Variety: YouTube Cancels PewDiePie Show, Pulls Channel from Premium Ad Program

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They may not be racists, but they are still enabling racism, which is the reason these comedians stopped doing the bits.

By the same token, I think its fair to say that South Park enables racism, regardless of the intentions of the writers.

So when a series ridiculizes nazis, they're actually enabling nazism?
 
So when a series ridiculizes nazis, they're actually enabling nazism?

If they do it poorly enough that it's used to enable Nazism rather than how the series intended for it to be used, then absolutely. People are not mind readers. A writer can't hide behind "well, I meant well" because the intent isn't the product they are delivering. The actual writing is the product.
 
So when a series ridiculizes nazis, they're actually enabling nazism?

Depends on how, a show about the hilarious adventures of a Nazi bureaucrat dealing with woefully inept Jews, slavs, and homosexuals would enable it. Some of the content in southpark, the chappele show, and some bits from chris rock can be taken like that. For instance, the asian character who owns a chinese food place. That is in the vein of leaning into tropes for humor and it isn't 'ridiculizes' the racists it's playing into it. Chappelle and Chris rock thought some of their bits played the same way. They were leaning into the racism. Parker/Stone have no such self awareness.
 
They may not be racists, but they are still enabling racism, which is the reason these comedians stopped doing the bits.

By the same token, I think its fair to say that South Park enables racism, regardless of the intentions of the writers.
And like I said, I don't think people should have to play to the lowest common denominatior just so some idiots don't misunderstand the joke.

At that point you literally can't make any racially based comedy because inevitably you're going to run into someone who doesn't understand that you're not being serious.
 
If they do it poorly enough that it's used to enable Nazism rather than how the series intended for it to be used, then absolutely. People are not mind readers. A writer can't hide behind "well, I meant well" because the intent isn't the product they are delivering. The actual writing is the product.
That's a ridiculious standard to hold. There are people here so removed from understanding comedy that they straight up ignore or see things they want to see on a show like South Park. Go into any recent thread and see how many people have to have jokes explained to them because they only saw what they want to see.
 
And like I said, I don't think people should have to play to the lowest common denominatior just so some idiots don't misunderstand the joke.

At that point you literally can't make any racially based comedy because inevitably you're going to run into someone who doesn't understand that you're not being serious.

No. You can still do "racially based comedy" you just don't make oppressed group of people the butt of the joke, you make the racists the butt of the joke.
 
And like I said, I don't think people should have to play to the lowest common denominatior just so some idiots don't misunderstand the joke.

At that point you literally can't make any racially based comedy because inevitably you're going to run into someone who doesn't understand that you're not being serious.

Racially based comedy doesn't have to degrade people or be based on stereotypes, it could be based on actual knowledge. Tons of Jewish comedy in movies and such are based on things like Yiddish and Rabbis; actual elements of Jewish culture as observed by those who participated in it.
 
No. You can still do "racially based comedy" you just don't make oppressed group of people the butt of the joke, you make the racists the butt of the joke.
That's a terrible idea. So much good comedy would be gome if you did that. You're essentially saying that if you make a racially based joke you can only make them about straight white people.
 
They may not be racists, but they are still enabling racism, which is the reason these comedians stopped doing the bits.

By the same token, I think its fair to say that South Park enables racism, regardless of the intentions of the writers.

So anything making fun or parodying racist or racist views enable that racism? While it's a little true it still just only goes to show how dumb/unaware racist are.

If anybody likes pewdiepie because of his antisemitic jokes and only that they only prove that they don't understand the context and continue to be dumb as hell.

Last thing we actually need to do is stop making jokes about stuff because some people take it seriously and enjoy the joke because they agree with it.
 
Honestly I hope this is a catalyst for him to move to another site or create his own. He has enough followers to get a significant viewerbase on another unknown platform, and YouTube has been getting worse and worse with their content policies, DMCA, etc. I'd switch to another video platform in an instant if I saw similar content available without the accompanying BS YouTube has tried shoving down our throats.

