{"id":2091,"date":"2019-03-31T15:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T15:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/?p=2091"},"modified":"2019-03-25T22:38:03","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T22:38:03","slug":"subscribe-to-pewdiepie-a-meme-turned-into-the-opening-line-of-a-mass-murderer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/31\/subscribe-to-pewdiepie-a-meme-turned-into-the-opening-line-of-a-mass-murderer\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Subscribe to PewDiePie’: a meme turned into the opening line of a mass murderer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A white supremacist shot and killed 49 people inside a Mosque recently, in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Facebook live-streaming the whole atrocious event, the shooter said, \u201cSubscribe to PewDiePie.\u201d This was a reference to the most popular YouTube star in the world Felix Kjellberg, known by his YouTube username PewDiePie, and his recent campaign to maintain a bigger subscriber count than Indian film company T-Series.
It\u2019s important to begin this discussion with saying that PewDiePie obviously did not singlehandedly inspire this tragic event. The idea of that is absurd. The core reason for this shooting is white supremacy, as many white supremacist talking points are repeated in the manifesto.
While it is ignorant and absurd to say that PewDiePie caused this shooting, it is equally as ignorant and absurd to claim that he is completely guilt free of its inspiration.
Prior to this shooting, PewDiePie has proven himself to be a controversial figure, to say the absolute least. While a predominant amount of his content is harmless and silly, there are several instances of horribly racist jokes and actions that have come from PewDiePie\u2019s content.
PewDiePie has said the N-Word on video, has promoted YouTube channel \u201cE;R\u201d a channel that has anti-Semitic hate speech, and even had popular Alt-Right public speaker Ben Shapiro, who is known for spreading transphobic and anti-Semitic rhetoric, on his channel.
Being fair to PewDiePie, he has apologized for several of these transgressions, and is in all likeliness not a white supremacist. I do not believe that PewDiePie is a racist anti-Semite. However, I do not believe that matters to this discussion.
Regardless of whether PewDiePie himself is a racist, he is objectively making racist jokes and opening the door for his young impressionable fan-base to more racist rhetoric.
Take the YouTube channel he endorsed, E;R. At the time he had only seen one video about the popular anime \u201cDeath Note.\u201d Realizing his mistake, he apologized and deleted the video that had the endorsement. That didn\u2019t stop E;R from gaining 20,000 subscribers as of the beginning of this year, according to GameRevolution<\/em>. That is an extra 20,000 people that potentially see videos where he actively quotes white supremacist David Lane and shows footage of and makes jokes about Heather Hayes, the woman who was tragically killed protesting against the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
There\u2019s also the inclusion of Ben Shapiro, who just this year was making points about preserving \u201cBaby Hitler,\u201d has a video that is still on YouTube and has over 7 million views.
At this point you might be thinking I\u2019m just overreacting at jokes, and that I\u2019m just an individual that gets offended easily.
For the adults, it is basic deflecting to avoid consequences.
The young and impressionable kids who are watching might not know it\u2019s a joke, or lack the mental capacity to take it as just a joke.
The same way you may watch a comedian you might like and let their jokes seep into your philosophy, so too might these young kids.
Even if PewDiePie himself isn\u2019t the one who inspired his fan, his encouragement of Ben Shapiro or E;R could lead them to do research on them. It could lead them to other content creators and speakers who will spend more time filling that child\u2019s head with racist rhetoric.
A perfect example is that Ben Shapiro is often associated, and seen interacting, with Conservative Speaker Candace Owens, who is directly credited in the shooter\u2019s manifesto as a direct inspiration to him.
Once again, this could all be hidden beneath the veneer of jokes and memes, but I must ask if being a joke makes this okay? Is it just a coincidence that these shooters, alt-right protestors and white supremacists all follow these jokes and people?
I can\u2019t reiterate enough that PewDiePie is in no way directly responsible for what transpired in New Zealand. However, if he believes that after this he doesn\u2019t have an obligation to clean up his content and be more careful with what he shows and endorses, then he is either foolishly ignorant or repulsively apathetic.
You can think I\u2019m overthinking, or you can believe that none of what I wrote here is real, but what is real is that there are 49 people dead at the hands of a young man that could\u2019ve said anything and he chose to say \u201cSubscribe to PewDiePie.\u201d
When does the joke go too far?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A white supremacist shot and killed 49 people inside a Mosque recently, in Christchurch, New Zealand. Facebook live-streaming the whole atrocious event, the shooter said,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[163],"class_list":["post-2091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"authors":[{"term_id":163,"user_id":8,"is_guest":0,"slug":"josue-villarreal","display_name":"Josue Villarreal","avatar_url":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/wp-content\/litespeed\/avatar\/9580769cb3ada2a586943d2ad90c47c2.jpg?ver=1778637593","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2092,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091\/revisions\/2092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2091"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesouthtexan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=2091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}