YouTube pest PewDiePie has once again shown his true colours by dropping the n-word during a live broadcast. The millionaire YouTube ‘personality’ was streaming Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds and generally being rubbish at it when he said “”What a f***ing n*****! Geez! Oh my god! What the f***? Sorry, but what the f***?”
He then wen’t on to say “I don’t mean that in a bad [way].”
He has previously thought it would be funny to pay people to hold up signs that read ‘Death to all Jews’ and alleges that all his anger has been fuelled by how the mainstream media treat him. Maybe if he grew up a bit and got an editor he would get better treatment, but for the moment the mainstream media will continue to have to point out what a massive, racist, stupid, cockwomble he is.
However, as he has all the monies and millions of followers he will probably carry on being a casual racist. Thankfully for him he doesn’t even need to write up a new press release, he can use the same one from last time, “I’m sorry for the words I used as I know they offended people.” That will save him a bit of time so he can make more hilarious videos.
The good news for us in the UK is that Brexit is happening in a year and a half so we might be able to find a reason to send the humongous twatbugle back to Sweden. PewDiePie’s supporters have pointed out that he did say he didn’t mean the word in “a bad way”, and he does a lot of charitable work.
So did Jimmy Saville.
There is one group of people who can directly affect PewDiePie and that’s publishers and developers, if they blocked him from using their work he would have nothing to make videos about. The developers of Firewatch have had enough of PewDiePie’s antics.
“I am sick of this child getting more and more chances to make money off of what we make,” tweeted Campo Santos Sean Vanaman. “He’s worse than a closeted racist: he’s a propagator of despicable garbage that does real damage to the culture around this industry. Freedom of speech is freedom of prosecution. His stream is not commentary, it is ad growth for his brand. Our game on his channel = endorsement.”
PewDiePie’s video of Firewatch has since been removed. The question is, will any other publishers follow suit? Will EA see racism and antisemitism as a small price to pay for millions of views for Star Wars Battlefield II? How much money will Ubisoft throw at him to promote Assassin’s Creed? It will be interesting to see if anyone else takes a stand.
You can read more about normalisation of casual racism in gaming here.
Source: Eurogamer
ScaffGTP
I almost never post here, but had to just to say thank you to TSA for this piece and to everyone else in the comments for intelligent and tolerant replies and comments.
They are both a rare find on the internet and on a gaming site in particular.
Nate
The maturity (and silliness) of TSA is what has kept me here for years, and turned me off most of the rest of the Internet!
MrYd
The maturity is a bonus. I’m sure most of us are here for the silliness. And improbable boob news. And as one of The Gays (I think we deserve capitalising now) I find all boobs silly and improbable anyway.
bunimomike
For me, I don’t like the conflation between him using a racial slur and suddenly being some sort of disgraceful racist. It belittles the complexity of the issue and steers us towards the republicans/democrats situation we have in the U.S. No middle ground and no desire to listen for mature discourse.
He’s using it simply as a derogatory term, much like the word “faggot”. There’s nothing right about either term being used in a derogatory term in the public eye but that doesn’t stop them being diluted and re-engineered by any given community (this time the gaming community) to the point of it now usually meaning a bad thing and nothing more than that.
Once again, it doesn’t make it right but it does help to separate the cheap conflation of using such words. I know a good couple of handfuls of people who would use any word under the Sun but just like me, they’re smart enough not to slip up with people they might not know very well or on the likes of Twitch/YouTube. Silly fucker (PewDiePie).
Also, those people I know who are like this don’t have a prejudicial bone in their body when it comes to sexual preference or skin colour.