There are tons of excellent reasons to ban Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg from your platform. The massively popular YouTube streamer, with a humongous audience of children, has been guilty of everything from “ironic” antisemitism to cancelling pledges for charities that help fight said antisemitism. He’s Not Good.
But authoritarian regimes are also Not Good. And in getting himself banned in China, PewDiePie has pulled a South Park and picked a fight with a villain even bigger and more obnoxious than him.
Online the absolute worst thing you could say about China’s president Xi Jinping is say he looks like famous honey-loving cartoon bear Winnie the Pooh. It really bothers him. That’s why the character has been banned in China. That’s why this Taiwanese horror game got taken down from Steam. And by making this comparison himself, that’s how PewDiePie got banned in China. If you search for his videos on Chinese YouTube, nothing will show up. For nearly any other reason, that would be great. But not like this.
This of course ties back to gamer culture’s current war on China following Blizzard’s controversial decision to ban a pro Hearthstone player for supporting Hong Kong’s protests for democracy. PewDiePie talked about this event as well as the NBA’s own issues with lucrative Chinese sponsorships.
And really it’s fascinating how these debates about China aren’t falling neatly along political lines in the West. I’m still convinced Republican Ted Cruz’s reasons for denouncing Blizzard’s China appeasement aren’t quite the same as socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s reasons (and her reasons are personally probably a lot closer to mine). But all of us, including PewDiePie, still sort of came to the same conclusion. Wild.
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