Because views mean nothing if you can’t monetize them, and this situations limits PewDiePie’s ability to monetize his videos. Popularity is great, but if brands see you as radioactive and you can’t sell your ad space your popularity won’t put a roof over your head.

To be fair, the jokes fit the literal dictionary definition of anti-Semitism. Headlines that didn’t use the term would be actively avoiding it, which would seem strange. It’s not like everyone went out of their way to use it; no one spends ten minutes listening to quacks and thinks how to describe this duck without using the actual word for it.

The issue most people have is the idea that labeling comedy anti-Semitic means the writer or performer actively has hate in their heart, which very few articles claim. One doesn’t always follow the others, but when it comes to these situations the difference is pretty moot. The stories focus on the videos and the business implications of them, not the soul of the person at the heart of things.

This is speculation on my part, but the idea that "I got this far by myself why do I need manager or PR who will just take a cut of my monty?" should maybe be more openly discussed and even debunked. If you’re popular and making a good living, it’s not shameful or bad to hire people to help you with stuff, and could potentially save you a bunch of money when you avoid bad situations. Or just having someone like a manager who has a completely explicit interest in helping you have the longest career possible and to ask as a sounding board for ideas would go a long way. Not everyone can and should do this, especially starting out, but once you have something to lose? It’s time to start thinking of support structure if you don’t have a good one, and paying for professionals to help is not an admission of failure.

It’s one of the biggest entertainment stories of the year about the biggest YouTuber ever and some of the biggest names in tech and mainstream reporting. The argument that everyone needs to drop it because you’re personally tired of reading about it is a bit silly, and the easiest solution is not to read stories about subjects that don’t interest you.

If it helps, here’s a lawyer saying basically the same thing. You can’t blame the act of breaking your contract on the people who watched your videos and reported on them.
http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/20/14675914/freedom-of-speech-censorship-pewdiepie

He’s not being silenced. His ability to make money has been compromised by decisions he admits were bad.

Dude, I wrote a lot of really ugly shit online when I was a teenager. I take full responsibility for it and have grown.

But if I was making a lot of those similar jokes today as a grown person who exists in the public spotlight and someone made a list of just those posts, taking them out of context, the point would still be 100 percent valid. Why is this person going back to this idea and ideology again and again? Why does he think it’s a good punchline?

It would be a story, because why is this person with a large reach and platform making these dumb jokes and using this crass and offensive language so often? Heck, in this example we’re not even talking about my published work, just forum posts!

But removing the context and putting the posts next to each other isn’t unfair, nor would it be evidence of malice, especially if someone took the time to ask me for comment and talked to my employer about it before running the story.

I know I was a shithead as a teenager. I used bad humor to try to get a reaction out of people by shocking them. I wanted attention REALLY BADLY. I don’t blame anyone for digging it up, it was all right there. I take responsibility for the crappy things I said when I was 18, and probably years after that too, as I grew up and learned how hard it is to speak responsibly to a large number of people.

It’s also important to go to your employer if and when these things happen and explain what’s going on and why. Show them what you said, and when you said it. Apologize and recognize you know how it impacts your coworkers and the people who work around you. Don’t let them hear about it from a respected publication first.

So you’re right. 17 years ago I was immature and thought offense was humor. Was I trying to make a point with these comments in the course of a bigger discussion? Of course.

But that doesn’t excuse what I said, nor would it be unfair for a media outlet at the time to report on it had I been a public person with a large reach at the time. Heck, I’m not shocked it’s coming up NOW, this shit is forever and we gotta teach our kids to be more sensitive in all things growing up, but also that what they put online can, in some cases, be forever. It can haunt you. These posts are things I will show my kids to prove it.

So there are a number of differences, and I would love it if PewDiePie grew up. That was literally how I ended one of these stories. He’s a smart person who makes a lot of people happy who is making a bad situation a lot worse due to a lot of bad decisions and attempts to deflect blame or responsibility. No one is rooting for him to fail, nor expecting it to. I’ll repeat what I’ve already said a few times: My gut says that the reaction will be his viewership is made larger but monetizing his videos may get a big harder. That’s it.

Despite his need to pretend to be a target of some unfair attack, there are very few people actively rooting for him to fail, and it’s certainly not an orchestrated attack of some kind.

I think in this case both people are having their place in the public spotlighted elevated. But if you think this is the golden age of not trusting the press, you should look at the different ways newspapers and the media has been viewed in the past. This isn’t even that surprising, it’s just another step in a dance that has been taking place since the invention of the printing press.

