The journalists at the Washington Post,  Ben Guarino and Kristine Phillips had taken it upon themselves to publish a newspaper article about the famous Youtuber Felix Kjellberg, better known as “Pewdiepie” on Youtube. This article had gone over several points that lead to the conclusion that Kjellber was anti Semitic, or hostile and prejudiced against Jews.

Kjellberg is one of the most well known Youtubers on the planet and has been in business with both Youtube and Disney for the past few years, which could be a major contribution to how this news had become so widespread. According to Yorba Linda High School student Rhys Weingarten (9), “He makes videos about himself playing video games which caused him to get so big because of his relatable reactions and his international fan base.” Despite his large fanbase, however, throughout certain videos uploaded to Felix’s channel on several different occasions, jokes that seemed anti Semitic had began to pop up. However, in response to these, Felix had mentioned how he was not trying to make “any serious political commentary,” and how it had all been in joke which he, in hindsight, was not proud of. The Washington Post stated, “Kjellberg will not lose his YouTube channel, which has more than 53 million subscribers, and he can continue to monetize his videos,” as if there should be a bigger punishment for what he had done, however many do disagree with this point of view. Many of these disagreement have been publicized due to his Kjellberg’s platform being a social media platform itself.

Several Youtubers themselves, including GradeAUnderA and various news channels, have inputted their opinions on the subject with overwhelming support to Kjellberg and against the Washington Post, stating that they had blown these jokes out of proportion and, in some cases, had been hypocritical. Later news had supported this argument by supplying the information that one of the writers of the piece to have made numerous racial jokes on his social media sight. Also, fellow Youtubers have pointed out how Felix does now see the error in his jokes and how they had crossed the line, something he is not proud of. However, the Washington Post is using his mistake to their advantage, while they themselves cite a quote stating, “he could be doing all this only to cause and stir things up and get free publicity.” Numerous creators have been known to reference how this specific argument could also be hypocritical due to the fact that the writers of this piece are using Kjellberg’s blight to their advantage since he is such a well known person. 

The amount of backlash that the Washington Post has gotten due to its article on the famous Youtube gamer Pewdiepie has many debating whether Felix was wrongly accused and taken advantage of for more publicity. Several other Youtubers have taken his side on this debate and supported the idea of how he does genuinely feel bad about the racial jokes he had made in previous videos. The true question is if he has wrongfully been accused, or if these claims are valid.