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Kotaku: The Pewdiepie Fiasco, One Month Later

M

Makonero

Member
A recap of what happened, plus a few new quotes:

Kjellberg's decision to keep banging that drum is a bit surprising when you consider that he apologized for the stunt that set everything off, claiming that he was taking it as a ”a learning and growing experience." Moreover, in a different follow-up on March 3rd, Kjellberg said ”Obviously I'm not going to see [the controversy] some way to provoke or start drama, I have really no intentions of doing that...it's not something I thrive on." Despite acknowledging that his jokes went ”too far," and claiming that he didn't want to start drama, Kjellberg did not make a clean break from what was happening. Many of these jokes are forced, and Kjellberg knows it: at one point during the Conan Exiles video, he grimaces after saying ”Hitler did nothing wrong," noting that his tired shtick is ”not a video, it really isn't."

More than a month since this all started, Kjellberg says that making these jokes were his way of dealing with a difficult time.

”I think when events like this have occurred you can either stay sad, angry or laughing afterwards," he told Kotaku in an email. ”I think laughing is the best way and making jokes is by no means a way to further provoke. I'm moving forward from everything that happened but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend it never did."
Click to expand...

Earlier this month, Kjellberg uploaded a Conan Exiles video where he pretends to play as Hitler while also name-checking the Wall Street Journal. More recently, he pretended that a cardboard cutout of Danny Devito called Kjellberg a Nazi, in reference to the wider controversy. Some call-outs offer a visual gag where Ben Fritz, or the word ‘Hypofritz' are pictured. These references have become sparser recently, but they still pop-up as in-jokes from time to time.
Click to expand...

”Yes, it's frustrating to be misrepresented especially concerning serious issues, but it can also be fun to just joke about," Kjellberg said. ”If there's a ‘pewdiepie vs the media' now, the way I see it is just for laughs."

As for the members of the media that were part of this crossfire, when asked about the barrage of Tweets against the Journal reporters, including Fritz, Kjellberg said: ”Fans getting involved directly on my behalf is something I'm always against," he said. ”It's byproduct of having an audience this scale. But taken from past experiences, I know they'll move away soon as well."

For a good while, Kjellberg had one of Fritz's Tweets featured on his on Twitter.com page, but he recently took it down. Hopefully, it's a sign that he, and maybe his fans, are ready to move on.
Click to expand...

Read the rest here

Dude has no response for the large amounts of people harassing one of the people from WSJ other than to say, "Eh, they'll stop someday." Bullshit, take responsibility for your actions and your audience. Also, on top of all this, he feeds them winks by referring to "hypofritz" and shit. He knows what he's doing. He may not be a nazi, but he certainly isn't innocent.
 
M

Muffin1611

Banned
Yeah, I commented under that. The moment he went to thank alt-right youtubers because they agreed with him was the last straw.
 
Sapiens

Sapiens

Member
It makes me so angry that he still has all that money - Millions of dollars! I wish it would be taken away from him. Nazis like him need to be in jail.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
I'm not sure I'm reading this right. So he blows off steam from being called a Nazi by telling jokes like "Hitler did nothing wrong"?

Or normalizing racism through his statements, rather. I guess I should be clear about the considering the "PewDiePie isn't a Nazi!" defense throughout the previous threads.
 
A

AcademicSaucer

Member
Sapiens said:
It makes me so angry that he still has all that money - Millions of dollars! I wish it would be taken away from him. Nazis like him need to be in jail.
Click to expand...

image.php
 
C

Conor_Fool

Banned
Sapiens said:
It makes me so angry that he still has all that money - Millions of dollars! I wish it would be taken away from him. Nazis like him need to be in jail.
Click to expand...
Is he really a nazi tho?

I didn't follow this too closely but both his response video and H3H3s video made it seem like this was blown out of proportion. Yeah he fucked up but...Nazi?
 
P

Piggus

Member
Sapiens said:
It makes me so angry that he still has all that money - Millions of dollars! I wish it would be taken away from him. Nazis like him need to be in jail.
Click to expand...

