The most powerful man on YouTube and the most powerful man in the world have something in common. PewDiePie (53 million YouTube subscribers) and Donald Trump (25 million Twitter followers) do not share the same temperament, politics or hair style—but do share a similarly adversarial relationship with the media.
For a YouTuber, PewDiePie is skilled at making headlines, mostly from notoriety. Offensive jokes, racist language and media stunts have proven popular with his subscribers but they’ve also fueled his antipathy with the press.
Last year, for example, he irked the media by appearing to say the n-word in a video; by claiming he joined ISIS; and by pulling a hoax stunt where he said he would delete his channel when he reached 50 million subscribers.
After the gaming press targeted PewDiePie with a media blitz for not clearly disclosing sponsorship in a few videos, he responded with some stern words for the press. “I don’t f—king need you,” he said in a video. “I have an audience. I can talk to them. You’re insignificant and that’s why you pull this shit.”
Sound familiar? Trump refers to his Twitter account in the similar ways. He uses Twitter to talk to the people to make the “fake news” journalists look insignificant.
But this time the press was able to hit PewDiePie in the pocketbook. Reporters from The Wall Street Journal contacted Disney and pointed to a string of “anti-semitic” jokes he made in his videos last year, causing the family-friendly company to panic and drop him from their Maker Studios. Following the extensive media coverage of Disney’s move, YouTube canceled his show on their YouTube Red subscription service. Google also removed PewDiePie from “Google Preferred” premium advertisement programming.
To put the jokes in context, PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, made a series of videos making fun of another YouTuber Keemstar, the most offensive of which was when he paid two Indian guys online to unfurl a paper that said “Death to All Jews.” The joke was meant to poke fun at the fact you can pay people to do crazy things on the online service Fiverr—it wasn’t meant as an anti-semitic political statement. But it’s not surprising how people could take offense.
PewDiePie earns an estimated $15 million a year from his YouTube fame, mostly from advertising around his videos. While getting dropped from Makers is a setback, he still has direct access to 53 million people via his YouTube channel. (According to YouTube’s guidelines, content creators can include satirical offensive humor as long as cannot be classified as legitimate hate speech.)
Makers and studios like them are crucial for some YouTube gamers. They are able to work out deals with gaming companies to allow their creators to play games on YouTube without receiving copyright strikes. Some companies are cool with anyone posting videos of gameplay on the Internet, but others, like EA, are neurotically punitive with copyright strikes.
PewDiePie will need to either find a new studio (there are likely many eager to scoop him up) or work out deals with companies himself if he wants to continue doing gaming videos.
He has yet to respond to the controversy publicly, but on Sunday he published a blog post, likely after getting contacted by the Journal reporters, where he clarified his jokes were not meant as an endorsement of racism. He also reiterated his point that his content is aimed at his audience, the people who “get it.”
I make videos for my audience. I think of the content that I create as entertainment, and not a place for any serious political commentary. I know my audience understand that and that is why they come to my channel. Though this was not my intention, I understand that these jokes were ultimately offensive.
PewDiePie was clearly playing with anti-semitic fire. With all his corporate sponsorships, his escalating edginess was going to inevitably cause him difficulties. But now PewDiePie is completely unshackled. He doesn’t have to worry about what Google, Disney or least of all the media think when he is making videos.
Like Trump, media outrage against him will have no effect as long as he has a direct line of communication with his fans. The shrill typings of journalists will not decrease his subscriber counts. However, now his videos will be made directly for the fans, and there’s a hell of a lot of them.
Follow me on Twitter @William__Hicks
