Celebrity YouTuber PewDiePie (a.k.a. Felix Kjellberg) has been caught under fire from online news media, more prominently The Wall Street Journal, for his allegedly anti-Semitic "posts" in his videos. Since this week, his channel’s partnership with Disney’s Maker Studios has been voided.
The controversy gained traction as the WSJ published a video and article and article online, citing up to 9 videos where he allegedly made said comments.
One such video features PewDiePie visiting the freelance website Fiverr, where he made joke requests to numerous freelancers. One request involved Indian comedy duo Funny Guys unraveling a paper that said “Death to All Jews,” before exclaiming “subscribe to Keemstar,” referring to another infamous YouTuber, and laughing heartily.
PewDiePie has then made a response video after the media backlash, apologizing for the jokes that “went too far,” but also stated the article and video posted by WSJ were a “personal attack” against him as the video they uploaded took his jokes out of context.
So what can we take from this aspect of the media industry, both as readers and writers?
First thing to understand is that there is no such thing as bad publicity. No matter what the coverage will potentially publicize said person to numerous audiences. Having PewDiePie's name all over the news has garnered him more YouTube subscribers and Twitter followers, the opposite as to what WSJ, The Guardian, and other similar outlets may have intended to happen.
Secondly, never take one side of the story as truth. WSJ may say that what Felix has done was wrong and that he is taking advantage of shock value, but the story is more than what they are saying in their article.
Personally, how the backlash grew the way it did was not just a result of PewDiePie’s viewers and corporate patrons not understanding the joke’s context, but rather some of the larger media outlets taking this misunderstanding to their advantage to gain more viewership. Considering words such as “anti-Semite” and “fascists” add up to shock value, and seeing a renowned outlet do this to a celebrity, others couldn’t afford not to jump on the bandwagon it seems.
There’s nothing wrong with having an agenda, but context is vital, and to label a celebrity as “anti-Semitic” or “fascist” because of some distasteful jokes can be dangerous. If the media continually hype up their audience to detest and jeer against something that they don’t know even the entire story about, it can lead to dire consequences.
