Pewdiepie as an Influence for White Supremacy

[Drainy]

I might be letting him off too easily but I don't think he has deliberately latched onto the alt-right, it's the other way round if anything, and he hasn't done his bit to separate himself from their cause, whether that's because politically he aligns with their views or because the 'other side' doesn't embrace his content and humour I'm not sure.

I agree, it's highly likely that the alt-right types like some of his content because it 'triggers the libs', rather than he actively seeks out that crowd.

I would say that internet fame is very fickle and taking on the edgier part of the internet is a risky move that could quickly move you into lolcow territory if they find anything to sink their teeth into.

 

[JPRouve]

I agree, it's highly likely that the alt-right types like some of his content because it 'triggers the libs', rather than he actively seeks out that crowd.

I would say that internet fame is very fickle and taking on the edgier part of the internet is a risky move that could quickly move you into lolcow territory if they find anything to sink their teeth into.

That's an interesting angle, what triggers the libs and why?

 

[Bojan11]

I thought Glaston was the most annoying spurs fan on here. But someone in this thread really wants to take that title away from him.

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

I thought Glaston was the most annoying spurs fan on here. But someone in this thread really wants to take that title away from him.

Cry more.

 

[Drainy]

That's an interesting angle, what triggers the libs and why?

Basically he occasionally gives his half baked thoughts on social issues which are more socially libertarian, makes taboo jokes, promotes edgy channels, defends edgy content creators etc, then twitter and reddit don't like it. The imageboards and other murky places love seeing twitter and reddit upset.

It's part of the culture war on the internet and people see it as him being on 'the other side'.

 

[RedDevil@84]

Must appreciate Squishy's craze about the guy to continue arguing on page 12.

 

[JPRouve]

Basically he occasionally gives his half baked thoughts on social issues which are more socially libertarian, makes taboo jokes, promotes edgy channels, defends edgy content creators etc, then twitter and reddit don't like it. The imageboards and other murky places love seeing twitter and reddit upset.

It's part of the culture war on the internet and people see it as him being on 'the other side'.

You are basically saying that he promotes ideas and material that are on a particular side even if he does it softly. Isn't that the way soft marketing works and an element to demonstrate his influence on a certain side of the culture war?

 

[hobbers]

I agree, it's highly likely that the alt-right types like some of his content because it 'triggers the libs', rather than he actively seeks out that crowd.

You also have to consider that the majority of his audience are still 10-15 year old boys.

And their actions aren't really any different to the older alt-right types in the sense that they want to be subversive and offensive about whatever it is that riles the most people up the most. I guess that's where the real danger lies, in the overlap between impressionable edgelord kids and the savvy content creators who know how to hook them in to whatever ideology they want.

 

[Ether]

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gonna get a bunch of idiot copycats now

 

[Drainy]

You are basically saying that he promotes ideas and material that are on a particular side even if he does it softly. Isn't that the way soft marketing works and an element to demonstrate his influence on a certain side of the culture war?

Yes, but the overlap is limited in scope with the Alt Right, who have a pretty clear definition - even if people use the term broadly as a smear.

To the best of my understanding the unifying belief of the Alt Right is that western countries are being weakened by immigration by people 'who cannot understand the culture' and the solution is to create a white ethnostate. My understanding is that a lot also believe that the immigration is a Jewish ploy to weaken white culture (!)

I've actually discussed before that a lot of the socially libertarian and 'free speech crowd' have some overlap with the alt-right who use non-alt right libertarians (for want of a better term) as human shields - which is something that is being raised in this thread.
The fact is that politics isn't binary and based on what we know I certainly wouldn't say that pewdiepie and his content promotes the stated goal of the alt right- it's unlikely that anyone will get that radicalisation from watching his videos or that a viewer would be gatewayed to alt right content from watching his videos without many degrees of separation.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure many people are unhappy at the prospect of children seeing Shapiro videos which may lead to Peterson etc. but both are hated by the alt right - Peterson is actually considered a lolcow (the meme being that he just tells people to wash their dicks)

 

[Dante]

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gonna get a bunch of idiot copycats now

And another White Terror attack in Surrey today.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-47605547

 

[syrian_scholes]

You think what he did based on instinct was not a real representation of his views, and his apology afterwards was? You realise the incentives that influenced that apology, surely? Your explanation of that instinct is very...generous. It's very dangerous to legitimise that act with such an easy excuse. Which is one of the dangerous of internet culture that is in discussion here. Do you not see that?

He said "kill the jews" sign looks "tame as hell" conpared to other youtuber content, he's not just defending the guy, he is saying the worst excuses ever.

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

He said "kill the jews" sign looks "tame as hell" conpared to other youtuber content, he's not just defending the guy, he is saying the worst excuses ever.

