I've said it before, might as well say it again Freedom of speech laws protect you from the government, not from public opinion and not from companies doing business with you who choose to discontinue the business arrangement.
Comedy is meant to push the boundaries of ethics and manners. It is meant to shock people with sometimes offensive material while bringing all walks of life together as a whole. Comedy brings people together. Tyrants cannot regulate what we find funny. That's why authoritarians hate comedy so much that they try to regulate it by telling us "that's too offensive!" No wonder Comedy Central is so bland and stale these days (with the exception of South Park ). If someone can make jokes that aren't mean spirited about the stereotypes of certain people, then give that person a microphone to speak their mind and make us all laugh! Stereotype jokes are hilarious (disclaimer, I'm not referring to racist jokes of hateful nature). If Sarah Silverman can crack a Jew joke then you can too! And for god sakes, will you stop putting pathetically unfunny crybullies like Leslie Jones on the pedestal for once? Not the government, but the predatory press who finds bigotry under every rock they look under. I saw a really good interview on the Dave Rubin Report where he interviews Liberal Redneck. Tray was saying how he is irked about how some audiences are way too politically correct when he tries to make redneck related jokes about how they talk about foriegners and/or ethnic groups and the offensive jargon they use. And how it's pretty much impossible not to make an effective joke without using those words and having his audience take it completely outta context. Especially being a white back country guy from Tennessee. Yeah that's a damn good analogy actually! I wouldn't normally defend Pewdiepie any further than I could throw him. So it feels weird that I'm finding myself defend this doofus against a greater threat.
Well, if its so funny, what's stopping people from laughing? Are you saying we can't boo, hiss, or be critical if we find attempts at humor offensive and nasty? How is that not free speech? Can we not be offended at Step n' Fetchit routines done by whites in blackface/? Must we forget the Holocaust and listen to the Neonazi do his "gas the Jews" monologue. The "not mean spirited" is an important qualifier in your qualifier in your endorsement of ethnic humor. Truly empathetic people find it hard to laugh at such jokes. Ethnic jokes shape stereotypes of groups which can be truly harmful to them: dumb blonde and Pole, unethical Jew, lazy black, etc. Or are you saying "the predatory press" (including Fox and Breitbart?), is somehow making us not laugh? I haven't seen Pewpie, so I can't really comment. But I think people should be free to laugh at, or not laugh at, whatever they want.
Seems you're not defending him from anyone in here. Most replies in this thread seem about putting things in perspective, that this is an exaggerated nonissue and are countering the ultimate purpose of this thread: to point out that the consequences of Pewdiepie's bad joke are an intentional attack by the evil mainstream media (which is completely fake and dubious and biased, unlike all the self declared experts on social media: the only place to get proper info). Lol nice try
So what you're saying is the very thing bringing him down is what he joked about? You can blame the media, the message of big brother or you can blame the citizens who can't make their own minds up for themselves. The fact that he lost a sponsorship ( I believe that's what I read) is not a negative, you sign up for a company you represent them and they can do what they please if they feel you've violated or in anyway did something to harm their image. I've been saying it since I read the book 10-15 years ago or so, 1984 is not a fantasy created by Orwell, it's a reality he predicted and never was it more of a reality than now.
Yeah... Pewdiepie getting shit for cracking a bad joke is the clearest sign Orwells 1984 is becoming reality.
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that everyone HAS to laugh at provocative humor..... I think I explained the line between directly hateful jokes, and jokes that make fun of stereotypes and generalizations if I'm not mistaken. South Park is filled to the brim with jokes like that, and they still pull it off without being blatantly hateful. Does South Park offend conservatives, Christians, Jews, athiests, Muslims, leftists, and celebrity worshipers? Yes, but who the hell cares? Of course, Comedy Central did pander to radical Islam when they blocked the episodes that had pictures of Muhammad. Southpark is like a shining beacon of freedom in an authoritarian left gulag known as comedy central.
