Apparently, poking fun is good for a harmless laugh except if you’re a globally-recognized internet personality.
Pewdiepie was caught mocking Winnie the Pooh-related fun, but at what cost?
The Youtube icon ended up getting banned across China.
In a recent video, the Youtuber explains:
Well boys, we did it… I’m banned from China… After I spoke about the Hong Kong protests and showed their leader being mocked for looking like Winnie the Pooh, I got banned from China.
Obviously me talking about the Hong Kong memes was going to get me banned.
In addition to joining in the Winnie the Pooh mockery, he also was caught slamming companies that bow down to China’s strict censorship demands.
Now if you search anything PewDiePie-related on any Reddit related forum in China or a YouTube related video, it will just be completely blank. I’m laughing, but I’m sorry if you’re in China and try to watch my videos. That kind of sucks.
In lieu of recent events, Pewds also took it to Twitter to make light of the matter.
just found out im banned in china. shit fucking sucks so hard dude pic.twitter.com/OIr86Aa89f
— ƿ૯ωძɿ૯ƿɿ૯ (@pewdiepie) October 19, 2019
The Youtube star’s feud with the country stems back to 2017, when a Chinese company selling clothing, gloves, and wedding dresses took copyright of the name “Pewdiepie”.
China took copyright of Pewdiepie in 2017 without me being able to stop them anyway, guess they can't sell any more pewdiepie wedding dresses now lol pic.twitter.com/EkdWR63bYW
— ƿ૯ωძɿ૯ƿɿ૯ (@pewdiepie) October 20, 2019
He joins the china-banned club together with popular DJ and songwriter Zedd, who got banned in China for liking a South Park tweet which portrayed the country in a relatively harmless, but borderline mocking light.
The long-running animated series has been under fire in China for its recent “Band in China” episode.
Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino also made news as he refused to trim scenes from his movie, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, only to suit China’s censorship demands.
The leading video platform, Youtube, has been banned in China for over a decade now. Other banned sites include Google and Facebook, which are dominating in the western market.
While fans can find Pewdiepie videos on third party Chinese sites in the past, that may come to a full stop at the moment. The government will most likely censor/ban the word “Pewdiepie” and his real name, Felix Kjellberg.
Fans are also speculating how Kjellberg may be banned from entering or visiting China now.
China’s censorship laws are strict among its citizens, but it shows no exception for overseas stars.
Turns out, Pewds may have to adjust his target audience setting to across the globe but China.