Yeah, I think it was a poorly executed bit of satire that got overblown by the media. You are of course perfectly allowed to disagree with that and be really offended by it, everybody has different limits.

 

[Ether]

And another White Terror attack in Surrey today.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-47605547

Hope we're not in for another devastating period like 2017 where we had the Manchester bombing, London Bridge attack and Finsbury Park incident within a few weeks.

 

[syrian_scholes]

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[christy87]

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Do you know how the meme started

 

[syrian_scholes]

Do you know how the meme started

I do, conpetition vs t-series for 1st place in youtube subscribers.

 

[Zarlak]

Sure, but most of the people you've worked with won't have been existing in environments where dropping an n bomb out of frustration is commonplace and not considered to be a genuine expression of racial hatred. Pewdiepie was a big gamer, so he would have been in those circles, and being around that will have had an influence on him, I think it happened pretty involuntarily and he immediately realised how stupid what he did was.

He himself recognised that it was a part of gaming that he hates, and that he was disgusted with himself for being a part of that. On the back of that I think it's fair to accept it as a stupid mistake that he as a person needed to learn from, and he hasn't done anything remotely similar since. Hopefully he's recognised it as an ugly part of himself and something he needed to work on, we won't ever know for sure, but unless he comes up with a similar outburst again I don't see any need to continue to punish him for it.

I've been gaming online for over 20 years, and I can count on both hands the number of times I've heard someone drop an N bomb - and they all came after Pewdiepie came to prominence. It's just not a word that people think to jump to even in gaming circles, unless you're racist, or a 14 year old edgelord aka a Pewdiepie subscriber. To say it's commonplace in gaming circles is absolutely ridiculous and just an attempt to apologise for him. Either that or the people you game with are just dickheads.

When you have an immature outburst, you don't jump to words you're not familiar with, I don't even imagine that you would have time to subconsciously consult your vocabulary to even locate a word you never used before. The first thing that pops into your head is what you say, and the first things that tend to pop into your head are words/phrases that are familiar to you. There's little reason for that to be the case to a white adult. The gaming community also has enough problems to deal with than someone telling people we commonly drop n-bombs.

 

[syrian_scholes]

He says it with the ....er at the end by the way

The comments are also very weird

 

[hobbers]

I've been gaming online for over 20 years, and I can count on both hands the number of times I've heard someone drop an N bomb - and they all came after Pewdiepie came to prominence. It's just not a word that people think to jump to even in gaming circles

I've been in Call of Duty lobbies where I've heard it screamed down the microphone around 10 times per minute.

 

[Andrew~]

This is the 2019 version of “does Eminem/Marilyn Manson encourage mass killings”.

Just as silly now as it was then.

 

[MadMike]

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Tbf that's a brilliant summary of how they go about things

 

[syrian_scholes]

This is the 2019 version of “does Eminem/Marilyn Manson encourage mass killings”.

Just as silly now as it was then.

I don't think dismissal is fair, have an argument, calling it silly does no good.

 

[2 man midfield]

This is the 2019 version of “does Eminem/Marilyn Manson encourage mass killings”.

Just as silly now as it was then.

I've never seen any of his videos, so I can't say I've seen evidence of what he's being accused of, but it does remind me of similar cases from the past such as those. Or when people say listening to rap music and playing Grand Theft Auto encourages violence.

I think anyone blaming him for influencing white supremacists is getting the whole thing the wrong way round tbh. There are people who are receptive to that sort of thing, and therefore they watch him. Not the other way around.

 

[Andrew~]

I don't think dismissal is fair, have an argument, calling it silly does no good.

The argument was there: does rap music cause gangland violence? Because gangsters are probably making more references to popular music, more frequently than white supremacists are making references to PewDiePie.

I've never seen any of his videos, so I can't say I've seen evidence of what he's being accused of, but it does remind me of similar cases from the past such as those. Or when people say listening to rap music and playing Grand Theft Auto encourages violence.

I think anyone blaming him for influencing white supremacists is getting the whole thing the wrong way round tbh. There are people who are receptive to that sort of thing, and therefore they watch him. Not the other way around.

I don't really see what the point to the question is, does the fact that white supremacists are attracted to PewDiePie's stuff make him bad? Because when looked at in isolation, there is nothing at all interesting about anything he says.

If a bunch of gangsters listen to Drake or whoever on their way to committing a drive-by shooting, does that mean Drake is bad? This is just really bad logic.

 

[syrian_scholes]

The argument was there: does rap music cause gangland violence? Because gangsters are probably making more references to popular music, more frequently than white supremacists are making references to PewDiePie.



I don't really see what the point to the question is, does the fact that white supremacists are attracted to PewDiePie's stuff make him bad? Because when looked at in isolation, there is nothing at all interesting about anything he says.