Comedy Central is a private corporation and can do what it wants on its own station, within the bounds of the law. Would you have it otherwise? Like manyother businesses, they're risk aversive, and don't want to offend potential viewers. What would you do about it, other than gripe? Force it to adopt certain programming that you think is appropriately provocative? I guess one solution if you had the money would be to buy a TV station, run whatever comedy you want, and let the consumer decide if it's worth watching. Other than that, you can make your views known to the management and hope that it counters the opposition. I've watched South Park a time or two. It did a good job on Scientology, and religious hypocrisy in general. I guess I just don't think it's that big a deal, and usually flip to the news or documentaries. Comedy is basically entertainment, but I agree it can influence attitudes, for better or for worse. Bill Maher can be a real asshole, but I think he sometimes puts things in ways that are downright insightful. Same with Colbert, John Stewart and John Oliver. How would you rate those? Not really your politics, I'd imagine. Humor is in the eyes and ears of the beholder. I think the Monty Python Life of Brian is hilarious, but when I show it to my Christian friends, they don't laugh. I have similar pet peeves about the politicization of the Academy Awards. I thought Manchester By the Sea, and Casey Affleck's performance in it, were brilliant, and allegations that he sexually harassed women should have no bearing on acknowledging its merit. Same goes for Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, not to condone his Antisemitism. Ditto Russel Crowe's performance in A Beautiful Mind, and Woody Allen's movies. It's a sad reality that really fine artistry can come from miserable lowlifes like Richard Wagner and pricks like Camile Saint-saens. Besides being a deadbeat and adulterer to his best friend's wife, Wagner helped to inspire Hitler's Antisemitism. But he gave us magnificent music which I wouldn't want to boycott or see diminished. I should probably mention Roman Polanski, who wants to return from exile after a conviction of statutory rape of a thirteen year old girl. I think he's a shit, and shouldn't be accepted back. But that doesn't keep me from enjoying Rosemary/s Baby or Chinatown. I'm able to compartmentalize the artistic and moral side of these guys, and am willing to defend my right to do so. All we can do is speak out. I
Based on looking at the schedule today for Comedy Central, I don't think 6-eyed Shaman's claim is even all that accurate. From ~9 am - 10 pm today, about 10 hours of the programming consists of : South Park, Tosh.0, Police Academy, Chapelle's Show and Futurama. We'd be grasping at straws to suggest that there is some significant agenda by the "left" here displaying those programs, none of which have an explicit political bent. The only one of those that might have some subtle "left" leaning remarks at times, I think would be Futurama. Tosh displays what I'd describe as a "right" leaning persona and much like South Park, Chapelle's show is fair game on everyone.
Dude, I watched this video. He found a website where if you paid for a slogan to be written on a sign, the people in the video would make it and hold it up no questions asked. He typed in "death to Jews" as a (admittedly distasteful) joke, expecting that they wouldn't actually do it. When they did it, his jaw dropped and he was speechless and apologized profusely. I don't know what he expected to happen, but he didn't seem to expect that they would go through with it. He probably expected to shock some people and get a hilarious rejection letter or something for lulz. Yes, it was kind of an awful thing to try, but it doesn't mean he actually believes it for chrissake...
Bad judgment! The best the guy can do is put out what you just did and hope the world will believe and forgive him. But until they do, don't expect a sponsor to touch him with a ten foot pole. Making Holocaust jokes, like pedophile jokes, goes way beyond pushing the envelope.
That's fine. I don't disagree with Disney's decision to drop him over it because they are extremely careful about their image, especially with rumors of Walt Disney's antisemitism to contend with. It's the people that actually believe he is a neo-nazi that I find completely ridiculous. Is it a PR nightmare? Absolutely. Was it in poor taste? You bet. But anyone who sees the look of horror on his face when those kids unroll that banner and still thinks he believes it is a special kind of stupid. The only thing he's guilty of is an insensitive, sophomoric sense of humor. That's hardly deserving of this public crucifixion.
I actually agree with much of what you said here. And it's well put together. I can and have put my beliefs and values aside to put appreciation for the arts. I do occasionally enjoy the works of those who I disagree with. Much of the entertainment industry holds a certain bias and I can see past that. I used to watch Colbert and Stewart. They were usually hit or miss for me. I can't stand Trevor Noah because the guy simply isn't funny. I just think there's an offense-taking cultural fad that has been blown way out of proportion in recent years due to the progression of political correctness. People forgot how to take a joke it seems. And many people don't know how to laugh at themselves and move on. Personally for me, learning how to laugh at myself whenever the joke was on me was how I overcame bullying when I was a kid. When others tried to make fun of me or bully me, I never gave them the reaction they wanted and they found I wasn't much fun to pick on. I think much of society could take it all in and learn the same lesson.
Pretty much this. And I don't know what business JK Rowling had in publicly smearing him on social media was all about. And I think the WSJ was totally stupid for trying to paint him up as a real racist and expect zero backlash when 50million of his followers know he isn't.
I doubt that the Wall Street Journal is much concerned with backlash from his followers, since gamers are pretty unlikely to subscribe to the paper. The fact that the WSJ went after him shows that this wasn't some kind of liberal conspiracy. The WSJ identified nine separate Pewdiepie videos in which it detected possible Anti-Semitic jokes or Nazi imagery since the summer of 2016. Apparently, the Stormers detected these references too, since Pewdiepie became one of their heroes. Stormers have been trying to politicize the gamer community for years. Maybe it was all a big mistake, as he maintains. His critics think he was using dog whistles to attract an AltRight Stormer fan club. Neo-Nazi activity has been picking up in Sweden since 2014, and the white nationalist Sweden Democrats have been soaring in the popularity polls. So I wouldn't rule it out. Wait and see. Now that he knows the eyes of the world are upon him, he may be on best behavior and provide no further ammunition for his critics. If not, we might consider the possibility that there's something to it.