Yeah, let's throw someone in jail for making a tasteless joke. Great idea.
 
Oddvintagechap

Oddvintagechap

Member
eh.

If I had a huge youtube following. I prolly would have made hitler jokes at some point of my career. For some reason southerners like to make 9/11 jokes.
 
B

benicillin

Banned
The continued hypocrisy of YouTubers resenting the coverage they get from 'mainstream media' without understanding that they are mainstream media is very frustrating. It seems like you can either live in a bubble like Felix or grow up and reflect on the position you're in like, say, Bo Burnham.

The anger he gets about them not covering good things that he does makes no sense. Not only has he had several positive cover stories, he doesn't need the Wall Street Journal to talk about him raising money for charity - he can talk directly to an audience of millions!

He just doesn't want to be held responsible for what he says.
 
M

Muffin1611

Banned
Sapiens said:
It makes me so angry that he still has all that money - Millions of dollars! I wish it would be taken away from him. Nazis like him need to be in jail.
Click to expand...

Conor_Fool said:
Is he really a nazi tho?

I didn't follow this too closely but both his response video and H3H3s video made it seem like this was blown out of proportion. Yeah he fucked up but...Nazi?
Click to expand...

The nazi label is definitely misused here.

Childish and ignorant is the better fit.
 
T

Taliban Stan

Member
I'm not familiar with this. Did he dress up as Hitler because he loves Hitler and hates Jews or was he making a joke about something being authoritarian and draconian and was like "let me dress up as someone immediately identifiable as these things and crack some jokes?"

I know Mel Brooks has an album cover where he's dressed as Hitler and cracking jokes you could say are poor taste but everyone kinda gets that it's a joke and obviously not Mel Brooks loves Hitler. Is this situation that but everyone took it as Mel Brooks clearly loves Hitler?
 
Yoda

Yoda

Member
Conor_Fool said:
Is he really a nazi tho?

I didn't follow this too closely but both his response video and H3H3s video made it seem like this was blown out of proportion. Yeah he fucked up but...Nazi?
Click to expand...

Agreed. The jokes were in bad taste and showed immaturity/bad taste on his part, but those who claim he's pushing some sort of alt-right agenda is asininely stupid.
 
J

jacobeid

Banned
Kjellberg's decision to keep banging that drum is a bit surprising when you consider that he apologized for the stunt that set everything off, claiming that he was taking it as a ”a learning and growing experience." Moreover, in a different follow-up on March 3rd, Kjellberg said ”Obviously I'm not going to see [the controversy] some way to provoke or start drama, I have really no intentions of doing that...it's not something I thrive on." Despite acknowledging that his jokes went ”too far," and claiming that he didn't want to start drama, Kjellberg did not make a clean break from what was happening. Many of these jokes are forced, and Kjellberg knows it: at one point during the Conan Exiles video, he grimaces after saying ”Hitler did nothing wrong," noting that his tired shtick is ”not a video, it really isn't."

More than a month since this all started, Kjellberg says that making these jokes were his way of dealing with a difficult time.

”I think when events like this have occurred you can either stay sad, angry or laughing afterwards," he told Kotaku in an email. ”I think laughing is the best way and making jokes is by no means a way to further provoke. I'm moving forward from everything that happened but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend it never did."
Click to expand...

Cool. My people really appreciate you turning your difficult time into the spread of antisemitism. There's definitely not enough of that already going around.

Meanwhile my little cousin is scared to go to school because of all the bomb threats. Let's talk about difficult times.

Edit: antisemitism existed long before Nazis, so you can all stop calling him a Nazi and just use the proper terminology.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
Taliban Stan said:
I'm not familiar with this. Did he dress up as Hitler because he loves Hitler and hates Jews or was he making a joke about something being authoritarian and draconian and was like "let me dress up as someone immediately identifiable as these things and crack some jokes?"