Every generation distrusts the current press, and then they look back and partially only remember the good, big stories and they think the press used to be better, but the press NOW is garbage. In 30 years we’ll think of the 20 best examples of writing from this era and talk about how effective outlets were in investigating the Trump administrating, before complaining what is happen at THAT point is the new low point.

The press is always on the downswing, depending on who you talk to, and always necessary. Trump isn’t the first popular and rich demagogue to say he’s above the press, and PewDiePie’s arguments tend to boil down to the same points: It’s unfair to watch his videos unless you like him, and the press is fake if they talk about the content of his videos.

The media always exists in a state of being basically fine, but changing, and also the worst it’s ever been, according to each generation. Go back a few thousand years and research how they complained about kids to see how long these arguments, complaints and slippery slopes we think are novel have been common place in society.

Free speech protects you against the government. What you’re talking about is somehow protecting people’s right to say whatever they’d like without being criticized for it. That right has never existed.

Neither has anyone argued that he should be shut down. People don’t seem to even read the coverage or the arguments being made before they try to have the argument they want to have, not the one that is actually taking place.

There is this really strange idea that I keep seeing when people defend PewDiePie saying that if people only saw the videos in context … then everything would be OK.

Do people think that no one reporting on this has actually watched the full videos? This issue isn’t the specific context of each one, the issue is that the guy continually sets up really poorly thought-out jokes where anti-Semitism and Nazi imagery is the punchline.

You can argue the merits of each video, the setup to each joke along with its punchline, but you can’t argue about the fact this is a topic the guy keeps returning to in his humor. And he’s 100 percent open about finding it hilarious. He’s now stated that the material was offensive and it was understandable for him to lose his business deals due to how far he tried to push the envelope.

So he’s in agreement that the context doesn’t actually make things better. There’s never been an argument, that I’ve seen, where he stated that everything is OK as long as you watch the full videos.

So the idea that there is a magical context that makes his humor OK doesn’t really hold up. Not even PewDiePie believes it, as far as I can tell. He doesn’t compare himself to other shows or personalities who try to do the same thing. He doesn’t say he wishes Disney would have seen the whole video. He says he was offensive and the repercussions were understandable.

I keep reading the Wall Street Journal article looking for lies or malice and I just don’t see it. The compilation video was of course edited to only show the bad parts, the entire point was that, no matter the setup, he kept going back to the same tired attempt at shock humor for the punchline. Of course reading the entire article is important, because the video doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The Wall Street Journal actually spent a lot of time and energy talking to people and presenting the story in a way that doesn’t evoke anger or passion or outrage.

So I don’t understand the idea that context is being ignored. Anyone who wants to can see the context. Go watch the whole videos. Then think about where they all go in the final moments and figure out why that kind of humor is the only way PewDiePie can seem to make his point.

Heck, look at his history of not thinking about what he’s saying or how he’s saying it and how many times he’s apologized, said he’s growing up and that he’ll try better and he understands why people are upset. If anything, the Wall Street Journal was being pretty kind by not pointing out how long controversial content has been a part of the channel and how many times PewDiePie has apologized for it and admitted he was wrong.

I don’t think there’s any real case to be made that the story was a hit piece or was designed as an attack. What you can say is that having a mainstream press outlet as widely read and respected as The Wall Street Journal asking PewDiePie’s partners about his videos very likely forced their hand. But they were already profiting from this material, is the argument that it’s unfair to ask them what they thought of videos that were attached to their brands? Do you think anyone involved in the decision making process DIDN’T sit down and watch the entirety of these videos or know the history of the channel?

This issue has been simmering for years, and having the press ask Disney about whether it’s comfortable making money from this content isn’t an attack, it’s the job of the press. PewDiePie admitted he messed up. There’s no way the videos weren’t watched in full before the decision was made to drop him. People are saying the content is defensible even though its creator isn’t defending it, nor are any of the companies that paid for it.

There was nothing stopping PewDiePie from saying "listen, a lot of entertainers use these topics as a way to provide an edge to their jokes and to push the lines of what’s acceptable and what’s funny and it’s a way to get people to think about themselves and the lines they draw and the media they consume." He didn’t say that. What he said was he knows he was offensive and he doesn’t seem to blame Disney or Google for their decisions with regard to him.

In fact, there was nothing stopping ANY of these companies from saying "This guy is pushing the line, but if you watch the full video you can see he’s trying to say something. He may go too far from time to time, but that’s part of being creative and being the leader in a new way to communicate directly with fans. We’re going to continue to work with PewDiePie on creating material that is funny, edgy and, hopefully, a bit more skillfully handled in the future. We’re all still trying to figure out what YouTube IS when it comes to humor and content, and that’s going to involve making mistakes from time to time. We’re all going to learn and move on."

