PewDiePie asks fans to confront his "immature" past
YouTube has "grown past" insensitive use of language, but his community still pines for the good old days
PewDiePie has asked the more nostalgic members of his community to confront the mistakes of his past, from the technical issues to his insensitive use of language.
In a video called "Old vs. New PewDiePie," the ubiquitous streaming celebrity noted the growing amount of feedback from people who perceived a slip in standards. PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, observed that those people seem to be, "stuck in the old days."
Kjellberg illustrated his point in several ways, using popular videos from his early days to demonstrate his lack of technical proficiency and, at times, professionalism. In particular, he highlighted a tendency to make controversial jokes, using a video in which he called the main character "gay" as an example.
"I was so immature, and I just thought things were funny just because they were offensive"
"Exposing myself here, but I don't know, I really don't like that," he said. "I still make kind of stupid jokes that I shouldn't make, but I feel like back then I didn't understand. I was so immature, and I just thought things were funny just because they were offensive. So I would say a lot of stupid shit.
"I'm not proud of it, I'm really not. But I'm also glad that I've grown past it."
Elsewhere in the video, Kjellberg pulled up a video with the word "retarded" in the title, which he immediately deleted. "I really should go through and censor some of these videos," he said.
Starting in 2011, Kjellberg quickly became one of YouTube's biggest stars. However, the DIY nature of Let's Play videos allowed for a great many rough edges, with streamers like KSI rising to prominence in spite of their videos' controversial content. In that respect, Kjellberg is hardly the main offender, and his willingness to analyse and critique his former attitude is very much in line with the custodial role he has taken within the streaming community since then.
In September 2014, he closed off comments in his videos in part due to the tone and content of people's remarks. He was also a vocal opponent when Nintendo started to crackdown on Let's Play videos, and he used his popularity as a platform to speak out against ad-blocking software.
In January this year, Kjellberg launched Revelmode, his own entertainment network.