As a fellow swede, I can understand why this was particularly rough for him, as he most likely used it just like many of us used English curse words and slurs very casually when we were young. They weren’t words we understood, or knew the history of, and parents/teachers didn’t really stop us or teach us when we heard them. We knew they were said in media, on TV and in movies, so we picked it up without much regard for meaning.
So for him to slip out an N-word is unfortunate, but definitely doesn’t make me think he’s racist or anything. Just like my friends and I who grew up using bad words like this, but we all grew up to be progressive and accepting of everyone. It doesn’t have to reflect anything within PDP himself, even though it’s highly offensive to the audience hearing it.
I mean you could see him recognize that he fucked up in real time. He definitely knew better. It was the ensuing “heated gamer moment” excuse which really made it a meme. He should have just immediately and unambiguously acknowledged that he fucked up and taken real action to show remorse. This is a pretty common pattern with this kind of thing. You can’t do the whole “soft apology with a side of justification” and expect things to go back to normal. And this is just a life lesson in general - when you fuck up, you need to really lean into making a change.
you could see him recognize that he fucked up in real time.
He knew it was a bad word though. That’s to his credit given the circumstances, IMO.
He should have just immediately and unambiguously acknowledged that he fucked up and taken real action to show remorse. This is a pretty common pattern with this kind of thing.
Maybe it’s a common pattern because people go into shock after they realize they fucked up? Not everyone is calm, cool, and collected when they realize they made a mistake.
I lived with an embarrassment for two decades before I apologized to a mate of mine. And that wasn’t even my fault. I was set up into embarrassing myself (by proxy of embarrassing my mate). Either way, being embarrassed can definitely put you in a sort of deer in headlights mode and continue like nothing happened while you try to assess.
i generally agree, as a european i also said dumb shit because i lack the cultural knowledge WHY certain words are problematic. but pewdiepie was always kind of close to some weird folk. we all probably forgot about the meme review with ben shapiro and elon musk - that was before the “bridge incident” - there was also the t-series stuff which started out as a funny thing in good faith but it normalized racism.
his song “removed lasagna” starts with “bobs or vegana, whatever will it be?” and includes lines like “hold your defecation”
I agree, when I was younger we would use worse words and, although I understand better now how they will be received, I could swear there was never any value associated with them back then. They were just descriptive words in the same way one would call a spade a spade - whether the spade is good or bad depends on the spade.
Right. It’s just kids being kids. Imitating adults.
And I’m betting him playing games would jolt him back to his child brain in some way, too. Making it even more likely to have something like that slip out, when I’m normal conversation you would obviously never hear him (or us) say something like that (I’d have to assume).
I sometimes let out some sexual organ slurs, which are pretty bad in my language, when I’m playing games, but it’s just because playing games is something I’ve done since childhood, and it can bring those words out, from those times. It’s more controlled now, since I’m well into adulthood now and I only let out those words to friends who can tolerate them. Not to my family.
So yeah. I know why something like this can happen. It shouldn’t be career-ending from his perspective (and to some degree it wasn’t), but from the audience’s perspective, it was a whole different thing.
Exactly. Exactly my sentiment. It was really inappropriate, but was not produced from malintent or anything like that, just an expletive, any expletive, and that happened to come out because it was the most edgy bad word that just popped up. Super bad, but, you know. 🤦♂️
As a fellow swede, I can understand why this was particularly rough for him, as he most likely used it just like many of us used English curse words and slurs very casually when we were young. They weren’t words we understood, or knew the history of, and parents/teachers didn’t really stop us or teach us when we heard them. We knew they were said in media, on TV and in movies, so we picked it up without much regard for meaning.
So for him to slip out an N-word is unfortunate, but definitely doesn’t make me think he’s racist or anything. Just like my friends and I who grew up using bad words like this, but we all grew up to be progressive and accepting of everyone. It doesn’t have to reflect anything within PDP himself, even though it’s highly offensive to the audience hearing it.
Just very unfortunate for everyone involved.
I mean you could see him recognize that he fucked up in real time. He definitely knew better. It was the ensuing “heated gamer moment” excuse which really made it a meme. He should have just immediately and unambiguously acknowledged that he fucked up and taken real action to show remorse. This is a pretty common pattern with this kind of thing. You can’t do the whole “soft apology with a side of justification” and expect things to go back to normal. And this is just a life lesson in general - when you fuck up, you need to really lean into making a change.
He knew it was a bad word though. That’s to his credit given the circumstances, IMO.
Maybe it’s a common pattern because people go into shock after they realize they fucked up? Not everyone is calm, cool, and collected when they realize they made a mistake.
I lived with an embarrassment for two decades before I apologized to a mate of mine. And that wasn’t even my fault. I was set up into embarrassing myself (by proxy of embarrassing my mate). Either way, being embarrassed can definitely put you in a sort of deer in headlights mode and continue like nothing happened while you try to assess.
i generally agree, as a european i also said dumb shit because i lack the cultural knowledge WHY certain words are problematic. but pewdiepie was always kind of close to some weird folk. we all probably forgot about the meme review with ben shapiro and elon musk - that was before the “bridge incident” - there was also the t-series stuff which started out as a funny thing in good faith but it normalized racism. his song “removed lasagna” starts with “bobs or vegana, whatever will it be?” and includes lines like “hold your defecation”
I agree, when I was younger we would use worse words and, although I understand better now how they will be received, I could swear there was never any value associated with them back then. They were just descriptive words in the same way one would call a spade a spade - whether the spade is good or bad depends on the spade.
Right. It’s just kids being kids. Imitating adults.
And I’m betting him playing games would jolt him back to his child brain in some way, too. Making it even more likely to have something like that slip out, when I’m normal conversation you would obviously never hear him (or us) say something like that (I’d have to assume).
I sometimes let out some sexual organ slurs, which are pretty bad in my language, when I’m playing games, but it’s just because playing games is something I’ve done since childhood, and it can bring those words out, from those times. It’s more controlled now, since I’m well into adulthood now and I only let out those words to friends who can tolerate them. Not to my family.
So yeah. I know why something like this can happen. It shouldn’t be career-ending from his perspective (and to some degree it wasn’t), but from the audience’s perspective, it was a whole different thing.
He’s also a product of toxic gamer culture, the N word is almost like teenagers calling things gay… doesn’t mean they hate homosexuals.
This is not to advocate for what he said at all.
Exactly. Exactly my sentiment. It was really inappropriate, but was not produced from malintent or anything like that, just an expletive, any expletive, and that happened to come out because it was the most edgy bad word that just popped up. Super bad, but, you know. 🤦♂️