(I don't actually enjoy PDP that much, but he should have the freedom to joke about things... humor is supposed to be offensive at times)

(I also fully support Disney's right to pull their support from him, and am kinda surprised they were in it at all considering he has never been super kid friendly)
 
Racially based comedy doesn't have to degrade people or be based on stereotypes, it could be based on actual knowledge. Tons of Jewish comedy in movies and such are based on things like Yiddish and Rabbis; actual elements of Jewish culture as observed by those who participated in it.
All of which could be misconstrued by stupid people and turned into something racially insensitive.
 
If they do it poorly enough that it's used to enable Nazism rather than how the series intended for it to be used, then absolutely. People are not mind readers. A writer can't hide behind "well, I meant well" because the intent isn't the product they are delivering. The actual writing is the product.

I don't agree with you on the matter i can blame the entire problem on the writer even if that's not his intent.
You said that people are not mind readers and that's true, but have you considered that the writer is also a person that cannot read minds and doesn't know the future how will his work be interpreted by others?
I can agree if the person keeps perpetuating those jokes ignoring the outrage of the public, that reveals that probably there was a more serious intent on that matter, but this is not the case.
 
That's a terrible idea. So much good comedy would be gome if you did that. You're essentially saying that if you make a racially based joke you can only make them about straight white people.
Nothing good would be lost. If anything it would force comedians to actually do clever satire instead of piss poor stereotypes
 
Jesus, he really shot himself in the foot. Of course he's already made millions of dollars so it's not his life has been ruined or anything, but still... gotta hurt.

I don't really understand how reckless people are with social media. Shameful posts and outbursts all the time. Like I'm sure a lot of people have some pretty dark thoughts and assorted biases and prejudices, but why would you just put it out there in the open for all to see? Seems like they just have no idea. On the upside, people being upfront about this stuff makes it easy to identify arseholes.
 
The wiki page for South Park Republicans doesn't have any detail about ideology or what they believe, probably because they were never considered a real group and the idea of it is flimsy at best. It's all quotes about Matt and Trey being Libertarians. The wiki page for the book doesn't outline what they believe either.

To say that they turned into the alt right seems pretty baseless from what you've shown me.
-http://www.life zette.com/popzette/south-park-20-years-of-political-incorrectness/

https://twitter.com/bb8_wins/status/799080766558863360
https://twitter.com/bb8_wins

https://twitter.com/BostonDaveOH/status/777667489257787392
https://twitter.com/BostonDaveOH

https://twitter.com/BajaHoncho/status/794499832983363584
https://twitter.com/BajaHoncho

https://twitter.com/BMillan/status/796065133151879168
https://twitter.com/BMillan

https://twitter.com/Wisakijak/status/793918316368662528
https://twitter.com/Wisakijak

https://twitter.com/CloppingCapital/status/787795732908675072
https://twitter.com/CloppingCapital
 
Partners dropping him does still mean a loss in financials. It won't break him like it would others but it's still a loss.

YouTube Red makes the rich richer, now he's been cut from that.
 
I just want to sit down with him someday and ask him how long he thought about this bit before going forward with it. I want to know the thought process behind this. If there was one at all.

It's clear from the video that he didn't think about it too much. Just as he wrote "drink bleach" to a woman who told she does anything for the $5 pay he didn't think they would write the line and make a video of it. It was probably a thing he thought of during filming as it seems he found the "we write anything" performers while he filmed.

He didn't think about it too much and he did it on a whim and thought they'd never dare to write it. When he got the video and saw that they actually did write it, he had a wordless "oh no they didn't" reaction and he apologized it and felt sorry about it. It didn't seem he found it funny.

That said, he still published the video so if he was sorry about it, he wasn't that sorry about it.




Personally, I thought the video the "we write anything" performers made was hyper absurd and the absurdity with this super dark subject mixed with pewdiepie's "oh no" reaction was a pretty funny moment, can't lie.
 
I kind of get what he was getting at and to an extent, context does matter, but he should know better. I know he's not completely stupid. He's dealing with Disney, a company that represents family friendliness and makes anti-Jew jokes. What did he expect to happen?

Maybe he's only doing this for more attention (as if he really needed it) or it's some way to get out a contract he ended up regretting signing, but either way, congratulations to him for getting a very small taste of the real world.
 
Racially based comedy doesn't have to degrade people or be based on stereotypes, it could be based on actual knowledge. Tons of Jewish comedy in movies and such are based on things like Yiddish and Rabbis; actual elements of Jewish culture as observed by those who participated in it.

