PewDiePie Yet Again Issues Another Apology

As you may have already heard, or inferred from the title of this piece, PewDiePie is in a bit of hot water. Well, more like a cauldron filled with the hatred of a good chunk of the internet. For those unaware, on Sunday night the crown prince of YouTube, and objectively the face of the platform went a bit off the rails while playing the popular online game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

During his livestream PewDiePie was in a small firefight with another player who, for whatever reason, was really pissing him. This caused PewDiePie to shout an expletive at the user. Now, I’m sure most people reading this article have probably done the same thing, I myself can get a bit flustered while playing Overwatch online, but where most capable adults would curse out the other player or players, PewDiePie decided to use the "N" word to describe the player.

It was a moment of pure frustration and you could clearly see that PewDiePie knew what he said was pretty terrible, but he said it nonetheless. Hearing that word isn’t some isolated incident for people that play online (it and so much similar speech during online games is why I don’t like playing, or mute everyone but friends), but when it comes to PewDiePie this isn’t the first incident of being insensitive, but it is the first to show how he reacts when he isn’t thinking.

Some time back the internet went nuts when PewDiePie seemingly dressed as a Nazi during a segment of his video series and had people from the online work service Fivrr produce content that included some pretty shocking things. Now, before you dive into the comments to tear into me (some of you no doubt already have) I actually wrote a piece defending PewDiePie for those videos. 

I got some hate for that as well because one can never really win on the internet, but my position was that he was creating comedy bits that played off the fact you could get people on Fivrr to pretty much do anything for only a few bucks. These videos were clearly comedic (whether you liked them or not is a personal thing) and served to make a point.

Sure, he got a lot of flak, but I didn’t peg him as racist, rather a comic making a point. Now, you can take issue with that as his audience is made up of lots of kids who might not understand the subtler messages he’s trying to make, and that would be a fair point, but I didn’t see the point of the internet going after him. I saw it mostly as a click-bait tactic to bring in ad revenue. At least for most onlne publications.

But that wasn’t even the first time that PewDiePie has been in hot water over his content. Back when he was much younger and just starting to make waves, he was one of the reasons that Machinima nearly closed up shop. What many don’t know was that while at Machinima, PewDiePie was doing some pretty cringy content that included a lot of yelling and really tasteless jokes.

Around the same time Machinima announced a massive ad deal with Levi Jeans that would see the network funded for at least an entire year. This was so massive that it made mainstream news and would have taken Machinima to the next level in terms of YouTube networks while still raking in revenue from all the views it's users got. 

But before they could seal the deal, someone at Levi’s decided to check out this PewDiePie fellow who was the top content creator for Machinima only to realize that this screaming Swedish kid was saying things that the Levi's brand would not want to be associated with. You can think of it like a mini “Adpocalypse,” which is funny as PewDiePie has been one of the main reasons for both now.

Fast forward to this past Sunday night and things have changed, not only with PewDiePie, but with how I am starting to feel about him. Saying the "N" word on stream is something altogether new for him and I’ll do my best to explain why.

A few months back when I defended PewDiePie it was because his content was clearly laid out before he recorded it. He had something to say and did so in an entertaining manner that was meant to cause a little bit of a stir. It was probably scripted out in some manner, edited, and released after checking it over. On Sunday night there was none of this.

The use of the "N" word is something that is pretty terrible in almost all forms as it’s a word with a lot of terrible history behind it. But it’s not even the word itself in the case of PewDiePie that is the issue, more in the context that he used it. Unlike comedians or even other content creators online, his use of the word was entirely out of left field.

You see, he blurted out the word in anger and his own reaction to him saying it almost confirms that not only was it unexpected, but that he understood the meaning of the word in which he used it. PewDiePie used it to describe a person in a negative light and thus placed all the history that the word has behind it into play. Anger and frustration makes us do lots of strange things, especially online, but PewDiePie’s use of the word was meant to describe someone as the lowest of the low.

Now, why he chose to use that word in anger is something that I can’t go into here as I don’t know the man, but him not being from the States and growing up online probably has something to do with it. It’s almost like a little kid when they say something bad that they heard their friends say without knowing what it really means. But in this case PewDiePie is an adult and already mired in racist controversy.

What’s unfortunate in this case is that the internet, and his fans, will let this slide just like they let everything slide with the people that they love, even though they don’t know them. But someone did strike back this time, but it’s probably doing more harm than good.

After the events of the stream the developer behind the game Firewatch issued a DMCA strike against a video PewPiePie made playing his game. When I first read this I had assumed that PewDiePie was playing Firewatch on his livestream and didn’t think much of it, but when I found out he was wasn’t, I got really concerned. 

You see, we here on YouTube have been fighting tooth and nail against false DMCA strikes against our channels. Even a small channel like one we run that deals in mostly news and podcasts has had to fight strikes, and that’s without having famous friends or being a part of a network to help. We’ve had the Pokemon Company hit us with a strike over our talking about how they screwed up their event in Chicago, and even had CBS strike us claiming we re-uploaded a show in its entirety.

The strike on that one said it was manually reviewed by CBS and thus a strike was issue. Problem was that it was a still image that was edited over a podcast talking about that episode. We won both cases, but it took time and we would have lost revenue if we monitored our videos which shows there are real issues with the system. 

The problem with the Firewatch dev is that he is abusing a system; A system that is very loose in interpretation. Legally, Let’s Play videos are copyright infringement. This has always been the case as it’s really hard to prove transformative work and this has been an issue since Let’s Play become a thing, shooting off from the Something Awful forums many moons ago.

What is scary in the case of PewDiePie and the Firewatch dev is that this could be bad news for all of us here on YouTube, because both sides are really messy. On the one hand Let’s Play’s are copyright infringement, but on the Firewatch website it states that Let’s Play’s are okay from everyone. The real worry is if this goes to court then in theory the Firewatch dev could win the case against PewDiePie. This could destroy the YouTube we know and all during a time where the “Adpocolypse” if affecting even major channels. 

And while I don’t think it will come to court, I do think YouTube is going to do something. PewDiePie is someone that helped put them on the map and you know that the company are monitoring the situation. And him being one of the reasons for the “Adpocoplyse” in the first place, they can’t turn a blind eye.

Look, at the end of the day both parties are clearly in the wrong. PewDiePie is turning out to seem like a sort of shitty person, and while I won’t call him a racist, he isn’t doing himself any favors with that respect over the past few months. The Firewatch dev is wrong for abusing an already broken system and his stance may affect all of us in the long run. 

YouTube is going to do something. The fear is that they take more control over YouTube and the content on the platform which will affect all of us in negative ways. I can easily see a more corporate controlled system that gives powers to advertisers and studios in general. It’s not all that crazy to see PewDiePie losing a case in court and studios going the Nintendo route and taking all a users revenue or simply banning their content from being shown. The same for movie channels and others.

Whatever may come of this all I know is that one of the people that helped YouTube grow to mainstream success might just be the same person that ushers its demise. Oh, and I’ve learned that people can’t control themselves online, even with millions in their bank accounts.