They did not. They dropped him. I cannot overestimate how huge PewDiePie is, and how popular. I think the decision to drop him will likely lose these company’s revenue, which shows you exactly how bad they thought this situation was and how little faith they had in PewDiePie to improve in the future.

So let’s stop pretending there is this context floating around out there that is intentionally being ignored to paint this guy as a bad person. I don’t think you can say with a straight face media companies this big can be bullied, even by The Wall Street Journal. This shit went too far and literally everyone involved is pretty open about it, including PewDiePie … but he still claims the press is the REAL villain here, because the press is talking about jokes everyone agrees were pretty terrible.

I think the bigger problem is that he honestly doesn’t understand the difference between someone saying content is anti-Semitic and being called an anti-Semite, and he doesn’t think he’s news. He also thinks he’s very popular and powerful, but it’s weird that the media writes a lot of stories about him and he’s always the victim.

The likely result? His audience will grow in size but it will be harder to monetize his content. He can continue to blame the media for his problems but he created them all, and almost all of them could have been avoided or mitigated with a bit of thought, self-control or skill.

I know we like to complain about glossy celebrities and being direct is a big part of how he got to where he is, but my gosh with so much at stake when this started to bubble up it seems like it would have been so smart to hire a bit of PR and a crisis management team and go to work immediately to get ahead of the story instead of escalating the situation and extending the news cycle on the bad stuff. He’s putting pride above just above everything, and that’s a good way to go out.

Also, I’ve been doing this long enough that I’m really good at emulating PR speak and it kind of made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. If I were a smarter person I would have made this its own story and published it on Monday.

A lot of the humor on the internet is based on shock and jokes made to be in poor because being in poor taste is the joke. This rarely comes from the most popular person on YouTube who is working with Disney. That’s the difference.

If anything, this shows you how little people inside the internet bubble understand how the majority of people see reality. The argument that you get used to all the Nazi stuff if you spend a lot of time online isn’t the BEST way to get people to accept your point of view.

Here’s a fun game: explain the context of each time he made a joke about Nazis or killing Jews and explain why that was the best way to express the point he was trying to make.

Everyone talks about context, but you can watch every single video this person has made in their entirety and find countless ill-advised jokes and attempts at humor, some of which he has apologized for himself, and the videos are still pretty horrible. There is no context that changes the fact his images and words were a cheap way to make a bad joke using shock value.

And then he blames the media for talking about it, as if this situation wasn’t one of the largest entertainment stories of the year. I’m trying to think of a situation in which The Wall Street Journal of all places woke up and decided to go after someone like PewDiePie out of malice, and none make sense. I doubt most of the outlet’s readers even knew who he was. The tone of the piece also doesn’t match the idea it was written out of anger or intent to harm. It sounds like a Wall Street Journal story about entertainment.

Just repeating the word "context" doesn’t make anything about these videos any better; the full context makes many of them seem even lazier, in fact.

Also, of course you give a damn about PewDiePie. You followed the story, watched the videos, read this article, and then felt strongly enough to write a comment trying to make a point about how you saw the situation. So … yeah. You care. I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing, I just wish people wouldn’t feel they needed to begin their level of engagement with topics by first claiming that they don’t actually care about the subject they’re engaging with.

That is 100% true and should be common sense.

I have super bad news for you: The issue is normalized. Take a look at the history of many of the people in the Trump administration and you’ll find a lot of racism and far-right ideologies. White terrorism is, statistically, a much larger threat in the US than terrorism from any other group.

It’s normalized. The US has a pretty long and extensive history of ongoing hatred, and it’s often been pretty much out in the open. We just don’t like talking about it.

The issue isn’t the press criticizing it, and if you read criticism of the current cultural climate and decide to join a hate group or grow more sympathetic to their goals, I’m not sure what to tell you. I don’t understand that point of view. If criticizing something is the same thing as doing it in your eyes, there’s likely not a productive conversation to be had.

I’m starting to believe that most people who make this argument watched the video and either haven’t read the article are aren’t aware that the video was even part of an article. I’m running into a surprising number of individuals who think that video was the entirety of what The Wall Street Journal reported on, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

They did reach out for comment, they did explain the situation. If the goal was just to get people outraged, they could have done so much more quickly and easily than the actual approach they did in writing about this subject. That aspect of things is often missing completely from the conversation, and everyone focuses on the video.

