Joe Rogan and Philip DeFranco discuss the PewDiePie controversy

Hello freak bitches. It would be more considerate or more kind. It's about calling people out on doing something wrong and stopping them. Do you think the intent matters more than the word? 100%. Because I feel like we saw that a lot with... There's two big YouTubers that were in the news. Or one was in the news. There was PewDiePie. Yeah, let's talk about that because I saw his response video and I kind of got sickened. Oh really? By what's happening to him. Oh, by what's happening. I thought you were saying his words. Well he was... It was crazy. It was crazy. The whole thing is insane. They're making it out like he's a Nazi. And he's not at all. He had made some videos where he had told people to not be Nazis. And to not... And to like... To don't... You know, what was his exact words? I don't want to misrepresent him. So the thing is, it originally started with this whole Fiverr video that he did. And then... Fiverr? Yeah, so it's like a website where you can get people to do things originally for $5 now for more money. And so he went through the site. It all started from this one video that got him attention. He went to Fiverr and tried to get people to do ridiculous outrageous things. Okay. Got a guy dressed as Jesus to say something weird. He got the main thing that blew up were these two guys. They're in like a jungle setting of some sort. They dance, they laugh, they'll hold up a sign, they'll say something. And so he was like, it's going to be hilarious because they're not going to do it. They're going to be like, thank you but no. But they actually made a video where the guys were laughing and dancing, held up a sign that said, death to all Jews, and then said to subscribe to a YouTube channel. The whole... of like someone else, not his. So he asked them to say death to all Jews? So he wrote in as like a... Because in the same video, he gets all these people that are like, I'm not going to do the stupid ridiculous thing that you said. But then they actually did it. The big reason I feel like they did it is they didn't understand what the words they were writing and the words they were saying. Oh, they're from one of the country. Yeah. What country were they from? I don't know. I'd have to double check. Okay. So they just essentially wrote down the symbols. They didn't really know how to even say the words. And so it... There it is. Oh yeah. And they're laughing. Yeah. And so I think this might be from his explanation video, but in the first one, he's like, why the fuck did they do it? How do I... Can I even include this? And so then that sent... That got a little traction. And then people started going through his other videos and they were like, he's dressed up. He's watching Hitler in this one, taken completely out of context of him saying that the YouTube Heroes program, which was a program where people can highlight videos or not highlight them, but mark them down for deletion because they're offensive. Right. And so people were like, oh, that censorship, that's... You're talking about like, obviously hyperbole. It's like, those are Nazis. So he made that joke and that relation. And then there was one, I want to say if it was on the verge or wired, but then they go even further and they're like, he used Leslie Jones picture on Harambe, taken completely out of context because he was using... There's this Microsoft AI bot, like this chat bot, and you'd say, let me see Harambe as Jesus. And either the AI was messed up or people had manipulated it, where it was putting Leslie Jones's face on it and he was horrified by it. And that was the whole joke, but they were saying that he was doing it. So this is clear, like you saw him use the software, you saw the error. If you try and use the bot today, a picture won't come up, because now they are aware that that's what was happening. Right. And so they took all these things and it was this crusade of, look guys, we're looking at this bad guy. He's the biggest guy on YouTube. He's the bad guy. We're going to take him down. So much taken out of context. Some things are not defensible, where I can't say it in the sense of, like you say that words don't have power based on intent. And I think there's a lot of truth in that. Not saying words don't have power based on intent. I'm saying that words should just convey intent. Right. And there are times where a word, there's times where like you see a friend, you go, what's up, bitch? You know, you're having there and you're both laughing and you're being silly. And then there's times where you call someone a bitch. Right. Because you think they're being mean. Yeah. I mean, those two words, exactly the same, but one conveys a completely different intent. Right. But out of this, it was very obvious that they were trying to do this takedown thing and it blew up entirely in their face. I think I saw over there. Has it? Because I don't think most people are aware. I mean, there was a Wall Street Journal article on it, right, which was where it got really weird because three people worked on this and they combed through. Hundreds of hours. Yeah. I mean, and they found like instances of him holding his arm out like this and they used that picture. Like there's a, I mean, that's weird. It's very weird. And then once all of it came out that they were like, well, here's the thing about the context. He's just like Donald Trump. And it was an immediate jump to he's using the same tactics as Donald Trump. But it was just insane. No, he's very reasonable. He did a video, a response video about it and the way he handled it was very reasonable. And he explained what he was doing, what's going on. And, you know, he's doing hundreds of hours of him playing video games and talking and being silly. And if you comb through those and take these things again out of context and try to make it look like he's a Nazi, that's a hit piece. 