PewDiePie Under Fire For Saying N-Word During Livestream

YouTube star PewDiePie used the n-word during a live stream and is facing more public backlash.

Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, is back in the center of another controversy. PewDiePie was livestreaming while playing the very popular PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds when he called a player the n-word.

As you can imagine, there has been massive backlash on social media for many reasons.

In February of this year, PewDiePie was caught up in a battle with the media. As YouTube’s biggest earner, PewDiePie was called out for his use of Nazis and Anti-semitism as fodder for comedy. PewDiePie put out a response, and didn’t really seem to grasp the reason for the backlash.

PewDiePie defended his content as humorous and sarcastic, but disguising hate speech as a shocking punchline is still racism and has a disgusting and toxic effect that PewDiePie, as a white guy, does not actually suffer from.

After the white nationalist march on Charlottesville, PewDiePie released a video that seemed more apologetic than any of his other videos, saying that he did not think there were real nazis out there.

However, being YouTube’s biggest star, his actions affect all creators.

In April of this year, YouTube made changes to their monetization rules, hoping to stop channels that profit off of hate speech, terrorism or piracy.

While YouTube had been working on these changes for a while, people see PewDiePie’s casual acceptance of racist jokes as setting the tone for the YouTube community.

In reaction to the livestream video, one game developer is filing a copyright complaint against PewDiePie’s channel. Sean Vanaman‏, co-founder of Campo Santo, wrote on Twitter, “We’re filing a DMCA takedown of PewDiePie’s Firewatch content and any future Campo Santo games.”

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