I know Mel Brooks has an album cover where he's dressed as Hitler and cracking jokes you could say are poor taste but everyone kinda gets that it's a joke and obviously not Mel Brooks loves Hitler. Is this situation that but everyone took it as Mel Brooks clearly loves Hitler?
Click to expand...

As far as I'm aware, he doesn't like Hitler, but he likes making jokes involving Hitler.

Mel Brooks was involved in World War 2 and specifically made Nazi jokes to undermine the ideology. His goal was specifically to make Nazis so ridiculous that no one would take them seriously ever again.
 
Bl@de

Bl@de

Member
Sapiens said:
It makes me so angry that he still has all that money - Millions of dollars! I wish it would be taken away from him. Nazis like him need to be in jail.
Click to expand...

Aha. You know who also had your opinion and actually went through with it?
Actual Nazis.
 
N

Nanashrew

Banned
Cross-posting what I said in the JonTron thread.

Nanashrew said:
YouTubers molding their viewers to attack "SJWs," leftists, main stream media. Mixing in paranoia that the world is out to get them because their thoughts are bad and people don't know how to take a joke anymore.

It's dangerous.
Click to expand...

Pewdiepies statements mean squat when he doesn't own up to it and just continues to play it all off keeping this all in the limelight with dog whistling. He's giving his fanbase more fuel and they're continuing to light fires.
 
T

tearsintherain

Member
If anything all this controversary has just helped pdp, his view counts have gone up daily on YT and he makes about $25k/day or $9m/year on youtube just from ad views, completely ignoring donations, partnerships, etc.
https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/pewdiepie

To me its crazy that a dude makes nearly $10m/yr on making youtube videos, just goes to show todays era is somewhat inscrutable for older people like me.

Nanashrew said:
YouTubers molding their viewers to attack "SJWs," leftists, main stream media. Mixing in paranoia that the world is out to get them because their thoughts are bad and people don't know how to take a joke anymore.
Click to expand...

I mean we have one guy in this thread saying he should be in jail so it seems there are enough crazy people on both side to fight each other for eternity.
 
C

Christhor

Member
I will never understand the irrational hatred that people on here have for Pewdiepie. They seem much more upset with him than Jontron, seeing as Jontron's threads actually don't get locked for the most part, despite Jontron being an objectively shittier person.

Glad people seem to be moving on from the entire thing though.
 
G

GinoFelino

Member
Christhor said:
I will never understand the irrational hatred that people on here have for Pewdiepie. They seem much more upset with him than Jontron, seeing as Jontron's threads actually don't get locked for the most part, despite Jontron being an objectively shittier person.

Glad people seem to be moving on from the entire thing though.
Click to expand...
Just because JonTron is worse, the current PDP hate is irrational?

Fuck that, they're both assholes.
 
L

L Thammy

Member
Christhor said:
I will never understand the irrational hatred that people on here have for Pewdiepie. They seem much more upset with him than Jontron, seeing as Jontron's threads actually don't get locked for the most part, despite Jontron being an objectively shittier person.

Glad people seem to be moving on from the entire thing though.
Click to expand...

I'd imagine that the reason JonTron's threads don't get lost is that there are fewer people who are willing to defend overt racism (at least on a board that they know is left-leaning and heavily policed) so it's less work for the mods to go through. Things get less heated.
 
N

Nanashrew

Banned
L Thammy said:
I'd imagine that the reason JonTron's threads don't get lost is that there are fewer people who are willing to defend overt racism (at least on a board that they know is left-leaning and heavily policed) so it's less work for the mods to go through. Things get less heated.
Click to expand...

Less derailing and going in circles too.
 
C

Christhor

Member
Nanashrew said:
JonTron's own reddit was calling him out.
Click to expand...

That's why I said on here. Yeah, he got more hate in general, for sure, but on here all of the recent PDP threads have gotten locked because of how heated they get. Jontron's stay open, not judging the moderating, just looking at what this could mean.
 
