PewDiePie Announces He Is Taking A Break From YouTube In 2020, Says He Feels ‘Tired’
PewDiePie has been one of the most prominent faces on YouTube over the last decade, but in 2020, he says he will be taking a break.
The Swedish vlogger announced in a recent video update that he would be going on hiatus in the coming year, saying that he feels “tired.” The social media star, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, told his 102 million followers that he would be leaving sometime early in 2020 and couldn’t give details on the reason yet.
“I am taking a break from YouTube next year. I wanted to say it in advance because I made up my mind,” he said, via Sky News.
“I’m tired. I’m feeling very tired. I don’t know if you can tell. Just so you know, early next year I’ll be a way for a little while. I’ll explain that later but I wanted to give a heads up.”
As the report noted, PewDiePie had already been dropping hints that he would be taking a break in the near future. In August, he mentioned in another video that “it would be good for me to take a break at some point,” noting that he had been inundated on YouTube for the last decade.
While he earned fame through gaming and comedic videos, PewDiePie has found himself in a series of controversies in recent years with content that critics say flirts with the alt-right. In 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that his videos had a series of Nazi imagery including PewDiePie wearing a mock Nazi uniform and watching a video of Hitler. In another video, he used a website where people complete tasks for $5 and paid for two men in India to hold up a sign that read “Death to all Jews.”
The reporting led to Disney cutting ties with the YouTube star and increased scrutiny on his work. As The Inquisitr reported, he found himself in more trouble after recommending a small YouTube page that published some anti-Semitic content. In another incident, he shouted the N-word while live-streaming a video game and later apologized, explaining that the word came out in the heat of the moment.
“It was something I said in the heat of the moment. I said the worst word I could possibly think of, and it just sort of slipped out,” he said in an apology video.
“I’m not going to make any excuses as to why it did, because there are no excuses for it.”
PewDiePie did not say if any of these recent controversies played into his decision to take a break in 2020.
