Pewdiepie hate crime or slipup?

Pewdiepie during the livestream which created more backlash

Pewdiepie during the livestream which created more backlash

Story by Emily Pravel, Opinion Editor

Pewdiepie, also known as Felix Kjellberg, hosted his annual early morning livestream on Sept 10, 2017. He played Player Unknown Battlegrounds with KickThePj, another YouTuber. During a very frustrating moment, an inappropriate word came out of his mouth: the n-word.

This word can be traced back to the Latin root, meaning black. In the 1800s, it was a derogative name used towards slaves that worked in the field. This word made fun of, ridiculed, and limited all black people. Whether it was written down or said, these and other words, were all anti-Black prejudice. Its original “American” use was towards the opposite race to make them feel bad about them being “inferior” by their masters, it was the “ultimate American insult.”

It’s not okay to say this. Pewdiepie isn’t the only YouTuber to use this word when filming a “let’s play” for their channel. On Sept 16, 2017, H3H3 Productions released a video discussing the Pewdiepie issue. While talking about it, he used the same word that Pewdiepie was attacked for. Now, H3H3 Productions is being called a hypocrite for using the same word Pewdiepie got in trouble for. The YouTuber Idubbbz used this word on his Twitter to describe Pewdiepie is a blank party, considering he has over 3 million followers, this was not taken well by his community, as said by the African American (a non-profit organization).

Pewdiepie is a Swedish YouTuber, who currently lives in England and wasn’t part of the history during the slave trade. He is by no means a “racist jerk.” He employs a video editor who would tell him if he’s being too racist because the editor is an African American male. If the editor believed that Pewdiepie was truly racist, then he still wouldn’t be working for him or continuously editing his videos after his slip up on Sept 11, during his livestream.

In a video called “My Response” Pewdiepie said, “I’m disappointed in myself because it seems like I have learned nothing from all these past controversies and it’s not like 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 okay, it was not okay.”

After Pewdiepie furiously said this word, a couple game developers emailed Pewdiepie to take down the video that featured the game while other developers allowed Pewdiepie to keep the videos up. However, the developer of Firewatch, Sean Vanaman, publicly tweeted that he’s going to sue Pewdiepie for filming his game, since he was in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But on the game’s website, it reads, “Yes. We love that people stream and share their experiences in the game. You are free to monetize your videos as well.” Mr. Vanaman doesn’t have a case for the DMCA, if he decides to bring this lawsuit to court, because his website proves he’s suing over false pretenses. Pewdiepie was within his right to create the video and monetize it, due to what the website says about the policy of the “let’s play.”

One defender of Pewdiepie, @stillgray, tweeted, “Hey, can people stop freaking out over Pewdiepie saying the n-word in a heating gaming moment? Watch, there’s going to be 10 articles written about it.”

Pewdiepie is not a racist, and his slip up doesn’t describe who he is as a person. This accident is blown out of proportion. If journalists really want to talk about something important then they should discuss the amount of cursing and inappropriate language used by other well-known YouTubers that “slip up.” Pewdiepie is always attacked by the media about the littlest things. His followers don’t care about this and nor does his video editor. It’s not like he went up to some random man and very loudly started using this word towards him.

Everyone writing an article about this incident is hopping on the hate Pewdiepie bandwagon. They probably don’t know his content or what his videos are, and how much he means to his followers. Unfortunately, he made a mistake by saying this word, but hopefully he will learn from this and be more careful in the future.

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