Monday night, Disney’s Maker Studios cut ties with YouTube star PewDiePie after videos of two men holding up anti-semitic signs he posted on his channel were uncovered by the Wall Street Journal. YouTube followed suit, canceling the second season of his “Scare PewDiePie” show on its premium service, YouTube Red, and pulling his channel from its ad program.
TheWrap spoke to the CEO of a large digital media company who didn’t find PewDiePie’s Nazi humor funny and shed no tears for his very bad day.
“What an idiot,” the CEO said. “I hope all his brand sponsors drop him, and I think we’re going to see that continue to happen through the day. It won’t kill him because he has so much one-on-one interaction with his fans, but it will hurt”
PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, has more than 53 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, which shot to prominence over video gaming videos. That wouldn’t stop the CEO from cutting ties with the social media star.
“We’d dump him immediately,” he said. “That’s a risk when you tie so much to one guy.”
The CEO added that despite PewDiePie’s ability to draw tens of millions of people to his videos, YouTube might have had enough of his envelope-pushing humor and ego.
“I also think YouTube was getting tired of his s***,” he said.