100%. And it's deceptive. It's not indicative of his overall, it's hard to call it a body of work, but let's call it a body of work. Right. His overall body of performance that's online, whatever you want to call it. His talking. It's not who he is. So for them to call him a Nazi and say that PewDiePie has, you know, seven videos where he's done something about Nazis, like people when they're doing these long form spitball improvisation videos like that and you're interacting with people, you're going to say all kinds of shit that in the moment is legitimate. But if you chop it up and edit it and splice them all together and then make a five minute montage of him saying Nazi like he's obsessed with Nazis. And what kind of sucked from it was a lot of people think that, oh, there are articles about the downfall of PewDiePie. I think he's gone up half a million, if not more than a million subscribers since all of this happened. Right. So he's gotten all this new support. He's a temporary face for free speech and persecution from mainstream media. But he lost, didn't he lose some gigs? It doesn't matter for him though. So I mean, it sucks more for the people that were working on that project. Well, what was the project? So it was Scare PewDiePie season two. It was a YouTube Red series. So they were, I think they were about to go into production. And and so then that got canceled. So YouTube didn't want to fund that. And I said it, he said it, he understands why they would have to separate because then it becomes a story of YouTube and PewDie or YouTube and Disney support an anti-Semite. Right. But obviously he's not an anti-Semite. So why would they back away? I think because they were scared that the Wall Street Journal was like, did you see all of this? We're going to write this article. How did the Wall Street Journal let that slip through? That seems to me very irresponsible. Many of them are standing by it, though. Many people. Yes. One hundred percent. And many are touting it as this victory because he lost Google preferred ads on YouTube, which I will say I don't know how he was still seen as family friendly because I'm not family friendly on my show his past two years at the very least, not family friendly. And then Drop by Maker. He doesn't he doesn't need his his MCN, his company around him. And the YouTube Red series is nothing. He's still going to make millions of dollars. He's grown. It's a good thing. I feel like now if you if you have mainstream media trying to swing at you, it's some of the best promotion in the world. OK, but why did they take a swing at him? And why is anyone saying that they took down a bad guy? I think that it's it's a big thing of them trying to label up. And it's once once again, it's the problem with a lot of media is they're they're overextending. Right. They all of a sudden start talking about this narrative about alt right and the rise of white supremacy again in this country. And then they look at this big guy and they're like, we can use him as an example. We can be the heroes that that expose this, that do the takedown piece. And they're not and they're not. And they're like so driven for that that they then just they go, oh, well, maybe that doesn't add up there. It's an argument. But we have the power. We have the size of the audience. We're good. And it just blew up in their face. So they were thinking they could get away with it, even though it wasn't kosher. I believe so. What is their response so far? Do you know? Have you read anything about it? As far as like fans or no Wall Street Journal post post. Are they digging their heels in? Yeah. And then a lot of people started trying to find, as always, dirt on like the office in the past. One was like a joke from 2015 because and while part of me would go, well, that's petty. If the argument is that context doesn't matter, then fine. Then then look at these guys, what they said a year ago, look at what they're saying now. Look the writers who of the of the article, like I think Ben Fritz was one of the writers where he made a I can't I never knew Jews were so good at frying joke from way back. And then he made another joke about it was like a back and forth with someone where he said, you know, these racial jokes are so stupid. And then someone said, you know, they hit everyone. And he said, well, at least the black jokes are funny. Those ones. Those ones are funny. And so people are like, well, if if if context doesn't matter, are you a scumbag? Right. And and then people just dismissed it as a lot of mainstream people dismissed it as like, oh, that's that's not the same thing. How could anyone say context doesn't matter? That's insane. That's insane. That is an insane thing to say. Is that literally what they said? The context does not matter. What was it? It was one of the one of the people I'm going to get the the problem is so many people have written about it. Right. There was one article that was promoted and it said all these articles are all these people defending Felix with but context. That's that's a bullshit argument. And that's insane. If you think that's absolutely insane. So everything exists in a highly edited bubble. Dope. So let's ruin everyone's career. If you're talking about a mathematician discussing algorithms, yes, context doesn't really mean that much because he's talking about numbers. But we're not talking about numbers. We're talking about words. We're talking about the way people express themselves. And we're talking about someone who is generally considered to be humorous. I mean, PewDiePie, a lot of his stuff is playful and humorous. So if you're humorous and you're playing around and you say something that might be I don't even want to use the appropriate. It might be the thing for him to say in that moment to try to be entertaining. That does not mean he's a Nazi. And to label him like that is incredibly irresponsible. And it's it's really I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but I would sue the fuck out of him. Right. If I was him, I would sue the fuck out of them for sure. Yeah, because what they're doing is misrepresenting who he is as a human being. And even if it's beneficial in the long run, it's super dangerous to set that precedent. Well, especially something in this in this climate where you say this is what he supports and it 100% isn't. How do you know someone doesn't just see those articles, doesn't see his defense and tries to kill the guy? But why would the Wall Street Journal do something like this? Wait, to jump back to what you were saying about mainstream, do they have any back to that poodie pie guy? Yeah. In your places, I get scared when everyone talks about stuff in generalities. Right. When I talk about and I'm guilty of it, too, when I talk about all mainstream media, it's not everyone, you know. Right. But there are I stopped doing interviews with mainstream outlets several years ago because they made everything about like I would talk about all the really cool ventures that we're going into, how our space is changing things up. And it would always be turned into one comment that maybe was somewhat critical of, let's say, like a studio. Right. And