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PewDiePie Calls Out the 'Old-School Media' For Spiteful Dishonesty
New submitter Shane_Optima writes: After losing his Youtube Red show and his contract with Disney, the owner of the most subscribed channel on Youtube, Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (aka "PewDiePie"), has released a video response to the Wall Street Journal and other mainstream news outlets, who have labeled his comedy videos variously as racist, fascist or anti-semitic. In it, he accuses the mainstream media of deliberately fabricating and misrepresenting the evidence used against him because they are afraid of independent content producers such as himself. In the video, PewDiePie discusses the recent actions of the Wall Street Journal, whose reporters sent nine cherry-picked and edited videos to Disney, which led directly to Disney's decision to terminate their relationship with him. These video clips and others used to "prove" PewDiePie's guilt have been edited (he claims) to remove all context, to the extent of using a pose of him pointing at something as a Nazi salute and using a clip where other players are creating swastikas in a game and editing out the part where he is asking them to stop. The most-cited video in the controversy involves seeing if he can use the site Fiverr to hire someone to create a video containing an over-the-top message for a mere $5. After a couple of laughing males unfurl a sign saying "Death to All Jews," he recoils with widened eyes and sits, apparently dumbfounded, for another thirty seconds before the video ends, without him uttering another word.
PewDiePie's video comes several days after a Tumblr post where he attempted to clarify that the videos were intended to be comedy showing "how crazy the modern world is." He has not yet used the phrase "fake news" in his response to the controversy, but given the current trends surrounding that phrase, it isn't surprising that his supporters are resorting to it frequently. Is this all just another unfortunate instance of collateral damage in the war against far-right political movements, is it a campaign of malicious retaliation by old media that is terrified of new media (as Felix claims), or was J.K. Rowling correct when she called out PewDiePie as a Death Eater? Err, I mean, ...as a fascist?
Update: Apparently, canceling his Youtube Red series was deemed an insufficient response. Youtube has now removed the mirror of PewDiePie's "Death to All Jews" video because it "violates Youtube's policy on hate speech." The original posting of the video had already been marked private by PewDiePie shortly after the controversy erupted. A quick check of Vimeo and Daily Motion came up empty, so you're on your own if you wish to find out for yourself what the controversy was all about.
PewDiePie's video comes several days after a Tumblr post where he attempted to clarify that the videos were intended to be comedy showing "how crazy the modern world is." He has not yet used the phrase "fake news" in his response to the controversy, but given the current trends surrounding that phrase, it isn't surprising that his supporters are resorting to it frequently. Is this all just another unfortunate instance of collateral damage in the war against far-right political movements, is it a campaign of malicious retaliation by old media that is terrified of new media (as Felix claims), or was J.K. Rowling correct when she called out PewDiePie as a Death Eater? Err, I mean, ...as a fascist?
Update: Apparently, canceling his Youtube Red series was deemed an insufficient response. Youtube has now removed the mirror of PewDiePie's "Death to All Jews" video because it "violates Youtube's policy on hate speech." The original posting of the video had already been marked private by PewDiePie shortly after the controversy erupted. A quick check of Vimeo and Daily Motion came up empty, so you're on your own if you wish to find out for yourself what the controversy was all about.
He is apparantly suprised that broadcasting a sign with "Death To All Jews" on it would get him fired.
I can't think of many places where you wouldn't get fired for that sign.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Anyone with any sense of intellectual integrity can clearly see that it was all satire. They can also see through the dishonesty of the media. This is just a taste of what the media has been doing politically. Regardless of how you feel about the current POTUS, these tactics are exactly the same tactics used against him from the MSM.
Follow the dollars. This stuff generates clicks. It gets people to read their stories. They do it because they get money for it. Hopefully at some point soon this type of "journalism" dies down.
I am disgusted by this article, almost as disgusted as I am at myself taking the time to respond to it.
PewDiePie is a professional attention whore and it is fascinating to watch him ply his craft. This latest response is perfectly timed, just as the flames were dying down he fans them and gets another round of attention.
He is a troll and like any troll the way to defeat it is by ignoring it.
That was the first PewDiePie I've watched, and it's interesting to see the media do to him what they've done to Trump, Farage, Wilders, Le Pen, Orban, etc. The media no longer report the truth, they report their own narrative. They fabricate evidence in an effort to influence people's views.
The media used to be able to control the narrative, but having lost control they're redoubling their efforts to control what people think, which means more attacks against people they disagree with and more fabrications. This is having the opposite effect, and is only serving to turn more people away from the mainstream media.
Traditional media knows it's in trouble but appears to be so out of touch with the public that it doesn't know what to do about it, so the attacks, the lies and the fabrications continue. The sooner the media collapses, the better.
But a very carefully targeted one. The people who get ridiculed have to really deserve the dickish treatment. You can take a cheap shot, but you can never punch down.
Now I've seen the infamous video and I totally get it. It's a good point, but it totally fails as satire because he ended up screwing with, and then harming the guys in the video, who almost certainly have no idea the significance of what they're doing. How many Jews are in India? About five thousand individuals out of a billion. Zoroastrians are almost 30 times more common in the US as Jews are in India, particularly rural India.
Now he's totally right that the media is stupid, block-headed and hypocritical, and has neither the ability nor inclination to understand him. But that doesn't change the fact he attempted satire and failed. That makes him, at least in this incident, just a dick.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Context is everything and lacking context your statement is a lie. The guy made a couple satires based on claims of him being a , not a normal staple on his channel. The allegation was that since some white racist like him he must be racist. That beauty should sound familiar right? By the way, some Muslim extremist likes your post, so you have to be a homophobic anti-Semite.