I wonder if a lot of younger people think Wall Street Journal is like PewDiePie in communicating through video rather than words. That misunderstanding would explain a whole lot.

So you’re taking the videos out of context and getting outraged?

No one is saying he’s bad at what he does, what he does is make videos online for his audience. He’s very good at that. You might not like the videos or their style, I don’t personally, but the way he speaks and edits his videos together isn’t easy. Try it. It looks simple because he’s been doing it a long time, but he’s the master of a certain style. He’s also been able to gain a huge audience and a lot of money and still retain a sense of intimacy and humbleness, which again isn’t easy. The guy puts a lot of work into what he does, and he clearly cares about it.

He’s a hack when it comes to trying to construct a joke. That’s he he’s called a hack. If you took the best comedian in the world and asked them to perform a really hard magic trick, they would fail. They’re too different skills.

The press isn’t really equipped to let people be just because they don’t like the coverage that comes from what they do. Reporting on the rich and powerful is the reason the press exists. The media can’t decide one day to stop reporting on certain people in government because they don’t like what it is being said about them.

PewDiePie’s inability to either understand or accept the fact that he can’t control the press with his money or power is part of the reason he takes everything so personally. It’s a situation that must not feel very familiar.

He is, without hyperbole, the most influential person in gaming right now.

I think using the subtitle to quote his own words about why the material was taken so poorly is a good use, personally.

It’s just a joke. Don’t take it out of context.

"Media cannot directly control viewpoints, no, but it does hold strong influence. To hold an opinion in contrast to what liberal press declares is to be placed front and center as an entity to be assaulted, as someone who is ‘against facts’, regardless of the quality of the foundation of either side’s arguments."

Can you share some examples of beliefs you feel people can’t share due to fear of being attacked? How are people who hold those beliefs being assaulted?

"people aren’t permitted to draw conclusions from their own moral foundations, they are given the side they must fall on, and you choose to wholly accept or wholly reject. No nuance, no middle ground. Division follows."

I don’t think this is accurate. There has been some good examples of nuance in these comments, for instance, in discussion the humor of things like Borat and South Park in relation to PewDiePie. Everyone is permitted to not only have their own beliefs, but there has never been more methods to share, defend or explain those beliefs with others. It’s impossible for the media to silence anyone, and the consequences from PewDiePie’s actions are more financial in a hypothetical sense than anything that causes an existential threat. He’s still immensely popular. He is still powerful and rich. He’s fine. "Assault" is a very strong word for criticism of his ill-conceived shock humor.

In the past with complex topics I’ve seen people, right in the middle, put "use the word banana or salt in the comment to prove you’ve read the whole thing." What I love about this is that so many people in the comments won’t let on or say anything about it, they’ll work it into the comment normally so everyone has the fun of figuring out who actually read the article because agreeing or disagreeing.

You hear this argument often, but … does it really hold water? I think the loss of these business relationships is going to hurt PewDiePie’s ability to run his business efficiently, but he can sell his own ads and work with other networks. His audience hasn’t left him, at least not in huge numbers. This article will not do much to hurt his actual ability to do what he does.

People often like to criticize "the media" by saying that it is too powerful and controls discourse in some situations, and then turn around and say no one watches or pays attention to "the media" so they have no power and personalities on social media are much more influential and powerful. The press is seen as an out of touch entity with no connection to anyone, as well as an all-powerful cabal that controls how everyone thinks about anything.

I mean, pick one. It can’t be both. Or it could be somewhere in the middle. Or a lot of different outlets in different media can have different levels of impact. But the goal posts are often moved depending on the situation and how you want to be perceived when you’re written about, either positively or negatively.

That video is just a repetition of PewDiePie’s points, which are addressed in this article, and then he says it’s OK because PewDiePie is his friend. It’s not the best response to the situation.

Also, using PewDiePie’s name in his video just to get traffic is clickbait. He’s just trying to profit off outrage. It’s sad.

(I don’t believe the last sentence, I think he was trying to engage with the issue even if I didn’t really find his responses that effective at changing my mind, it’s just silly that the "outrage clickbait" argument only seems valid when it’s people they disagree with. The reality is that he cared about the situation enough to spend time thinking of a response and then tried to convince other people. I wasn’t very convinced. I don’t think his use of his anger over what was going on was outrage, nor do I this his use of PewDiePie’s name nor the names of outlets he disagreed with to be "clickbait," although that’s the argument always used when YouTube personalities are criticized.)

If you disagree with this comment I was only joking.