YouTuber PewDiePie may have started out having people watch him gaming on the video sharing site, but in recent years he has made many enemies as his channel has been marred in controversy. In January 2017, he convinced YouTubers to unscroll a message saying “Death to all Jews,” starting a major public outcry.
Since then, public opinion has been majorly divided on PewDiePie, and everything he says is scrutinized. Now he has found himself in hot water yet again, according to Comic Book .
This time, the YouTube video in question features a number of recommendations for other channels he feels his subscribers might enjoy. One of those channels, E;R, belongs to a group known for its Nazi imagery and anti-Semitic views. They have also posted a number of terrible homophobic videos in the past. Over the years, the channel has had several of its videos removed from the site for the bigotry and hate speech.
Unsurprisingly, people are somewhat unimpressed with this recommendation from the YouTuber, and confused as to why he would make it at all considering the controversies he has already been caught up in in the past two years.
PewDiePie’s video didn’t appear to be all that well researched, to be perfectly honest. He seemed instead to be making recommendations based on short tidbits he himself had enjoyed while scrolling through YouTube over the years.
All things considered, it seems bizarre that PewDiePie would outright recommend E;R at all. Following the controversy last year, he issued a somewhat lukewarm apology. He later spoke up again about his actions and even lamented himself for his initial apology for being disingenuous at the time.
That original apology was more a defensive effort than anything else, where he slammed the media for mischaracterizing him after the supposedly funny prank. This most recent incident has yet again placed PewDiePie alongside Nazi symbolism and anti-Semitism. Although he seemed shocked to see that someone had actually decided to read out the message, he wasn’t all that bothered to do damage control when it came to his image.
Even so, following PewDiePie’s recent recommendation, there appears to have been a spike in the number of subscribers on E;R’s channel, and now many are calling for the YouTuber to acknowledge his mistake in making the recommendation, even if it was out of ignorance.
PewDiePie’s brand has also suffered as a result of his controversies, but not enough that his public reach isn’t still immediate when he posts videos like this.
