Damn you, racism. I was going to write a very easy article about the Xbox One X, and how it has few exclusives because Microsoft is bad at cultivating talent, but instead, the face of YouTube went and threw the whole platform into flux again.
Back in February, Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, made a video where he paid two people in India to hold up a sign saying “Death To All Jews” just to see what a crowdfunding site would let him get away with, which caused Disney (owner of Maker Studios) to cut ties with him, and YouTube itself to cancel an incoming Red series with him. In spite of that, he remained the most popular YouTuber on the site with 57 million subscribers, and his numbers are not set to go away anytime soon.
What it did do, evidently, is screw with nearly everybody else on the site. See, advertisers don’t like their ads being placed in front of controversial content or creators, Sargon of Akkad, JonTron and now PewDiePie, because the association with those brands will make people less likely to buy the products being advertised.
But given that YouTube tends to handle problems like this with automatic sledgehammers rather than hire people to do it themselves, many perfectly fine channels, like Miracle of Sound and SuperBunnyHop, get ads taken off their videos and are forced to use Patreon to make a living off their channel again.
So this current controversy, when during a livestream of PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds, PewDiePie got frustrated and used the N-word quite casually, might prove even more destructive for him. With the first time, Felix and his defenders can play the “it’s a joke” card, but they can’t now, because he said it off the cuff in a slur-like manner.
And if you’re wondering why this might matter at all, because he’s just a funny internet personality, a huge chunk of his audience includes children, the last kind of person one would want exposed to casual racism in a world where Nazis and the KKK never went away, and the current President of The United State based his campaign on a promise to wipe the first black President from history.
For their part, other YouTube personalities like Angry Joe, Boogie, Jim Sterling and the Extra Credits team wasted no time taking him to task for his failure to represent the platform. Meanwhile, Firewatch developer Campo Santo has filed a DMCA takedown against PewDiePie’s LP of the game, and this is where it gets stickier.
See, in the past, bad developers of asset-flipped Steam games would try and DMCA takedown videos of criticism they didn’t like. Jim Sterling can tell you all about that, because he once got sued over his criticism of Digital Homicide’s games to the tune of ten million American dollars after DigiHom tried and failed to keep his videos down. Heck, Konami used the DMCA to try and keep SuperBunnyHop’s investigation of their treatment of Hideo Kojima and his team out of public eyes, and got a PR nightmare in return.
Now, we’ve got Campo Santo trying to remove positive coverage by a now-toxic personality, and that in itself is sympathetic. If Campo Santo wins, however, shadier developers like those that exist in the AAA space might use the PewDiePie case as precedent to shut down anything they so desire.
It’s not good that the fortunes of an entire platform/planet presently hinge on the good grace of a man who gleefully employs casual racism, but that’s the world we live in.
Logan Graham is a senior studying media arts with a focus in games and animation at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Are you OK with PewDiePie's latest controversy? Let Logan know by emailing him at lg261813@ohio.edu.
