PewDiePie's community is toxic and gross and represents everything that is wrong with the internet and gaming culture.
This does not surprise me.
This does not surprise me.
If you are thinking that 60 million people are all toxic and gross and represent everything that is wrong with internet and gaming culture, with respect, you're being an extremist. Just like those in that community who are noisy enough to get your attention.
“As pointed out in editorials by the New York Times and The Verge, the phrase "subscribe to PewDiePie" has become almost equivalent with dumb stunts and racially fueled declarations, and was also muttered by a gunman before embarking on a killing spree in a New Zealand mosque last week.”
Pewdiepie followed a lot of white supremacists and alt-right on Twitter, including encouraging his fans to follow one of them.
After the terrorist attack, he went into damage control and unfollowed everyone on Twitter, probably to hide the fact he had followed those kinds of people.
Christchurch terrorist was trying to make his attack as viral as possible and saying something like "subscribe to Pewdiepie" was the best way to create perfect shit-storm online achieving exactly this goal.
PDP never expressed any views adjacent to white-supremacy or whatnot. I've been following his story for quite some time and haven't seen any proof of the opposite that could be argued in good faith.
> including encouraging his fans to follow one of them
This is also while technically true, only presents half of the story. PDP has made a video promoting 40+ other youtube channels with low subscribers count. One of the channels he's promoted for making a funny anime review turned out to be pushing some questionable content outside of these anime reviews. PDP cut out this part from his original video and apologized. Seems like his only fault in this situation was not doing enough research before recommending those 40+ channels.
Again, I'm not a huge fan of his, but these kind of bad-faith attacks on someone who's just making funny meme videos on the internet seem very unjust and counter-productive.