And mostly understood by people on the inside.

YouTube Red makes the rich richer, now he's been cut from that.

Will probably do more harm to YouTube than PewDiePie.
 
So what? I laughed at that episode too. And I'm a democrat who voted for her.

Even if they are conservative none of that proves that this made up subset of Republicans are the same people who are now alt-right. There could be crossover as South Park is very popular, but they arent any sort of cause of it. Which was my entire point.
 
Partners dropping him does still mean a loss in financials. It won't break him like it would others but it's still a loss.

YouTube Red makes the rich richer, now he's been cut from that.

Yeah he does take a hit. That said, him being dropped by his network, Maker Studios shouldn't hurt his revenue I don't think. I'm with a network on YouTube and depending on the contract they can take a sizeable cut. For example, my network makes 40% of my earnings so maybe he will end up closing the gap while he's a free agent.

YouTube Red being pulled obviously hurts since they were funding everything and him getting pulled from the Premium Ad Program does as well. To be fair though, the ad program he was in is specifically for "Family Friendly" content and Pewdiepie has NEVER been family friendly so I think this is a well deserved thing.

In the end I don't see him losing in this. He's once again in the news cycle, many of the big networks are foaming at the mouth to get the #1 YouTube Channel under their network and his viewerbase isn't going anywhere. He's gonna be fine if not better. This isn't like the Mel Gibson situation where the dude does monstrous things that can't be defended. Pewdiepie isn't gonna need to talk about the mistakes he made with these videos years later while people still hate him.
 
So we went from talking about Pewd's botched joke that no casual understood to South Park and Anthony Fantano being so wrong that we gotta be against them.

This is full Tana Mongeau territory, I'm out, if you want to argue hit my DM.
 
This has been a fascinating thread. You are awesome, GAF.

Anyway, I'm dying to see PDP's response. Most likely coming tomorrow.

I see Casey and h3h3 have response videos out now. Good stuff. edit: and Philip!
 
Not sure why anyone with his user base and reach would ever do this. If I had his view count and monetary responsibility I would be on my best damn behavior every second. Only know this guys name in passing but -shrug- hard to feel sorry for someone at the top of the game who did some dumb shit and got caught.
 
I don't understand why is this such a big deal. Eric Cartman in South Park has been doing the anti-jews for years as a joke but no one gives a shit
 

The video is making the wrong question. The problem is not PewDiePie is racist, which maybe he isn't, I don't know, I don't care. Rather than banalizing Nazi imagery and the holocaust, is not a good thing. When you pay 5 dollars to two brown poor guys so they can show "death to all the jews" message, the limits of humour have been destroyed with C4, if we can even call that humour.

Is downright poor quality content and a negative message to send to the millions of young people that watches his content. Context is not applicable in this case, he fucked up.
 
They may not be racists, but they are still enabling racism, which is the reason these comedians stopped doing the bits.

By the same token, I think its fair to say that South Park enables racism, regardless of the intentions of the writers.

I'm sorry but this is kind of ridiculous, media reflects culture. Not the other way around and we've been scapegoating media since it's inception. We weren't tolerant loving beings before modern media, so what makes you think it's "enabling?" You think these people would have suddenly been tolerant equality loving people had South Park and other shows aping bigotry and racism not existed? That's absurd.
 

Pretty much on the ball.

Looking back on all this I realize that the joke was in poor taste and Disney/Youtube are fully within their rights to drop him, but I feel like people are really reaching in their attempts to paint him as some sort of Nazi or racist white supremacist. Also, "think of the children" is a silly argument and a logical fallacy that appeals to basic emotion and doesn't actually represent a good response to issues.
 
The video is making the wrong question. The problem is not PewDiePie is racist, which maybe he isn't, I don't know, I don't care. Rather than banalizing Nazi imagery and the holocaust, is not a good thing. When you pay 5 dollars to two brown poor guys so they can show "death to all the jews" message, the limits of humour have been destroyed with C4, if we can even call that humour.

Is downright poor quality content and a negative message to send to the millions of young people that watches his content. Context is not applicable in this case, he fucked up.

