PewDiePie Pulls $50,000 Donation to the Anti-Defamation League

YouTuber PewDiePie has decided to not donate the $50,000 that he had previously pledged to the Anti-Defamation League. Originally announced Tuesday, he had decided to donate this sum to the Jewish anti-hate group but backtracked the next day. The news comes from Gamesindustry.biz who say that PewDiePie decided it was a “mistake” that didn’t “feel genuine.”

PewDiePie’s Courtship With Controversy:

As the aforementioned article affirms, Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg is the most popular lone creator on YouTube. His subscriber base stands at over 100 million, with a large portion of that being young audiences. But, despite that fact, he has a history of controversy.

As the article states:

“…in 2017 both YouTube and Disney’s Maker Studios cut commercial ties with him after he posted a number of offensive and anti-semetic videos.”

The videos in question involve paying Sri Lankan men to hold up signs stating “Death to all Jews” and another paying a man dressed as Jesus to hold a sign stating “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong.”

However, in this reporter’s opinion, I saw the reaction back then as a little over the top. The things that he paid these people to do were shocking, but PewDiePie seemed just as shocked himself. It’s as if he wanted to see if they’d actually do it. Granted, he probably should never have shared the result, but I found the humor to be remarking more on the innocence of not knowing what was written than anti-semitic humor. I could be wrong, this is merely my observations.

So Why Did PewDiePie Pull the Donation?

As the announcement was made about the donation, theories began to rise that Kjellberg was trying to distance himself, or atone if you prefer, for the past controversy. The theories suggest that the donation was a way of the YouTuber highlighting that he was not an antisemite.

PewDiePie himself said:

“It really doesn’t feel genuine for me to proceed with the donation at this point… [I] didn’t know a lot of things that surfaced throughout this whole thing about the charity that doesn’t fit at all. So I understand why people had concerns about it.”

Whatever you believe about his motives, perhaps now is the time to give the guy a chance to move on from this.

How do you feel about this? Are you a PewDiePie fan? Let us know in the comments!

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