Why YouTube's Biggest Star Can't Be Canceled // Why PewDiePie's Anti-Semitic YouTube Jokes Don't Hurt Him
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/why-pewdiepies-anti-semitic-youtube-jokes-dont-hurt-him.html In general, PewDiePie's frequent controversies seem to have no real effect on his popularity. In 2017, at a little over 50 million subscribers, he lost a lucrative partnership with Disney over a series of videos in which he paid Indian men on the gig website Fiverr -- as a sort of black-humored social experiment -- to record themselves holding signs saying things like "Death to All Jews"; later that year, he called an opponent a "f*cking n*gger" while livestreaming a video game. And yet, Kjellberg remains YouTube's biggest star, to the tune of 75 million subscribers, 19 billion views, tens of millions of dollars, and the adoration of millions of adolescents worldwide. If you come from outside YouTube, where letting a single N-bomb slip can be enough to end your career permanently, this sequence of events is baffling: How can someone flirt so frequently and so explicitly with racist slurs and anti-Semitic jokes and thrive? - - - I disagree with this author, who seems to believe that this is an unsolvable problem. Google could begin by kicking PDP off YouTube. That's the first step. Then move on from there. Backbone required. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lau...@vortex.com): https://www.vortex.com/lauren Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com Google Issues Mailing List: https://vortex.com/google-issues Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: https://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Google+: https://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 _______________________________________________ nnsquad mailing list https://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad
