therobdyke Pewdiepie Dropping the N Bomb Again Is Far From Cool But
There's no excuse for pewdiepie
Hear the news about pewdiepie? He dropped the n-bomb during a livestream, tossing the racial slur at a random player he was frustrated with.
The internet's erupted about a racial joke made by pewdiepie (again), and I'm on the outside looking in.
The excuses paraded out for this dude are mind-boggling.
Ian's back.
The same guy who threw GamesBeat's Dean Takahashi under the bus for playing Cuphead poorly is back with his hot takes about free speech and what people should be offended about. That's Ian Miles Cheong, by the way.
I love that he offers that we're freaking out because of a "heated gaming moment." As if playing a video game is an excuse to get upset and sling racial slurs. It's not.
The N-word is not the same as fuck, shit, damnit, asshole, dick or whatever slang you want to throw around. Those words don't string along centuries of torture and racial injustice every time they're drug out in front of others. The n-word does, plain and simple.
I'm not your dad, but maybe don't drag out the n-word when you're upset at a video game. Maybe.
"It's just a word…"
Not really. I'm a white dude without much to complain about when it comes to social issues. Which, I get it, makes me privileged. That term makes me cringe a bit, but that's likely because it's true. I was born with a social silver spoon in my mouth, and I challenge myself to understand different personal reference points in order to be a good human.
I personally don't have the right to dictate the meaning of a word so socially charged as the one pewdiepie threw out during a livestream. I can't tell you 100% exactly why it affects people (though, I'll guess) or if we should discontinue its use. That's not up to me, is my point.
I do know that it offends people. A lot.
Black people suffered a shitty lot in life in the United States for a really, really long time. Following slavery, they faced discrimination and segregation, and that legally continued for another 100 years before the books changed.
Do you speed? I do. That's against the law. The written law might slow people down a bit or keep legal zealots from speeding altogether, but people still speed.
Discrimination and segregation still happen in the same way. Definitely not on the same scale as speeding, but I use that analogy to prove my point. Just because slavery and racial discrimination have been made illegal doesn't mean people suddenly gave up racism. It's boiled into our social culture and systematic approach to just about everything we do, and that extends to people of all social and racial backgrounds.
This "it's just a word" excuse is ridiculous because racism still thrives today. Perhaps it's just a word to the person saying or hearing it because they own no personal context for it, but those who do have every right to be offended.
"This doesn't matter."
It matters because of pewdiepie's audience size.
This isn't just some backwater YouTuber community with a few hundred subscribers and a host randomly injecting racial slurs and jokes into his productions. This channel is the largest in the history of the internet (which is not hyperbole) and attracts viewers from every age and demographic.
I'm not just talking about little kids, here. I'm talking about teenagers and young adults still in their formative years. They're taking social cues from YouTube celebrities like pewdiepie, and he knows this. He's raised money for charity, he knows the power of his position. He knows exactly what he's capable of.
Like it or not, pewdiepie is a role model.
He needs to act like one.
Source: https://medium.com/irrelevant-dot-cool/theres-no-excuse-for-pewdiepie-ead5fb35ddc9
0 Response to "therobdyke Pewdiepie Dropping the N Bomb Again Is Far From Cool But"
Post a Comment