psychowave
Member
It is obviously very undesireable for someone as influential as PewDiePie to signal it's okay to use the word willy-nilly. But all the comments instantly condemning PewDiePie as clearly racist have it wrong. I've only seen proof he's insensitive and kind of a dick so far. Which is kind of his jazz.
To see where I'm coming from: in my native language, Dutch, the equivalent word "neger" lacks the same connotation as "nigger" does in English. Sure the Dutch kept slaves way back in the day so there's a similar history there, but it just so happens that the word (not the principle of racism or slavery) was normalised over the years and became a pretty inoffensive way to refer to someone with black skin. It's only recently that people have become more sensitive to the word again as we start to realise it's a very bad word in English, which is a language we all speak to some extent nowadays. But Dutch people, when speaking English, will still say "nigger" sometimes and have no idea how it comes across.
PewDiePie, being Swedish, probably doesn't fully realise what it means to use that word. "He really should know better at this point", I hear you think, and you'd be right. But I can understand that using the word doesn't feel as significant as it would to any native speaker. He knows it's not really a good thing (which is why he doesn't use it all the time), but doesn't realise how offensive saying the word even once is to native speakers. It's ignorance.
It's possible he's also racist, I just wouldn't extrapolate that from the use of "nigger" by a non-native speaker. If he used it ten times in a row, then it least it would look like a statement of some sort, a very deliberate choice at the very least. But now he just seems like a kid who doesn't know what's what. As he usually does.
Some of you will likely take issue with my typing out of the "n-word" uncensored, which kind of proves my point: I don't really know where the line is as a non-native speaker. I just feel it's silly to censor it when it's obviously not meant as an insult.
Even if you could argue that your average Joe doesn't know the full connotation of the n-word, this isn't just some average Joe. This is PewDiePie, the biggest streamer in the whole world, with a huge American following, someone who interacts with lots of American people on a daily basis, and someone who already has a history of being generally shitty (constantly using rape "jokes" in his videos, using nazi imagery, the whole "death to all jews" deal).
He knows exactly what the fuck he's doing.