Quite a few of YouTube's earliest influencers and entertainers have seen their popularity wane as trends change and new faces join the platform. PewDiePie, however, hasn't gone anywhere. Felix Kjellberg started his YouTube career in 2010 and hasn't fallen off the radar since. He remains a tour de force on the platform, making a broad variety of content, collaborating with tons of other famous influencers, and entertaining millions of loyal fans. Recently, however, PewDiePie made headlines when famed Minecraft streamer Dream spoke up against a recent PewDiePie video that had Dream in the thumbnail.

PewDiePie's video was about streamers caught cheating in video games, and the thumbnail referenced the recent controversy around Dream cheating in a Minecraft speedrun. Dream was a pretty small part of the video, despite being the core of the thumbnail. Dream later tweeted about it, and good-naturedly made fun of PewDiePie for using him as clickbait, but Dream's fans took the tweet differently and started criticizing PewDiePie. While this controversy is sure to be an inconvenience for PewDiePie, it's not the biggest social dispute that he's landed in.

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PewDiePie's Relationship with Controversy

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Whether it's through his YouTube videos or his livestreams, PewDiePie tends to get on the wrong side of public opinion. Just last year, PewDiePie met criticism for joking about the COVID-19 pandemic in its early months, for instance. PewDiePie also has an unfortunate history of using racial slurs and condoning anti-Semitic gestures. In fact, many YouTube users have started petitions to get him removed from the platform due to these controversies. There's plenty of other instances besides these where he's rubbed people the wrong way, and PewDiePie's brand is a little hard to separate from his habit for stirring up trouble.

What's really remarkable about PewDiePie's long track record of controversies, though, is that it hasn't stopped him. PewDiePie has lost lucrative contracts with people like Disney over his behavior, and yet he remains one of the most popular creators on YouTube. He currently has 110 million YouTube subscribers, and consistently gets millions of views on his videos. PewDiePie might consistently receive criticism for his words and the behavior he encourages in fans, but his career hasn't suffered for it. That's why PewDiePie and Dream's recent debacle isn't a big deal - it's notable to see two big Internet personalities collide, but it's probably not going to result in any real consequences.

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YouTube's Biggest Figures Persist

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Something ironic and amusing about the PewDiePie-Dream controversy is that Dream is hardly free from controversy himself. Aside from lingering fan ire about his Minecraft speedrun, Dream was recently criticized for failing to commit to a humanitarian initiative he planned. Dream told fans that he'd celebrate Pride Month in June by donating all the revenue from his streams to LGBTQ organizations. Fans got excited for the plan, but then Dream hardly streamed during June, resulting in backlash from fans. Similarly to PewDiePie, Dream remains influential despite this controversy and others.

The way that people like PewDiePie and Dream cycle in and out of controversy suggest that these creators' careers are nigh-immovable. At this point, the thing most likely to take PewDiePie offline is himself. He's suggested a few times in recent history that he's retiring from YouTube, but even so he's still creating tons of content and gaining subscribers. One wonders if PewDiePie really ever will leave YouTube, or if he's just messing with his fans. It's certainly hard to imagine PewDiePie walking away from YouTube now after all that it's done for him. Controversy involving PewDiePie may come and go, but for the foreseeable future, he's here to stay.

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