Pewdiepie as an Influence for White Supremacy

[syrian_scholes]

I've always defended the guy from those claims, but now I've seen more of his tweets and understand those claims better and after the events of yesterday, I'm starting to think the guy might actually have some ties to white supremacy
Here are some of the things I found(mostly from Resetera):

PewDiePie calling someone the N word:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-a-youtube-livestream/?utm_term=.ff2b0bec1f75
PewDiePie paying people to hold up a sign that says "Death to all Jews":
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ie-thinks-death-to-all-jews-joke-laughing-yet
PewDiePie doing a collab with Ben Shapiro:
https://www.vox.com/2018/12/13/1813...-links-to-white-supremacist-alt-right-redpill

Far right figures followed by Pewdiepie on twitter:

Remember this guy has 89m subs on youtube, many of them are impressionable youths and some of the stuff he does like shouting out a nazi youtuber then "claiming" he didn't know the guy is a nazi, and paying people to hold a sign that says death to jews, even if he didn't mean to do it, he is definitely leaving a bad influence on children.

Thoughts?

 

[Blackwidow]

I guess I am getting old. I watch videos on youtube - actually I often do - but until today have never heared the name before... (I guess I haven't missed anything either)

 

[MJJ]

Excellent thread.

 

[Samid]

But what about that one time he donated something to charity?

 

[Tom Van Persie]

Scary to think he has 89M subscribers.

 

[vangagal]

89million subs? Fecking hell. Thats massive for his kind of content.

 

[FlawlessThaw]

Who he follows is probably an indicator of how he really thinks. He can brush off everything else as satirical jokes but he’s clearly a twat despite his wholesome charity work.

 

[Moriarty]

I feel like the judge who asked counsel if Kevin Keegan played association football or rugby. never heard of this person. There's a whole parallel universe out there that I am unaware of.

 

[VeevaVee]

Who knows? Could be a full blown neo nazi trying to influence, or just be rolling with the way his fanbase has fallen. Like most I don't know enough about him to have much of an opinion. Either way, he's a dickhead.

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

I've always defended the guy from those claims, but now I've seen more of his tweets and understand those claims better and after the events of yesterday, I'm starting to think the guy might actually have some ties to white supremacy
Here are some of the things I found(mostly from Resetera):

Remember this guy has 89m subs on youtube, many of them are impressionable youths and some of the stuff he does like shouting out a nazi youtuber then "claiming" he didn't know the guy is a nazi, and paying people to hold a sign that says death to jews, even if he didn't mean to do it, he is definitely leaving a bad influence on children.

Thoughts?

Most of the tweets you posted are completely innocuous and clearly sarcasm aimed at people who have labelled him a Nazi or a representative of the far right. He's poking fun at himself, as he is perfectly entitled to do, and it doesn't mean he has ties to white supremacy. He's just an immature youtuber who tried his hand at dark comedy on the wrong kind of platform, that's what the 'death to the jews' sign was, a really stupid joke that backfired, it's not proof he's a white supremacist.

Also, he gave props to somebody because they did an interesting video on some anime, he also shouted out like 60 odd other small channels because he enjoyed some of their content. He clearly didn't actually know that one of the content creators had some dodgy material, and as soon as he found out he deleted it and explained the situation.

99% of his content is the safest shit out there. There are far riskier content creators all over youtube who don't get anywhere near the attention because they don't have his subscriber base. He's not some spokesperson for the far right and has never expressed political views at all as far as I'm aware, making a couple of edgy jokes again doesn't mean you have ties to white supremacy. It makes you immature, which he was and he's admitted that.

Holding him as somehow responsible for the actions of the christchurch shooter (which I'm guessing is what prompted this thread?) is ludicrous, he mentioned him because pewdiepie is the biggest youtuber and his entire motive was to cause controversy, he also blurted out a bunch of shit about spyro and fortnite.

But yeah, let's hold him up as the devil because it's great to have a big scapegoat.

 

[afrocentricity]

Uh oh

 

[Arruda]

89million subs? Fecking hell. Thats massive for his kind of content.

More than 1% of the world population. FML.

I know little about him, so don't know if it's unfair to connect him to the murders. Is he a real influence or more something like the Charles Manson / Beatles thing?

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

But what about that one time he donated something to charity?

He's raised money for charity on far more than one occasion and has consistently urged his fanbase to do the same, but yeah let's completely disregard that and instead focus on stuff like the time he tweeted sarcastically about a Nazi looking like him. I.e completely overblow the bad stuff he's meant to have done, and totally play down the good. That sounds like a fair and reasonable way to evaluate him.

There's certainly an argument about whether or not he's a good influence on children (He's undeniably done some dumb, immature stuff) but he's not some fecking evil alt right white supremacist mastermind, at worst he's just a bit of a tit.

