Top 5 Pewdiepie controversies to look at as vlogger announces break from YouTube
After years of reigning the video-blogging, or vlogging forum on YouTube for years, PewDiePie has finally announced he is taking a break. With over 100 million subscribers acquired over the last five years, everybody's beloved Pewds managed to rack up four billion views in 2019 alone - a feat acquired despite his battle with T-series making the headline towards the end of 2018. Add to that his charity live streams and the countless donations he has made over the course of his flourishing career, and there's no wonder why he is so widely adored.
Pewdiepie, real name Felix Kjellberg announced on his latest video that he indeed is choosing to stay away from putting out content as he is 'tired'. This is way less drama by Pewdiepie's standards because his kind of vlogging is no stranger to controversies. Sure, it took YouTube's latest update on family-friendly content for Pewds to announce the big decision, but things are especially shocking as the 30-year-old newly married Swedish vlogger has lived through controversies involving racial slurs and offensive memes that escalated way out of hand. So it only makes sense that in the wake of this announced break, we take a look at the top 5 controversies Pewds has tactfully braved.
1. ‘Death to all Jews’ sign (January 2017)
Among the most ridiculous controversies Pewdiepie has managed to land himself in, one of the anti-semitism ones where he paid actors on Fiverr to hold up a sign that read 'Death to all Jews' stands out. After major outrage, a follow-up video came from the actors where they apologized for the statement and even came clean about not knowing the contents of the sign they were sporting. They just knew they were writing something in English but didn't understand what. But when it was time for the man who started it all, he clarified things with a Tumblr post claiming the purpose of this was to show 'how crazy the modern world is.' Concluding, he also stated that he is ‘in no way supporting any kind of hateful attitudes’.
2. Using the n-word (September 2017)
The biggest Pewdepie controversy that blew right up was when the vlogger uttered the n-word during a live stream. Pewds was live-streaming himself playing Players Unknown Battlegrounds and had said "What a f***ing n****r… sorry, but what the f***." He paused right away and apologized, before laughing it off as he realized the blunder he had made. This controversy came shortly after he had attempted to distance himself from Nazism, following a lost brand deal with Disney and even his YouTube Red series canceled. The Brighton based YouTuber later said in an apology: "It was something I said in the heat of the moment, I said the worst word I could possibly think of, and it just sort of slipped out. I’m disappointed in myself because it seems like I’ve learned nothing from all these past controversies. It’s not that I think I can say or do whatever I want and get away with it, that’s not it at all, I’m just an idiot, but that doesn’t make what I said or how I said it OK."
3. Offensive Demi Lovato meme (July 2018)
Looks like Pewds was right when he said he learns nothing from the many controversies he lands in as just ten months later, he was slammed by the social network for his not so funny and absolutely insensitive take on the whole Demi Lovato heroin overdose incident. When Demi was rushed to the hospital following her sudden overdose, Pewdiepie posted on his social media a 'cartoon strip' of someone asking their mum for money to buy a burger, but 'actually buys heroin like a boss’ instead. Goes without saying, Demi's face was pasted atop the meme and when flak stormed his way, he was forced to delete the meme and apologize publicly too. Pewds claimed he didn't realize the joke was insensitive, as he announced on Twitter: "Deleted mem. I didn’t mean anything with it and I didn’t fully know about the situation. I realise now it was insensitive, sorry!"
4. Promoting E;R, an anti-semitic channel (December 2018)
In a segment called Pew News, Pewdiepie ended up promoting the channel E;R - a channel whose content has already been taken down by Youtube for its alleged hate speech and anti-semitic bigotry. It is to be noted that this channel was majorly criticized for a joke on the Charlottesville rally - which caused Heather Heyer's death, and the Netflix series 'Death Note'. Pewds' defense revolved around him not realizing the Nazi connotations attached to the channel. "They have hidden Nazi references in their videos, obviously if I noticed that I wouldn’t have referenced him in the shout out," he said, adding: "Not because I have a problem with Nazi references being offensive in themselves, but because I said that I was going to distance myself from Nazi jokes. ‘Generally, I’ve done that. I don’t really have a reason to dip into that again; it’s stupid.’
5. ‘Sub to PewDiePie’ graffiti (March 2019)
When Pewdiepie was feuding with T-series over who has more subscribers on youtube, his loyal fans and followers started trending 'sub to PewDiePie’. Unfortunately, they took it a bit too far when the phrase ended up scrawled on a World War II memorial in New York City. Labeling the act 'disgusting', he said: "I don’t think I’ve done anything to condone this sort of behavior. Obviously it’s disgusting, obviously, I don’t condone it whatsoever. I don’t know why anyone got it in their mind to do this, it’s stupid." He even made a donation to the park saying "glad it got fixed."
Taking all of the heavy stuff into account, it's no secret that Maria Ruiz petitioned to get him removed from YouTube back in September this year. Ruiz labeled his content a ‘white supremacist platform’, and wrote in her petition: "PewDiePie has on many occasions proven once and again to promote and affiliate himself with white supremacist and Nazi ideologies. Worst of all his channel is very much aimed toward children in their formative years." Sure, Pewdiepie was once again able to brush off the allegations as defamatory and remarked how "Just by glancing over the points that they made against me, it’s so blatantly misrepresenting and misinforming people, a lot of these points are just flat out lies, as well. There’s nothing to back up any of the claims."