All I know about PewDiePie is that they are a YouTube user. What's the connection with terrorism and ransomware?
The guy himself was a gaming youtuber but nowadays mostly makes relatively simple comedy videos reviewing memes. He's hosted people such as elon musk on his show, and really isn't all that controversial or bad himself. He's the most subscribed youtuber at the time of writing, and a long drawn-out campaign by several people has been made to keep him there, mostly without his guidance or really, much of his participation. Mostly because he has become something of a figurehead for the time where the internet was based around individuals sharing things - this happened because the next highest channel who will inevitably pass him at some point are a large corporation.
As a result, many twenty-somethings who grew up on an internet of blogging and viral videos made by random people like them are having a sort of kickback against what they see as the growing influence of corporations on the internet's culture.
Naturally, there is nothing that is against manufactured pop culture taking over the internet than places like 4chan with their rhetoric about 'normies' and 'npcs', and they already have a sort of apocalyptic outlook on the world and culture of anything goes, it breeds certain kinds of people like this.
Now pewdiepie himself has done things that haven't helped his cause, but it's difficult to spin this situation and say it's his doing.
I'd say he actively participates in that campaign. Also, he did nothing to discourage fans who came up with that printer hack, which though seemingly innocuous, is still a hack.
The views of madmen don't reflect on the celebrities or groups they're fans of.
https://i.redd.it/a30ktlbuann21.jpg
What do you think? And do you really want to go through life painting 60 million people with one brush?
>picked up by actual racists
Chicken and egg, eh?
If you make out with a goat, whether you’re attracted to goats or doing it to be “edgy” or “ironic”, you’re still a goat-kisser.
Proving that the corporate media is mostly propaganda may not suit your political preferences, but comparing it to "goat-kissing" ranks fairly highly on the nonsense meter - and these days, that's really saying something.
The more it happens, the more the media is willing to cover it, meaning it will happen even more. What would you call this, a Virtueless Cycle?
Please elaborate, what would you have PewDiePie do differently?
The funny thing is that the ones complaining are the same ones who's generation was accused of listening to bad influence music like SOAD, Marilyn Manson and Rammstein, all of whom were blamed for shootings in the past because the perps happened to listen to them.
EDIT: Just to make it clear, I'm not saying that Felix is responsible for the actions of his fan, just that it makes sense that people would latch on to the potential that he might be a douchebag.
It's ridiculous I have to say it, but Pewdiepie is no more responsible for terrorism or white nationalism than Doom was for Columbine. In fact I'd say he's less culpable. We've been through this before with videogames, now we're going through it with memes. The older generation always thinks the younger generation is up to no good and their form of entertainment is "corrupting" them. Before videogames it was movies, and before that it was "rock and roll". And so on.
There are plenty of examples throughout history of fear-mongering around race. Are you going to suggest that Hitler wasn't at all responsible for uniting a large percentage of the German people against the Jews? Are you going to suggest that Charles Manson shouldn't be held responsible for anything he started by his bizarre attempt at a race-war? Are you going to claim that bad behavior cannot become normalized if enough influential people do it?
I don't think PewDiePie is responsible for the actions of his fans, because as you said, with 80 million people, you're going to get some awful humans in the mix. I just didn't agree with your reasoning.
Around sometime last year, PewDiePie came under a string of bad publicity which linked him to Nazi's and an incident where he called someone a nggr when he died in a video game. He has since "apologized" and tried to make things right, but whats done is done.
My hypothesis is, due to his "persecution" PewDiePie is now very popular as an alt-right martyr - he can't fully come out and say he's full on white supremacist because of the media boogeyman, but, to his supporters, he's clearly on their side (whether he is or not, I don't know, and it's irrelevant). As a result he gets a lot of lip service from a lot of notorious individual (regardless if he wants it), due to his nature as a meme in these communities.
Again, I'm not pretending to know where PewDiePie lies in all this, and he could very well be supporting or indifferent to this whole thing. However I do believe this whole thing might be larger than him at this point.