A ‘Dangerous’ Influence?
Ok in case you’ve been living under a rock or you’re new here in internet land then you’ll know the story already of PewDiePie being dropped by Maker Studios and his Youtube Red series and having his channel being one of the default Youtube recommended ones.
Before I go on let me preface all of this by saying I’m not a fan of PewDiePie, I don’t generally follow his work and while I can see he appeals to a certain audience it’s very much not an audience I’m really part of. I can respect his content’s right to exist while also personally disliking it. I also had to do some research in writing this to fill me in a bit more on the subject matter.With that out the way lets carry on.
Also because it will be brought up if I don’t say it. Hitler was bad, the Nazi’s were bad, they did terrible things and I in NO WAY support or endorse them. Yes it should be obvious but if I don’t make crystal clear you know someone will try and misrepresent things.
Most of the allegations against PewDiePie seem to remove around claims he’s a bad influence and somehow a Nazi sympathiser because he paid a couple of guys to say some outrageous stuff just to show the insanity of what people can and will do for money.
Yes this looks bad and you can tell from Felix’s face (PewDiePie’s real name) that he is in fact shocked this happened. What some of the media is leaving out is this part just after that segment.
Yes even PewDiePie suspected it had gone a bit too far and this is a theme for the rest of the video.
He even goes on to say just to clarify he’s not Anti Semitic with the video even ending saying he’s sorry, so sorry and doesn’t know what else to say.
The other main claim being presented as antisemitism is the image I used to top of this post where it shows PewDiePie watching Hitler. Which in context was him referring to the youtube heroes program and being like Nazi Germany. Now if referring to things as being like the Nazi’s or Hitler makes the person doing it a Nazi or Hitler lets just say some of the media have things to answer for.
What this was, was a hit job. This was people taking a shot at PewDiePie. People going to Disney and Youtube with out of context information (likely screenshots) and essentially backing them into a corner. No-one is really blaming Disney or Youtube hugely because they understand it was a buisness decision taken under essentially pressure to either be seen to act or face being potentially pulled in as complicit with this. Would it be good if companies turned round and said “We’ll launch an investigation internally and take appropriate action”? Yes because it’s very easy to present some-one as something they’re not. Just look at what was done to Thunderf00t
People lie, and lying to get someone fired seems to be a regular thing these days or lying to get a product removed or banned seems to be more and more common place.
Get Jimmy “Dwarvenhobble” Page’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
In the case of PewDiePie initially this could easily be written off as some in the media being pissed off and jealous he makes obscene money and has a huge audience.
This also isn’t the first time the media has chosen to put PewDiePie in the cross hairs and likely won’t be either because it’s not about who PewDiePie is but what he stands for.
Here I’ll let PewDiePie himself talk about the last time the media tried something like this.
So as I said this isn’t about what PewDiePie is so much as what he represents and unfortunately certain outlets really did let the cat out of the bag rather obviously in relation to what this is all truly about.
It’s about PewDiePie as an influencer. If you look at the “PewDiePie exposed” video I previously embedded again you’ll notice a startling pattern to this. The last time it was done was going after PewDiePie and other youtubers.
This is about an old form of media that is partially dying off fighting both to try and keep it’s relevance and keep the views coming in. People know PewDiePie is big and has a huge following so his name will bring attention hence they use his name. The second part is media outlets trying to keep the perception they’re relevant. With media trust in the USA at an all time low many in the media know they’re in trouble and as a medium they’re being replaced by youtubers. The media’s influence is dying and the influence of youtubers and others is growing in new media. So using what little influence they have left the old media is attempting to either stop the loss of influence to new media or salt the earth to try and make sure as they go down new media doesn’t get to take over and gets pulled down with them.
To me this matters because this is attempting to damage and harm new media by portraying youtubers and “dangerous” to brands. This doesn’t seem like a big thing but for me personally I see it as one. I have a very small youtube channel, I’m not holding out some false hope I’ll become huge or that I’m even really any good. What I do care about is watching misrepresentations and lies be used to try and doom another medium. It wasn’t long ago we had the whole Youtube friendly advertising furore as youtube removed monitisation from videos it deemed not advertiser friendly (or to put it another way videos not safe and PG level enough that advertisers were happy to have their gambling sites or explosion filled film trailers shown beforehand).
Don’t believe me that this is some in the media going after youtubers because they can see themselves losing influence?
Well here’s one simple question, Where were they when Gawker decided to hijack a bot Coca-Cola made to instead of spread happiness spread passages from Hitler’s book Mein Kampf?
Very few people in the media bothered. At least one did but it was few and far between. People even later defended Gawkers right to keep going, yet where’s the defence for PewDiePie?
Some in the media are realising they need to fight to have advertisers support them and they’re fighting dirty to try and make youtubers seem like a dangerous unpredictable property compared to oh so dependable and not at all controversial old school media and the people in it. Who would never ever drag a companies name through though the mud by associating it with something disgusting.
This is the modern world and PewDiePie is far from being a Nazi or supporting Hitler, I mean it’s not as though he even supports racial segregation of people……..