The "take offense at everything" generation has ensured that the overwhelming majority of comedians will not perform on a Campuses. But hey, enjoy Amy Schumer shows ever week because a white chick insulting men and pretending to be a slut is comedy everyone can enjoy for an eternity right?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You know who doesn't get the irony of fighting fascism with fascism?
The leftists.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why is fucking 'PewDiePie' even showing up on Slashdot? Again. There was an article about him just a couple of days ago. Nobody. Fucking. Cares about this asshole. Can we please give it a rest?
Do this. Do this more often. Exactly this.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Submitter here. And the gloves are off, FYI.
This is a bizarre little trick, apparently some weird leftover piece of Cold War propaganda, that any time a topic has anything to do with the free market you can point that out and a significant minority of people will believe you've just "won" the discussion and will mod you up, even if you're rambling irrelevant drivel. (It works on Reddit, too.)
Congratulations, Disney and Youtube are legally free to do as they choose. No, the first amendment doesn't constrain them. Are we done with the kindergarten version of Civics now?
There appears to be widespread *lying* about the nature of the videos in question, characterizations that are so brazen as to be actual lies by mainstream media organizations like the Wall Street Journal, Wired, The Independent, etc. This is on top of the WSJ actually going out of their way to get PewDiePie "fired" by mining and editing his content and then sending it directly (from my understanding) to Disney.
I think that alone is all worth talking about. If dishonest and manipulative newspapers don't interest you at all, well there's the door. Bye.
But there's even more: to the extent that companies like Youtube and Disney are being pressured by asshats writing letters and threatening boycotts, I'd even go so far as to say it's worth discussing trying to pressure them in the opposite direction. Not because I'm a huge PewDiePie fan (I'm not; I've watched only a few of his videos), but because the internet is being dominated by a small group of companies and it's worth a little effort to push back now, while we still can, and inform them that free speech for their platform (not just our constitution) is what we actually want.
Just listen to this smug shit coming out of the WSJ and put that in the context of the thousands of Youtubers trying to figure out Youtube's uncodified content policy so their videos won't be de-monetized. Put that in the contest of the millions of Youtube users who just want their favorite hosts to be able to speak their mind uncensored. The WSJ doesn't care about all of that. They only care about media giants being able to dictate acceptable content with an iron fist.
Does that violate the first amendment? Again, no. Is this capitalism at work? Again, yes. You're such a good, smart little anti-Communist for reminding us of these things!
But us talking about it and getting a bit pissed about it and wondering aloud if there's any way to pull the brake on this shitshow before it gets any worse is also capitalism at work. If that's a conversation that doesn't interest you--there's the door. Vote with your feet, citizen.
This is akin to bitching that you don't like Snowden because he wears ugly glasses and has a boring face.
I'm the submitter. I don't watch PewDiePie videos. I think I watched only two in my entire life before today. This is serious news. He is the biggest name on Youtube (like it or not), and these are some of the biggest names in mainstream news lying about him, engaging in an open campaign to get him fired (WSJ went directly to Disney, from my understanding), and then they casually, lazily, openly discuss about how their motive in all of this was that they want to see online media giants dictate acceptable content with an iron fist instead of this willy-nilly free speech bullshit that makes old media nervous.
When the hell did Slashdot turn into goddamn TMZ? Who cares who you like or don't like? This. Matters.
I lived 55 years without knowing who this was, and now that I know, absolutely nothing was gained. I'm so glad my life doesn't revolve around a computer or phone. Sucks to be y'all.
You're missing the point. It's not about some vlogger we've never heard of. It's about the mainstream media being caught in a lie. Again. As if we needed more evidence after the disgraceful election coverage.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
... in that I never heard of it before and don't give a shit now that I have.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I think you're in violent agreement with the GP. He's right, reporting on a celebrity isn't news. And "mainstream media" isn't news either - most of the outlets which say they're news are 95% op-ed. I suppose that's a result of pandering for eyeballs. They're not really lying, they're just going way beyond unbiased objective fact, with an intent to mislead in order to support their POV.
Where, oh where, are today's Edgar R Murrows? They all seem to be Hearsts these days.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
He's male. He's white. He's likely not gay or transsexual. And he's not a member of the leftists.
In this day and age, would you ever need any more proof that he's a sexist, racist nazi scum?
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First, I encourage all Slashdot readers to take a look at what Xenographic thinks is a "crass racial stereotype".
Second, I don't expect Disney to sponsor my Slashdot comments, nor do I look for the alt-right to spring to my defense because they don't.
Why do you hate the Japanese, PopeRatzo?
There's a saying in Texas: "All hat and no cattle." And yet, "all hat" keeps winning, even when it's losing. Because the Twitter/Youtube economy is about clicks and views, regardless if you find the content compelling or appalling. Trump got the White House in part because his Tweets got him so much free publicity - news media making his Tweets into front-page stuff while his GOP opponents wasted their time and money trying to go it old-school. Now, people like me who'd never heard or cared about PewDiePie are all reading about him on Wired.com for the first time, amazed at his epic rise and fall as a juvenile asshole, doing on the Internet what would otherwise get him smacked in the face until he learns his lesson and stops... all that really matters is how every click records something about you on a server somewhere, and makes somebody a buck.
This is fucking ridiculous. We are all getting Played, and the Players are studying all this carefully and perfecting the craft... for pay.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
That doesn't match with the president's strong support for Israel, although it does fit your personal narrative, presumably that old white male = evil.
The media is "always appalling"? I disagree.
There are some great media outlets putting out well researched and written articles daily.
Then there are the media outlets targeting people who are only interested in some red meat half-truths being tossed out so they can rant and rave.
While you might not see it as such, I see the current "media dishonesty" schtick to be nothing more than the shark attack media frenzy you complained about.