N

Nightbird

Member
I feel like the whole thing hit him really hard.

He lost the network he helped creating and his show was cancelled (something he brought up multiple times).
But what is irresponsible to me is to grief by continuing to do the thing that brought him into this situation.

If hitting your head got you into the hospital, the same thing won't get you out of there. This isn't a video game.
 
P

Piggus

Member
Nanashrew said:
Cross-posting what I said in the JonTron thread.



Pewdiepies statements mean squat when he doesn't own up to it and just continues to play it all off keeping this all in the limelight with dog whistling. He's giving his fanbase more fuel and they're continuing to light fires.
Click to expand...

He makes an occasional joke about how silly it was for WSJ to call his pointing away from the camera a "Nazi salute," but otherwise he hasn't made much reference to it.

And I'm sorry, but Fritz isn't exactly clean in all of this.

Nightbird said:
I feel like the whole thing hit him really hard.

He lost the network he helped creating and his show was cancelled (something he brought up multiple times).
But what is irresponsible to me is to grief by continuing to do the thing that brought him into this situation.

If hitting your head got you into the hospital, the same thing won't get you out of there. This isn't a video game.
Click to expand...

He has always made jokes in reference to past events or controversies. Always. I'm not sure how you can see his current content and think that he's doing the exact same thing that got him into trouble, because he's not.
 
B

bosseye

Member
I've watched a few of his videos since, there has absolutely been some tongue in cheek references to the whole sorry affair.

I never really bought the whole 'nazi' thing; it was ignorant, childish, incredibly poorly judged and in many ways normalising the abhorrent but I don't think there was any genuine intent of malice behind it so he probably finds the whole fallout from it faintly ridiculous. Therefore some wink wink nudge nudge in his followup videos isn't entirely unexpected.
 
M

Makonero

Member
Piggus said:
He makes an occasional joke about how silly it was for WSJ to call his pointing away from the camera a "Nazi salute," but otherwise he hasn't made much reference to it.

And I'm sorry, but Fritz isn't exactly clean in all of this.
Click to expand...

There were TWO OTHER WRITERS on that article. Neither of them is being harassed. It's ridiculous.
 
Kremzeek

Kremzeek

Member
great job Kotaku for following up on this. i wish more topics & controversies were followed up on after the initial hysteria, for some distance perspective.

but he was not "misrepresented". he still doesn't really get it, does he?
 
T

thumb

Banned
Piggus said:
He makes an occasional joke about how silly it was for WSJ to call his pointing away from the camera a "Nazi salute," but otherwise he hasn't made much reference to it.

And I'm sorry, but Fritz isn't exactly clean in all of this.
Click to expand...

Does Fritz having once told a tasteless joke on twitter excuse PewDiePie? Why is it even relevant to the reporting? Should Fritz have refused to participate in the article because he once displayed bad judgment, so he cannot write about it?
 
E

eliochip

Member
I read the whole article.

This situation is going to get lumped with JonTron but they really don't have much in common.

This guy apologized publicly for making a joke in poor taste.

I appreciate Kotakus objective-ish stance on this. I'm ashamed at all this racist shit thats been creeping up out of gaming culture recently but lets not start burning people at the stake
 
P

Piggus

Member
Makonero said:
There were TWO OTHER WRITERS on that article. Neither of them is being harassed. It's ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Fritz was specifically called out about racist/Nazi jokes he made in the past.

thumb said:
Does Fritz having once told a tasteless joke on twitter excuse PewDiePie? Why is it even relevant to the reporting? Should Fritz have refused to participate in the article because he once displayed bad judgment, so he cannot write about it?
Click to expand...

No it, doesn't excuse PDP. And Fritz can write about whatever he wants. But if you're going to target someone and accuse someone who's pointing off screen of making a Nazi salute, do you really think antisemetic jokes you made in the past aren't going to come up? Even if it wasn't the right way for PDP to respond, it was how pretty much anyone would respond if they felt aspects of the reporting were unfair or taken out of context.
 
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