No it's not, a lot of people think that to be true based on the article that cherry picked tiny bits of footage without context to reflect that idea.
 
The video is making the wrong question. The problem is not PewDiePie is racist, which maybe he isn't, I don't know, I don't care. Rather than banalizing Nazi imagery and the holocaust, is not a good thing. When you pay 5 dollars to two brown poor guys so they can show "death to all the jews" message, the limits of humour have been destroyed with C4, if we can even call that humour.

Is downright poor quality content and a negative message to send to the millions of young people that watches his content. Context is not applicable in this case, he fucked up.

What would have you had them write instead? When Felix's eye's widened and he backed away when he saw they actually did it... I don't think anything else written could have created that moment
 
I'm sorry but this is kind of ridiculous, media reflects culture. Not the other way around and we've been scapegoating media since it's inception. We weren't tolerant loving beings before modern media, so what makes you think it's "enabling?" You think these people would have suddenly been tolerant equality loving people had South Park and other shows aping bigotry and racism not existed? That's absurd.

People learn a lot from media.
 
The video is making the wrong question. The problem is not PewDiePie is racist, which maybe he isn't, I don't know, I don't care. Rather than banalizing Nazi imagery and the holocaust, is not a good thing. When you pay 5 dollars to two brown poor guys so they can show "death to all the jews" message, the limits of humour have been destroyed with C4, if we can even call that humour.

Is downright poor quality content and a negative message to send to the millions of young people that watches his content. Context is not applicable in this case, he fucked up.

Agreed. The holocaust is not something to ever be made fun of, ever, in my opinion. Felix showed incredibly poor judgement and a serious lack of empathy or forethought at a minimum, and displayed some possible racist tendencies at the worst. Either way, the reasoning isn't near as important as the actions themselves.

He done fucked up, badly, and for someone with the experience he has at this he should have known better. Tough lesson to learn the hard way.

What would have you had them write instead? When Felix's eye's widened and he backed away when he saw they actually did it... I don't think anything else written could have created that moment

You are missing the point, which is the moment should not have been created in the first place.
 
The video is making the wrong question. The problem is not PewDiePie is racist, which maybe he isn't, I don't know, I don't care. Rather than banalizing Nazi imagery and the holocaust, is not a good thing. When you pay 5 dollars to two brown poor guys so they can show "death to all the jews" message, the limits of humour have been destroyed with C4, if we can even call that humour.

Is downright poor quality content and a negative message to send to the millions of young people that watches his content. Context is not applicable in this case, he fucked up.

Yes, he fucked up. That's pretty clear. But several people, including posters in this very thread are using it as an excuse to call him a nazi or an altrightist, which I feel is going beyond what is needed.

Agreed. The holocaust is not something to ever be made fun of, ever, in my opinion. Felix showed incredibly poor judgement and a serious lack of empathy or forethought at a minimum, and displayed some possible racist tendencies at the worst. Either way, the reasoning isn't near as important as the actions themselves.

He done fucked up, badly, and for someone with the experience he has at this he should have known better. Tough lesson to learn the hard way.


I mean, holocaust jokes are pretty common, ever play Cards without Humanity? the Holocaust is an instant win card half of the time.
 
I'm sorry but this is kind of ridiculous, media reflects culture. Not the other way around and we've been scapegoating media since it's inception. We weren't tolerant loving beings before modern media, so what makes you think it's "enabling?" You think these people would have suddenly been tolerant equality loving people had South Park and other shows aping bigotry and racism not existed? That's absurd.

And media influences people. It's circular.
 
They didn't ban him at all, they just dropped his show and the premium ad program. His channnel is just fine and he still gets money from standard monetization.

So nothing happened, I mean he keeps doing money besides the mountains of money he already has.

He will be fine....
 
So what? I laughed at that episode too. And I'm a democrat who voted for her.

Even if they are conservative none of that proves that this made up subset of Republicans are the same people who are now alt-right. There could be crossover as South Park is very popular, but they arent any sort of cause of it. Which was my entire point.

There was a term way way before alt right: "South Park Republicans."

I know they mean most of their stuff as satire but it is certainly lost on many. I personally grew up with guys who thought Cartman was a hero, and use that attitude as a crutch to be racist and anti-Semitic to this day.
 
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