 

[Cloud7]

@SquishyMcSquish still fighting the good fight mate

 

[syrian_scholes]

Most of the tweets you posted are completely innocuous and clearly sarcasm aimed at people who have labelled him a Nazi or a representative of the far right. He's poking fun at himself, as he is perfectly entitled to do, and it doesn't mean he has ties to white supremacy. He's just an immature youtuber who tried his hand at dark comedy on the wrong kind of platform, that's what the 'death to the jews' sign was, a really stupid joke that backfired, it's not proof he's a white supremacist.

Also, he gave props to somebody because they did an interesting video on some anime, he also shouted out like 60 odd other small channels because he enjoyed some of their content. He clearly didn't actually know that one of the content creators had some dodgy material, and as soon as he found out he deleted it and explained the situation.

99% of his content is the safest shit out there. There are far riskier content creators all over youtube who don't get anywhere near the attention because they don't have his subscriber base. He's not some spokesperson for the far right and has never expressed political views at all as far as I'm aware, making a couple of edgy jokes again doesn't mean you have ties to white supremacy. It makes you immature, which he was and he's admitted that.

Holding him as somehow responsible for the actions of the christchurch shooter (which I'm guessing is what prompted this thread?) is ludicrous, he mentioned him because pewdiepie is the biggest youtuber and his entire motive was to cause controversy, he also blurted out a bunch of shit about spyro and fortnite.

But yeah, let's hold him up as the devil because it's great to have a big scapegoat.

I'm not holding him responsible, I want to discuss his connections to the far right, you totally ignored the part of the people he follows on twitter and his collab with Shaprio and the "death to jews" sign or him saying the N word to fit your agenda, can you 100% say he isn't feeding young innocent minds some stuff in small amounts on a consistent basis? it's not a one off, it's getting to the point that you really should question his motives with what he is doing.

 

[vangagal]

More than 1% of the world population. FML.

I know little about him, so don't know if it's unfair to connect him to the murders. Is he a real influence or more something like the Charles Manson / Beatles thing?

His content mostly about reviewing games and some shite. At least thats what it was.
His channel has 89mil subs, so yeah, people watching him in daily basis but not in the same vein as Beatles's influence.
His total video views i think more represent of how many times his videos being watched. I bet it more than 3 or 4 billion times.

 

[KiD MoYeS]

I've watched his videos for a period, a few years back, and genuinely don't think he is a racist / white supremacist. He is stupid, however. There is a difference.

 

[Silva]

the most upvoted on his subreddit in response to the shooting was a ben shapiro tweet

 

[MJJ]

I am convinced squishy is pewfiepie

 

[Eboue]

He's raised money for charity on far more than one occasion and has consistently urged his fanbase to do the same, but yeah let's completely disregard that and instead focus on stuff like the time he tweeted sarcastically about a Nazi looking like him. I.e completely overblow the bad stuff he's meant to have done, and totally play down the good. That sounds like a fair and reasonable way to evaluate him.

There's certainly an argument about whether or not he's a good influence on children (He's undeniably done some dumb, immature stuff) but he's not some fecking evil alt right white supremacist mastermind, at worst he's just a bit of a tit.

This is very sad.

 

[Arruda]

His content mostly about reviewing games and some shite. At least thats what it was.
His channel has 89mil subs, so yeah, people watching him in daily basis but not in the same vein as Beatles's influence.
His total video views i think more represent of how many times his videos being watched. I bet it more than 3 or 4 billion times.

By the Beatles thing I didn't mean their popularity, but rather how they could have influenced Manson. Since they were all about peace and love, I reckon he was just a fan and that's where the connection ends.

So in this case I mean, the question is... Is Pewdiepie just an harmless content creator who happened to have a terrorist (who may have been a fan of his content or not, irrelevant) endorse him as some sort of sick joke, or does his content subreptitiously caters to, and influences, this sort of extremist minds?

 

[Runner]

I've never seen one of his videos and everything I've heard about him indicates he's an awful person.

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

I'm not holding him responsible, I want to discuss his connections to the far right, you totally ignored the part of the people he follows on twitter and his collab with Shaprio and the "death to jews" sign or him saying the N word to fit your agenda, can you 100% say he isn't feeding young innocent minds some stuff in small amounts on a consistent basis? it's not a one off, it's getting to the point that you really should question his motives with what he is doing.

He has no connections to the 'far right'. None. Zilch. Nada.

He's just a youtuber who sits in his bedroom and screams a bit at gameplay. At one point he said the n word on stream and he did a stupid bit of satire on jews (there's far, far darker comedy on youtube and even mainstream stuff that doesn't get remotely the same attention) which doesn't make him some spokesperson for the alt right. He apologised for all of that and has mostly stuck to completely safe videos since the controversy, until this guy decided to give him a shout out.