If a bunch of gangsters listen to Drake or whoever on their way to committing a drive-by shooting, does that mean Drake is bad? This is just really bad logic.

But then again I don't think a terrorist ever shouted subscribe to Eminem or buy The Slim Shady LP before opening fire.

 

[Alex99]

I don't think dismissal is fair, have an argument, calling it silly does no good.

Whether it's video games, rap music, films, or more recently, online content, the whole "x causes y" argument immediately becomes very black and white, with no acknowledgement of the massive middle ground that has to be traversed before you get from x to y. I'm going to use Pewdiepie as an example here, but I'm not at all well-versed enough in the specific nature of his content for this to be entirely accurate, so his name may be more of a placeholder than anything.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, Pewdiepie is not a white supremacist, is not a Nazi, and is not in any way racist. However, he knowingly creates content, be it videos or just his tweets, that he must be acutely aware appeal to a sub-section of society that those tags can be applied to. Having a history in which he's paid people to hold up a sign saying "Death to all Jews," and calling someone a "n-er" while playing an online game, means he absolutely needs to distance himself from those tags, and the people to which they belong. He hasn't, and he continues to court them as an audience. He may not be racist, but at best he has become a prominent pawn for racists.

So, the vast majority of Pewdiepie's audience is more than likely made up of adolescent males, a group in which self-identifying as "edgy" is not at all uncommon. Pewdiepie's content seems to fit that bill, particularly with the growing prominence of meme-culture. With his audience not being a local audience, and for the most part existing online, his predominantly young audience will absolutely have members that are older, and more aware of the connotations of his content, and the context and weight behind some of the 'edgy' jokes he may make, and they will interact directly with the younger, perhaps more naive members.

So we have, for example, a 12-year-old boy who is an avid consumer of Pewdiepie's content. He sees the "Death to all Jews" prank, and sees the "n-er" video. He doesn't really understand why these things are taboo, but knows that they are. This kid may well then go on to make 'jokes' with his friends about Jewish people, and may well start using n-er or n-a with them, but it's all okay, because he's a kid, and he's joking. This kid doesn't jump from there, to being a fully blown white supremacist, and 99% of the kids in that situation get a few years older and look back in embarrassment, but not all of them do. Some of them end up on 4chan or 8chan, and from there find themselves exposed to the likes of Paul Joseph Watson. Through them they find a political group that holds ideas that they present as persecuted and marginalised, and that most importantly, present some other group as a direct threat to his way of living.

The process is not, watch Pewdiepie, then go on a killing spree. There's a longer process of radicalisation, like with all of these things, that gets ignored. It's far easier to portray it as one side blaming YouTube, and the other side going, "that's silly," than it is to recognise that the media we consume can shape our ideas and our behaviour, even a little bit, and that from that first step, there is the potential to just keep on travelling down a path that leads to hate-fuelled violence. 99% of people don't travel that path, and pointing out that a very tiny minority do, does not tarnish everyone who's ever done something remotely similar with that brush. However, it is important to recognise what the beginning of these radicalisation processes are, so that we can identify when people are starting to stray down dangerous paths.

You can't ban these 'gateways', because it's pointless, and the logical progression would be to ban pretty much anything and everything, just in case, which is insane. What you need to do though, is take a step back and think about why certain people identify with certain aspects of this media, on a level that goes a bit deeper than, "well, it's edgy."

 

[Andrew~]

But then again I don't think a terrorist ever shouted subscribe to Eminem or buy The Slim Shady LP before opening fire.

Even if they did, it wouldn't mean Eminem is bad unless you could point to specific instances of him encouraging people to be terrorists and shoot people.

 

[syrian_scholes]

Even if they did, it wouldn't mean Eminem is bad unless you could point to specific instances of him encouraging people to be terrorists and shoot people.

It's not as simple as that, and again I'm unsure if he is doing it intentionally or unintentionally but with 89m subscribers he should be more responsible to say the least with his content, what you are saying it just seems like you mean he never did no bad, and again I've never said he has any responsibility in the NZ attack or anything.

 

[SteveJ]

Is that figure of 89m subscribers realistic? I never trust it when I read that most of the Kardashian twits have hundreds of millions following them on social media platforms...

 

[Eboue]

Next thing you know Steve will cast aspersions on my 110 followers.

 

[syrian_scholes]

Is that figure of 89m subscribers realistic? I never trust it when I read that most of the Kardashian twits have hundreds of millions following them on social media platforms...

Yeah it shows it on youtube, it's actually saying 90m now.

 

[2 man midfield]

Yeah it shows it on youtube, it's actually saying 90m now.

I think what he’s asking is are they genuine. They can’t be, surely. How many people, especially 12 year old kids, forget their details and make another account? How many ardent fanboys make 25 accounts to fudge the numbers even more?

