PewDiePie wants the “Subscribe to PewDiePie” meme to end after New Zealand shooting

Following the terrible mass shootings in New Zealand at two mosques, Felix Kjellberg aka PewDiePie got involved in a controversy after the terrorist named him before the massacre. [caption id=“attachment_6535261” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg. Image: PewDiePie/YouTube.[/caption] The terror attack that resulted in 50 casualties was livestreamed by the terrorist on Facebook. Before murdering the innocent victims, the attacker used the “Subscribe to PewDiePie” meme in the livestream. For those unaware, the “Subscribe to PewDiePie” meme started off as feud between PewDiePie, the most subscribed YouTube creator at that time, and T-Series, an Indian music studio which was gaining subscribers astronomically. The meme became quite popular and it was used not only across the internet, but it was also referenced at physical locations, one of them being in the context of vandalism. It soon became a fight between an individual content creator and a big company. “Subscribe to PewDiePie” began appearing at the end of several videos on YouTube itself and the community showed immense support for the little guy going up against an entire corporation. However, as soon as the meme was referenced by the terrorist in the livestream, people started disassociating themselves from it. Right after the incident, Felix had tweeted out (tweet doesn’t exist anymore) that he was “sickened” to have his name used by the attacker. And now, considering how out of control the meme went, Felix took to YouTube to address the issue, calling an end to use the meme. Felix said in the video, “To have my name associated with something so unspeakably vile has affected me in more ways than I’ve let shown. I just didn’t want to address it right away, and I didn’t want to give the terrorist more attention. I didn’t want to make it about me, because I don’t think it has anything to do with me. To put it plainly, I didn’t want hate to win. But it’s clear to me now the “Subscribe to PewDiePie” movement should have ended then.”

Apart from being referenced by the attacker, the meme was also used to deface a World War II memorial in New York, as reported by The Verge. This isn’t the first time Felix has been involved in a controversy. Towards the end of the video, he requested all his subscribers and viewers that when his channel reaches 100 million subscribers, he wants it to be seen as a positive milestone rather than a competition.