PewDiePie Responds to Criticism Over Coronavirus Jokes

Tyler Fischer

02/22/2020 09:21 pm EST

Yesterday, after a brief hiatus, PewDiePie returned to YouTube with a new video that, at the moment of publishing, is the number one trending video on the platform, accumulating over nine million views in about 24 hours. During this video he notably reacted to Ninja's "It's just a game" controversy, as well as made a series of jokes involving the Coronavirus outbreak in China. Being a comedy-driven channel, PewDiePie makes a lot of jokes, including many about sensitive topics, such as the Coronavirus, which has devastated certain parts of China in particular. In this video, these jokes including referring to the virus as "Coronachan" and adorning an absurd number of anti-viral masks.

To his massive audience, most of these jokes ranged from harmless to hilarious, but some were put off by the YouTuber, while others criticized the jests and accused PewDiePie of racism for them. Included in this wave of criticism were articles about the "racially edgy" video, as well as tweets from across Twitter that put the YouTuber on blast.

Mocking Coronavirus and Chinese People

"Coronachan"

He Should Be Banned From YouTube

Not Funny

Not Cool YouTube

Not Surprised

PewDiePie Responds

That all said, following up yesterday's video, PewDiePie released a new episode of meme review were the Swedish star doubled down on the jokes by continuing them.

"Now I understand this is a bit controversial, you can't really joke about stuff," said PewDiePie as the screen turned black and white and was accompanied by a rain effect and somber music to give off a pseudo-serious tone. "Disclaimer, just because I laugh at something, doesn't mean I think it's funny. If anything it's the opposite. I'm only reviewing this for the sake of historical context," added the YouTuber before adorning an anti-viral mask.

All while this happened, a disclaimer read at the bottom of the screen as follows: "THE COMMENTS IN THIS VIDEO ARE PURELY SARCASM OR HYPERBOLE. DO NOT TAKE ME SERIOUSLY."

The coronavirus memes and jokes continued for awhile until he linked to an article that revealed Chinese citizens have been using memes to cope with the ongoing crisis.

"Listen, if you think these are racist jokes, even Chinese people made these jokes," said PewDiePie. "If Chinese people are joking about it, I can as well. It's a coping mechanism."

PewDiePie finished things off by actually giving his viewers advice on how to stay safe, which includes washing your hands and disposing items that you cough into.

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