 

[SteveJ]

Next thing you know Steve will cast aspersions on my 110 followers.

If there were any justice, you would have 89m followers and PDP would have merely 110.

 

[Aboutreika18]

They're not all active accounts or real people, if that's what you're asking.

It's why subscriber counts often drop when YouTube periodically cleans out the spam accounts.

 

[syrian_scholes]

I think what he’s asking is are they genuine. They can’t be, surely. How many people, especially 12 year old kids, forget their details and make another account? How many ardent fanboys make 25 accounts to fudge the numbers even more?

take half off, its still 45m.

 

[2 man midfield]

take half off, its still 45m.

Yeah, that’s right

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

I've been gaming online for over 20 years, and I can count on both hands the number of times I've heard someone drop an N bomb - and they all came after Pewdiepie came to prominence. It's just not a word that people think to jump to even in gaming circles, unless you're racist, or a 14 year old edgelord aka a Pewdiepie subscriber. To say it's commonplace in gaming circles is absolutely ridiculous and just an attempt to apologise for him. Either that or the people you game with are just dickheads.

When you have an immature outburst, you don't jump to words you're not familiar with, I don't even imagine that you would have time to subconsciously consult your vocabulary to even locate a word you never used before. The first thing that pops into your head is what you say, and the first things that tend to pop into your head are words/phrases that are familiar to you. There's little reason for that to be the case to a white adult. The gaming community also has enough problems to deal with than someone telling people we commonly drop n-bombs.

Look, maybe you've been lucky in gaming, I don't know. I'd be interested in knowing what games you've played during that time?

But from personal experience I can honestly say it's been a problem for as long as I can remember going online. Mostly it's kids getting frustrated when playing games and looking to lash out, so they head for the worst, most offensive stuff they can come up with. They don't necessarily mean/think about what they're saying, but they want a way to get back at the person/people who are beating them. Back in the day on call of duty it was something I heard weekly, it wasn't a case of me gaming with dickheads (although yes, I have in the past) it was random strangers in the public lobby screaming the n word.

Again, mostly kids. I also received loads of messages telling me to get cancer, die of AIDS, the whole shabang. Edgelords didn't arrive with pewdiepie, has he capitalised on that market? Yeah, sure. He's regularly showed that he's anti-pc and most of the creators he associates himself with are of that persuasion as well, creators who push social boundaries of what is acceptable and are in to edgy/dark humour. Again, people don't like this when I say it, but pewdiepie is far from the 'edgiest' of the big creators, there are channels which regularly get 4m views + which use the n word about as liberally as it gets.

But anyway yeah, on certain games the use of the n word is definitely pretty commonplace. Particularly Russian or American teenagers seem to be the worst for it, shit even back when I used to play TLOU online (a pretty chilled shooter, which generally attracted an older audience) there were always racist dudes around. It's not an attempt to apologise for him, him saying it during an outburst was reprehensible and rightfully criticised, but it's a sad fact that it's a not uncommon word to hear during online gaming.

I think rightfully he got a ton of stick for what he did, a lot of creators criticised him (even ones close to him) and he was forced to apologise and lost a lot of revenue from sponsors. My personal view (and I understand that other people have different boundaries) is that a lot of the controversy surrounding him is overblown, but that particular incident was unjustifiable, there was no attempt at humour there, just idiocy. But he clearly stated to the world it was wrong and that he was stupid for doing it, and there's so far been no repeat of anything like it, so it's an incident that I think most people have been prepared to forgive.

 

[Andrew~]

It's not as simple as that, and again I'm unsure if he is doing it intentionally or unintentionally but with 89m subscribers he should be more responsible to say the least with his content, what you are saying it just seems like you mean he never did no bad, and again I've never said he has any responsibility in the NZ attack or anything.

Not sure what you're so opposed to. Yeah, he's made a few over-the-line jokes, but I've yet to see anything he's done that he needs to really have a look at himself about. His comedy is generally pretty asinine, but that's youtube for you.

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

Is that figure of 89m subscribers realistic? I never trust it when I read that most of the Kardashian twits have hundreds of millions following them on social media platforms...

Nah, youtube sub counts should always be taken with a massive pinch of salt.

People subscribe then forget to unsubscribe, people subscribe on numerous channels (loads of people probably did this to try and help him beat t-series) and you also have shit like sub bots which come in to play. He's been around for ages, so there's loads of people who probably don't even go on youtube anymore that are still subscribed to him.

It's hard to know how many genuine regular followers he has, but all of his videos get millions of views, which is a lot considering he uploads pretty much every single day. Some of his bigger videos (like bitch lasagna, a parody song aimed at t-series) get loads of views, with the biggest on 157m.

Bottom line is he's seriously popular, easily one of the creators who are getting the most views monthly.