I'm going to go ahead and guess he follows a hell of a lot of people on twitter, most of that list have significant youtube channels, Shapiro is very big on the platform. He once got Shapiro to review some memes on his dumb show, so what he's a white supremacist now? What exactly is he feeding young minds except vacuous content, he's never taken a political stance or shared any kind of remotely interesting opinion. What consistent basis are you talking about? He's made ONE video with genuinely controversial material (the death to jews sign) in an incredibly long youtube career, and said something dumb on stream. That's it, nothing else is worth even talking about.

It's not a one off because he gets micro analysed to a stupid degree. Loads of the stuff you've posted is completely innocuous, but still gets raised because it's pewdiepie. Oh, he follows some right wing leaning content creators? Evidence he's a white supremacist. Oh, he made some sarcastic jokes about people thinking he's a Nazi? Darn suspicious. Oh, he shared content from like 70 odd channels and one of them had dodgy material (which he immediately removed when he found out) ??? Shit, must have been on purpose.

Serioiusly, does anybody actually believe pewdiepie is a white supremacist who is secretly attempting to influence children towards the far right?

 

[ivaldo]

I've watched his videos for a period, a few years back, and genuinely don't think he is a racist / white supremacist. He is stupid, however. There is a difference.

Though we can't say for certain, it's fairly likely. The bloke is a grade A moron.

 

[syrian_scholes]

I've watched his videos for a period, a few years back, and genuinely don't think he is a racist / white supremacist. He is stupid, however. There is a difference.

But his irresponsibility with his content needs to be questioned at the very least and imo YouTube should keep an eye on his content just in case, it's been too many times already.

Also people call Trump stupid and not really a racist when he is definitely a huge influence in the alt right movement atm, I feel like we should hold people more responsible for their actions if we want to save the community, I'm very worried of things escalating or that someone might actually target me because I'm not white, that's the main reason I think we should be shedding more light on every thing, and not dismiss anything atm.

 

[afrocentricity]

I am convinced squishy is pewfiepie

It's possible.

 

[hobbers]

We should worry about him knocking IQ points off his follower base at a rate 5x that of weed and alcohol, sure. But harbouring white supremacy? Err. Nah.

He's just an idiot on the internet with an obscene number of viewers and social media interactions. It's impossible for idiots with that sort of attention to do everything right all the time. People forget he puts out enough content and streams to basically make his entire waking life open to the public eye.

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

But his irresponsibility with his content needs to be questioned at the very least and imo YouTube should keep an eye on his content just in case, it's been too many times already.

Also people call Trump stupid and not really a racist when he is definitely a huge influence in the alt right movement atm, I feel like we should hold people more responsible for their actions if we want to save the community, I'm very worried of things escalating or that someone might actually target me because I'm not white, that's the main reason I think we should be shedding more light on every thing, and not dismiss anything atm.

It has been questioned. When he released the video with anti-semitic humour it caused a shit ton of problems for him and I imagine if he ever did it again he would be banned from the site. He lost a ton of ad revenue and sponsors as a result, there was a huge backlash against it, and when he dropped the n word on stream. Those are pretty much the only two incidents he's ever been associated with that were genuinely worthy of flagging up, and he suffered for them. I'm pretty sure Youtube do keep an eye on his content - they basically refuse to acknowledge his existence these days.

Holding people accountable find, but blowing up somebody's influence out of proportion (he is not a spokesperson for the far right) also isn't helpful. As others have said, he's simply not a particularly intelligent person who thought Nazi jokes were funny, he's no big figure in the far right.

 

[Irwin99]

I've watched his videos for a period, a few years back, and genuinely don't think he is a racist / white supremacist. He is stupid, however. There is a difference.

Aside from the topic question, isn't that kind of sad if he's so stupid yet has 89 million subscribers? There are aspects of our culture that are just baffling.

 

[syrian_scholes]

He has no connections to the 'far right'. None. Zilch. Nada.

He's just a youtuber who sits in his bedroom and screams a bit at gameplay. At one point he said the n word on stream and he did a stupid bit of satire on jews (there's far, far darker comedy on youtube and even mainstream stuff that doesn't get remotely the same attention) which doesn't make him some spokesperson for the alt right. He apologised for all of that and has mostly stuck to completely safe videos since the controversy, until this guy decided to give him a shout out.

I'm going to go ahead and guess he follows a hell of a lot of people on twitter, most of that list have significant youtube channels, Shapiro is very big on the platform. He once got Shapiro to review some memes on his dumb show, so what he's a white supremacist now? What exactly is he feeding young minds except vacuous content, he's never taken a political stance or shared any kind of remotely interesting opinion. What consistent basis are you talking about? He's made ONE video with genuinely controversial material (the death to jews sign) in an incredibly long youtube career, and said something dumb on stream. That's it, nothing else is worth even talking about.

