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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.
It would be huge. Bigly even.
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?
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.
> He is apparantly suprised that broadcasting a sign with "Death To All Jews" on it would get him fired.
Actually, he's surprised that his other video about the media taking things out of context would itself be taken out of context to prove that he was some kind of Nazi.
Even in the original video, in which he was dismayed to find out that someone would actually do those things for a few bucks, he says that he's not proud of this and apologizes to the viewers because he didn't think the people he hired on Fiverr would actually do those things.
But I bet you didn't actually look at any of that, and now the videos are marked as private. The best I can find now is this discussion by a friend of his.
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'll agree that what Pewdiepie did was crass and tasteless, but I would think that his apology (which he gave in that very video...) would cover it.
Speaking of which, you yourself have used more than a few crass racial stereotypes right here on Slashdot. Would you think it was fair if all the newspapers tomorrow were calling you a closet racist and calling on people to shun you. I seem to remember you making satirical statements pretending to be racist as well, but I won't quote you out of context to make a point (a courtesy, I note, that was not extended to Pewdiepie, when in a fit of irony they used "examples" from his video about taking things out of context out of context).
So I have to ask, will you answer for your own crass racial stereotypes before you throw stones at another?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... 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.
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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You know who doesn't get the irony of fighting fascism with fascism?
The leftists.
You know who doesn't understand what Irony is... You.
Or leftism and/or fascism.
By definition, a fascist cant be a leftist as Fascism is an extreme right political philosophy, The left equivalent of Fascism is called Communism and ironically enough... they are the traditional enemies of fascism. It wasn't the west Hitler wanted to conquer, it was Russia where he sought his Lebensraum.
Also, those who defeated the Nazi's like Churchill and Eisenhower were actually very left of where today's politicians are. They would be left of Obama and Blair, definitely left of Cameron, May, Turnbull and Bush... and extremely left of Trump.
The irony is, you've gone so far towards the extreme authoritarian right, you don't even know what the left is anymore.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The problem with this argument is that it's anti-free-speech. You are saying that once a service becomes popular, once the inertia sets in, that service must be forced to publish and force to silence its criticism.
No I'm not. I've explicitly refuted this straw man like twenty different times now in every way I can think of, but it keeps rising from the dead.
Are you suggesting that YouTube Red and Disney should be forced to continue paying him?
No, I'm suggesting these legions of people (like you) who are trying to shut down debate, analysis, criticism, and talk of boycotts[1] by conflating it with arguing that Youtube should be legally forced to not censor people are being intellectually dishonest asshats.
why not also require PDP to host material from other channels on his own?
This is taking an argument that "it would be a bad thing if phone companies could start censoring who I talk to and what we talk about" and trying to refute it by asking "well, why not force you to make *your* phone public use to everyone who wanders by?"
This is nonsensical. There is an obvious distinction between a general-purpose communication platform and a user of that platform. Also, see above. No one in this entire thread, as far as I can see, is arguing that Youtube should be legally compelled to host any content... but it does not then follow that there is no point in ever criticizing any of their decisions.
It's also worth pointing out that PDP hasn't actually been kicked off YouTube
There's a wider context here of Youtube's banning policies and demonetization policies, which are mostly subjective and have been enforced more and more in recent months. Advertisers, it's worth noting, cannot opt out of Youtube's de-monetization decisions. If you want to advertise on a video which has been demonetized, you can't. (You'd have to post a new version of the video and roll your own advertising system from scratch, which is unrealistically cumbersome for the majority of producers and advertisers.) This is an important issue worth talking about, and talking about it does not mean one supports the government making it illegal for Youtube to act this way, nor does it mean one necessarily likes or supports PewDiePie.
Also, there's the tiny, tiny side issue here of journalistic integrity.
1. Not that I'm thrilled about the prospects of these being successful, but if it stood any chance of succeeding I would of course be for it, because only reason why some advertisers care about this stuff is because the people on the other side of this war have already conducted many successful boycotts in the past.
That's a joke? Are you into bumfighting videos too? Do you find conflict diamonds hilarious?
You are welcome on my lawn.