Shantanu David News18.com

Updated on: April 14, 2019, 2:54 PM IST

April 14, 2019, 2:54 PM IST FOLLOW US ON: Facebook Twitter Instagram

PewDiePie, that most assured of social media parasiticals, has been quivering of late.

His throne, built (much like the one in Westeros which we obsess about) on invalidating other people groups, has been at peril. Him and T-Series have been having a subscriber war of late. And as stereotypes are wont to do, T-Series turned to the letter of the law and PewDiePie's fans turned to soft-hued racism.


Not perhaps recognizing that the number of Bollywood fans outnumber a YouTuber's, PewDiePie published quite a few videos on the close contest, most in poor taste. He launched campaigns begging you to care while asserting he didn't.

When he first lost out to T-series in being the most subscribed channel, PDP did the classy thing and capitulated with a sarcastic video to T-Series, which had already been preceded by diss videos on the Noida-based company.


People were not pleased.


Apart from social media, there was a real world effect too.

As noted by Bar&Bench, "The Delhi High Court has directed YouTube to remove two songs published by Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie from its platform. The interim order was granted by a Single Judge Bench of Justice Jayant Nath in a suit preferred by T-Series owner Super Cassettes Pvt Ltd., seeking to permanently restrain Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, from uploading the songs titled ‘T-Series Diss Track/Bitch Lasagna’ and ‘Congratulations’."

Meanwhile, other Indian fans of the YouTuber took up arms for him.

Among the videos posted by his non-Indian fans was this gem, in which my favourite line is "Imagine if YouTube complies with this Indian law and judgement and removes PewDiePie's videos" followed by much eyebrow waggling and subtle racism:

Imagine Indians and their opinions/laws/judegements actually having to matter. These other non-Indian folk certainly didn't.