it would all become about that or it would all become about like the money. And I was like, you're just fucking manipulating what I'm saying. I want to deal with this. Yeah. And so the point has become when the Wall Street Journal knocks on Felix's door after they didn't apparently approach him for the original story and they're like, hey, we want to give you a platform to tell your story. It's like, fuck you. Is that what they're doing now? Yeah. After the story broke and there were all these people that came to his defense, they came to him. Now, I'm not going to. That's what I think that's what a journalist should do. Right. Talk to the fucking main source. I would assume that they would be different journalists. Well, so I think from what Felix wrote, it was the Wall Street Journal. They left their cards and that's how he knew it was 100 percent them. But why? But that's not what I mean. What I mean is different journalists from the Wall Street Journal. Not the same ones who were the hit piece. I don't know if it was the same ones. He didn't say. He was highly doubt that they would go, hey, we're super sorry. We called you a Nazi in front of millions of people and we were totally lying. Yeah. But the argument all of a sudden is why why should he do an interview with the Wall Street Journal? Maybe because they have a different audience. But he has his own larger platform where he controls the narrative. He's not going to be selectively edited. Right. But he's not speaking to the people that the Wall Street Journal disparaged him in front of. But I would assume that they're also covering their ass by going to him and reaching out and giving him a platform. They can say, well, we gave him a chance to respond. And the facts remain. He did say those things and they are valid. I think I think if he was confident enough, he should probably do what I've seen Milo Yiannopoulos do in the past where he had someone film at the same time. So if they did misrepresent him in some manner. But that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because they've already done it. They've already misrepresented him in the article. If he has someone film his response that I don't know. I mean, just if he did something with them, right, if they did film something, I understand the entire thing just so you can show. But I'm saying it doesn't matter because they've already done the damage, the damaging thing. Like how many people who read the first thing are even going to read the second thing? It might even be 30 percent. So that's 70 percent people. And how many people just read the Wall Street Journal and maybe a local paper and aren't online and aren't hearing all these responses. And they go, oh, you know, they catch their son. Oh, I'm watching PewDiePie. Oh, you're watching that Nazi. That guy's a Nazi. No, he's not dead. You hate everything I like. And now that kid's doing meth for the rest of his life. No, I I think that it is sad. Right. That's that's a huge problem with with a lot of the fake news or just news. That's false is the crazy salacious shit. Yeah. If you then look at the correction half the time, that gets like 20 times the shares. You know why? Because it's fucking insane. It's like, did you see this? Did you see this thing? And it's something that I've been critical of people I like in the industry, critical of a lot of the mainstream guys that I don't like. And it sucks because there's not there's not a clear answer. Do you delete the false thing and then it looks like you're hiding that information? Do you do? Well, you should definitely delete the false thing. So if you have argument, but then there's there's an argument that you you leave it up because you show that you were wrong. If it's on Twitter, you quote tweet it. But that's still that still doesn't fix it because as much as we talk about bubbles and separation that tweet that promotion of a thing is separate from everything else in the world. Tweets are problematic anyway because it's 140 characters and it's very difficult to adequately explain some subjects in 140 characters. But if you put out some information that's not true, like this poodie pie thing, you absolutely should print a retraction. And you absolutely if you have it still up on your website, the first thing you should say is this is all taken out of context and it's incorrect and it's not does not represent who this guy is. And you should absolutely not have those writers do that again. Right. I mean, whether you fire them or whether you assign it, who knows what they were asked to do. This is another part of the problem. Was this an independent thing that they decided to pursue on their own? Did someone ask them to do it? Was there someone who decided that this guy was a Nazi because that maybe they tuned in at the very moment he was doing something? Right. And they're like, and some people obviously are very, very sensitive to that kind of stuff. So I think that's why it's important, especially on an editorial team of some sort, to have people with mixed opinions, because it's very easy to all of a sudden get railroaded behind an idea of just like, yeah, look at these look at these seven specific things. We're not going to say that it's out of context, but look at this information. We got this guy. We got this guy dead to rights, but it's all flimsy. Well, again, context, right? As soon as you – that is part of the problem with doing something like you do, and it's certainly part of the problem with a podcast, is if you're talking for three hours and you take these little snippets of those three hours out of context, it paints a completely distorted perception of who the person is. But that's also a problem with language in general. It really is a problem with – and it's certainly a problem with words, and that's one of the problems with these quote magic words that you're not supposed to say anymore, whatever those words are. You know, you give the weight, give so much weight to these words that just taken alone on their own, they can get you in trouble. Just saying, uttering the phrase as if it was a magic abracadabra can get you in trouble. I think it's important that we stop trying to – oh, God, it rhymes, and it's not on purpose. We have to stop just blindly hating and we try and educate, right? I think that – Don't blindly hate. Educate. Educate. It's an after-school special starring Philly D. Oh, God. That sounds like straight up something from the 90s. Hey, kids, you're on a skateboard, you pull up. Don't hate. Educate. Yeah. But, I mean –