Just a few days ago, we thought South Park was the big, controversial news.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/7xx5n4/we-discuss-pewdiepies-racist-comments-on-waypoint-radio
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/7xx5n4/we-discuss-pewdiepies-racist-comments-on-waypoint-radio
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As an addition to Spawn on Me and The Polygon Show, in terms of seeking out alternatives to âthree white guys,â Not Your Mommaâs Gamer is worth checking out.
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This was a great, thoughtful discussion, and Iâm totally going to take that âfalling asleep at the wheelâ metaphor for future use.
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What was the Giant Bomb thing that Patrick mentioned? I must have missed that.
I came in here to ask the name of the podcast Austin mentioned, thank you sir, I will check out Spawn on Me 
I missed it, was chat bad during stream? Austin thanked mods at the end, so I feel that something bad happend.
I remember there being one person whose comments I was giving some serious side eye to, but Adam Koebel who happened to be in chat handled that person pretty well. I am not sure if there was other stuff that was deleted and I just didnât see it. Regardless, mods probably deserve to be thanked because they would have to be extra vigilant when a topic like this is being covered even if nothing terrible ends up happening.
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As one of Waypointâs Twitch mods, I would say that discussion of controversial things like this invites difficult chat discussion which, in turn, requires a proactive moderation presence. But I donât feel that the Twitch chat was particularly bad and there were a number of users pushing the discussion in a more constructive way (as @juv3nal indicated). I wouldnât call it âperfectâ, but I wouldnât have told someone not to come in, if that makes sense?
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Oh, OK. Thanks to both of you for answering!
No, our chat almost always pretty good, with help from moderators, of course! I was just wondering if invasion of PDP supporters happened or something :Â)
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Yeah, chat yesterday was pretty good but also pretty chaotic, there was a lot of text per person, attempting to communicate complex topics at a breakneck pace.
Iâll say, for being a public twitch chat Iâm always impressed how great and respectful it is, I think itâs a good example of forming expectations and a tight knit community, where some other twitch chats have a ton of hostility and chaos.
Giant Bomb also has a pretty great chat but I feel like itâs a special case due to the stream/chat being sectioned off to its own page.
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Iâm really glad they brought that incident up. To me Ryan Davisâ response was exactly what was needed. Quick, direct, and sincere, with no funny language or âIâm sorry you were offendedâ backpedaling.
Every time I see that message on twitter when I report someone, I want to much it in the face.
Between this and Patrickâs article a lot to digest. To be honest I barely give a shit about PDP but the underlying issues are complex and troubling.
Thereâs all these people that grew up surrounded by irony and shock humor, but didnât experience the context. They become adults, either realize the world is different than they thought by themselves or are confronted about it, then try to change or hunker down in social groups that see things their way.
Robâs distinction between being âignorantâ and being ânaiveâ were pretty much the crystallizing moment for me in this discussion. Itâs occasionally been difficult for me to properly explain to people why the argument for ignorance vs open malice is a mischaracterisation of the issue. It might be believable that pewdiepie is ignorant of the political connotations of using a word deployed for centuries in the denigration of an entire ethnic group, and why using a racial epithet in place of a pejorative is a gross thing to do. But nobody for a moment can even argue that he isnât aware of it being wrong, at least in some vague indeterminate way even if he doesnât know specifically why. As a public figure with an impressionable audience that undoubtedly draw some of their day to day parlance from him, he doesnât care enough to even look into why he shouldnât say these things, read up on the use of racially charged language, look into how its usage might affect members of his viewershop, who look up to him. His failure to do that even after similar fuck ups in the past, is now not just a fuck up, itâs straight up morally repugnant.
Heâs not speaking to a small, roped off group of friends who have a common understanding and idiosyncratic parlance and can use otherwise use fucked up terminology without consequence. Heâs speaking to more than 60 million people and has to abide by the common understanding of the place such vocabulary occupies in the world.
Like, it isnât hard not to constantly be a messed up barflord in front of a live camera audience, dude.
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