destiny is nowhere near as bad as someone like Rogan or Rubin or, to a much lesser extent, PDP. There is zero evidence that Destiny has done anything other than retard the spread of far-right ideas, as evidenced by the base of fans he has developed and the sorts of enemies he has. There is simply no way you can make the argument that Destiny of all people helps profligate right wing thought.
I have no idea who "Tomska" is but he tweeted out a rupidation of radical extremism so I'm not sure what stops PDP from doing the same. I don't think he is nearly as important as you think he is, and honestly it would be a win either way for him. Either most people are convinced and we can go on our way, or people feel like he is being disingenuous and then he can just say "See, I tried to explain myself and they still want to paint me as the bad guy" and be totally vindicated.
For what its worth I think the shooting shook him at some level, given the fact that he cleared his follows list, which included several right wing and far right people, many of which pushed anti-Muslim propaganda.
What do you want YouTubers to do: disavow racism and extremism at the start of every video?
The shooter was 28 years old, he wasn't raised on the internet.
I'm 28 years old and I've been using the internet since I was 5.
You're reading what you'd like into this. It is ridiculous that he'd have to make a video disavowing racism and extremism: it's such a fundamental position that he holds. It has nothing to do with his content.
This is sufficient:
https://twitter.com/pewdiepie/status/1106419935390171136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1106419935390171136&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdeadline.com%2F2019%2F03%2Fyoutube-star-pewdiepie-sickened-by-new-zealand-shooter-reference-during-massacre-1202576849%2F
I'm genuinely curious, can you string together more than two posts without being dishonest?
I mean, same, but I'm willing to bet we are outliers in this regard. These are anecdotes anyway; AFAIK we know nothing about the shooters childhood.
It just sounds like you don't like that group of people. Alt right essentially means nazi, so it's just like "well now libertarians are alt-lite", you are accusing them of being light nazis. That doesn't seem a fair accusation to make based on the description your making does it? Is everyone who is too right leaning supposed to be at risk for nazism, should everyone like that be censored because of the risk of "promoting" radical terrorism?
To draw a pretty obvious analogy, it's obvious that all muslims are not at fault for radical terrorism, but one of the popular talking points of the far right in america pretty much from 9/11 through now is that normal mosques have tons of "radical imams" that radicalize muslims to support terrorism. This is textbook fearmongering but the parralel should be obvious, there are indeed muslims that become radicalized within the religion but if you go around calling muslims isis-lite you'd like like one of the biggest idiots there is. The reason so many people fell into this trap of "muslims bad" is kind of the same reason so many people are failing to make a distinction between actual nazis and ordinary people. It's a rediculously bad attitude regardless of where on the political spectrum anyone falls on, you can't just blame people that have nothing to do with anything and expect a good response, you just dig deeper divisions.
It's so frustrating to see people who pretend to understand why the blatant fearmongering involved in the "mosques are radical islamist training ground" shit the terrorist himself seemed to buy into is *wrong* just to make the same mistakes over and over.
It's a good first step, I think. It remains to be seen if this continues to be a clear pattern of changed behaviour or if he goes back to making 'lul lul kill all jews nigger nigger' jokes to his 91 million subscribers.
Not that this kind of shock humour cannot be funny (to a certain audience), it just needs to be made clear just who is being laughed AT and who is being laughed WITH.
https://twitter.com/Hbomberguy/status/1107236042262884352
Speaking of Destiny, I think this is a good take on the whole "jokes to radicalization" thing
https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/b516i0/a_slam_dunk_by_destiny/
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Raidyr is a poster who expects *me* to disavow the right every time i make a post related to this topic or else its apparently fair to spend a whole thread flinging thinly veiled nazi accusations for having opinions he disagrees with on deplatforming/censorship and freedom of speech. He has no place to stand accusing anyone else of being "dishonest" with his history here, and i say that mainly because it'd really be nice if he just responded to what you said instead of going on yet another rediculous "wow you have an opinion i disagree with, you must be lying to manipulate me!" things.
As a tangent, it's kind of hard to talk to people who would rather you not be allowed to speak openly or even exist but maybe raidyr hasn't argued with enough actual nazis to understand why that might be the case. As soon as people devolve into this state where it's like, oh pewdiepie has to meet whatever impossible standard of expressing contrition, or else he's at fault for being a pileline to nazis, it basically seriously hinders any kind of productive discussion.
Yeah, I've seen Destiny """debate""" people. It's a fucking clown circus and he loses his dipshit gamble every time, for one simple reason: the alt-right rhetoric thrives on immediate conversation. Why do you think the whole "liberal gets owned by facts and logic" meme comes from ? It's easy as fuck to trap people in logic loops, semantic arguments and constant gaslighting if you're trained in the art of bullshit spewing.
The arguments used by alt-right figureheads are not built around actual hard evidence; if they are, they are built around gross misrepresentation, manipulation and occlusion of facts. You can't actively break down and debunk those points live unless you are so absurdly proficient at a subject you can casually shit out sources at a moment's notice. It takes a lot of reading, a lot of fact-checking, a lot of citing to get anywhere near a point where you've actually managed to debunk a point properly.
1) If you want to hash things out we can do it on Discord, or over email. I have no idea why you trying to shit up this thread with drama.
2) I've never accused you of being a Nazi. A self-serving hypocrite? Absolutely. But never a Nazi.
3) I'm accusing Reg of being dishonest because he completely misinterpreted the argument I made, which seems to follow a pattern of recent posts that are less than truthful.
Did you just completely miss the post where I said that Pewdiepie's tweet was satisfactory in my eyes.
Unless someone had a specific retort to hbomberguy's tweet or Destiny's spiel I was going to bail on this thread because I've said my piece but now I'm interested in the possibility that I don't even want some people to exist.
If your job consists of sitting on your gaming chair making Google docs of talking points and cited research while your debate opponents are typically alt right neckbeards, then not only should Destiny be expected to win every debate, he must thank his lucky stars that he has such an easy job.
You seriously haven't understood what anyone in this thread has said if you interpret it to mean "anyone I disagree with should not be allowed to speak openly or even exist and is secretly a nazi". Do you seriously not see how hyperbolic that is?
Have you considered that you're the one misrepresenting people here, not Raidyr?
You're literally calling someone out for their prior history, misrepresenting them and calling them some kind of evil dictator who wants to silence people like a nazi, because you believe they are calling you out for your prior history, misrepresenting you and calling you some kind of evil dictator who wants to silence people like a nazi. You're seem to be doing the same thing you're accusing other people of doing and don't seem to be aware of it.
Criticising someone does not automatically mean you want them to be executed by firing squad or burned at the stake.
Can we please, PLEASE stop misrepresenting anyone criticising literally anything that anyone says as being some sort of dictator who wants to ban all freedom of speech and execute political opponents.
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