It's not a one off because he gets micro analysed to a stupid degree. Loads of the stuff you've posted is completely innocuous, but still gets raised because it's pewdiepie. Oh, he follows some right wing leaning content creators? Evidence he's a white supremacist. Oh, he made some sarcastic jokes about people thinking he's a Nazi? Darn suspicious. Oh, he shared content from like 70 odd channels and one of them had dodgy material (which he immediately removed when he found out) ??? Shit, must have been on purpose.

Serioiusly, does anybody actually believe pewdiepie is a white supremacist who is secretly attempting to influence children towards the far right?

I don't know why you are being overly defensive of him, him hosting shapiro is exposing 89m person to shapiro's existence, him saying the N word with the er is not something to be laughed off, the sign, the sarcastic tweets, he has been warned multiple times and he continues doing these things, can't be that stupid when you have 89m followers, just making fun of people who question his actions isn't right, by the way it's funny that the same highlighted sentence is being used about MJ and child abuse.

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

This is very sad.

Do you think pewdiepie is genuinely a white supremacist or somebody attempting to influence the far right?

 

[syrian_scholes]

It has been questioned. When he released the video with anti-semitic humour it caused a shit ton of problems for him and I imagine if he ever did it again he would be banned from the site. He lost a ton of ad revenue and sponsors as a result, there was a huge backlash against it, and when he dropped the n word on stream. Those are pretty much the only two incidents he's ever been associated with that were genuinely worthy of flagging up, and he suffered for them. I'm pretty sure Youtube do keep an eye on his content - they basically refuse to acknowledge his existence these days.

Holding people accountable find, but blowing up somebody's influence out of proportion (he is not a spokesperson for the far right) also isn't helpful. As others have said, he's simply not a particularly intelligent person who thought Nazi jokes were funny, he's no big figure in the far right.

how is it out of proportion when a terrorist said "subscribe to pewdiepie before starting to shoot, when will it be not out of proportion for you?

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

I don't know why you are being overly defensive of him, him hosting shapiro is exposing 89m person to shapiro's existence, him saying the N word with the er is not something to be laughed off, the sign, the sarcastic tweets, he has been warned multiple times and he continues doing these things, can't be that stupid when you have 89m followers, just making fun of people who question his actions isn't right, by the way it's funny that the same highlighted sentence is being used about MJ and child abuse.

Everybody on youtube already knows about Ben Shapiro, he's not some fringe channel on youtube.

There is nothing wrong with the sarcastic tweets. He's allowed to make a joke at his own expense. Saying the n word on stream was wrong and rightly condemned, and he suffered badly because of it as he lost a hell of a lot in ad revenue and I'm pretty sure got a warning from youtube. It was a stupid mistake he made, nobody laughed it off.

You absolutely can be stupid and have 89m followers.

 

[Silva]

imagine caring about a gamers reputation

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

I find it somewhat disturbing that a person would consider holding up signs that say "Death to Jews" as comedy of any sort.

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

how is it out of proportion when a terrorist said "subscribe to pewdiepie before starting to shoot, when will it be not out of proportion for you?

Yeah he also mentioned fortnite and spyro the dragon before he shot people, are we going to start linking them to white supremacists?

He mentioned pewdiepie because he knew about controversies in the past and he wanted to stir up more of it, he basically regurgitated a bunch of memes before he went on a killing spree. Subscribe to pewdiepie has been all over the internet for a long time, him saying it doesn't make pewdiepie guilty by association.

It will not be out of proportion when pewdiepie genuinely starts promoting white supremacist content or expressing any of those kind of views through his channel, which he hasn't. He's done some stupid, childish shit and if he does it again he should be banned for it, but he's never provided some sort of breeding ground for fascism.

 

[hobbers]

him hosting shapiro is exposing 89m person to shapiro's existence.

Shapiro the Jewish conservative. Not Shapiro the white supremacist, neo nazi.

Plus the overlap between Pewdiepie and Shapiro's audiences would already have been huge. We're talking about young male youtube viewers after all.

how is it out of proportion when a terrorist said "subscribe to pewdiepie before starting to shoot, when will it be not out of proportion for you?

If the gunman had announced everyone should eat tacos would that make tacos the food of white supremacy?

 

[SquishyMcSquish]

imagine caring about a gamers reputation

I don't care about his reputation, but I don't like people getting scapegoated as a general rule, and I don't think any of the attention should be on somebody like pewdiepie over this.

There are people who genuinely share the kind of views which influenced the shooter, and it's on them.

 

[Adisa]

What is PewDiePie?

 

[Kinsella]

Thoughts?

My main thought is who is Pewdiepie? Followed by you don't know what the far right is.