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mariaiscrafting · 3 years

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Let’s talk about the old Techno tweets

For a week now, I’ve been sitting on this ask that linked me to a Twitter callout thread on SBI. Although I have many thoughts about the entire thread, I’ve since only had the time and will to respond to the Techno part, and I figured instead of keeping it in my drafts and waiting to gather the energy to write the rest, I’d just post what I have.

Here is the thread, for reference: https://twitter.com/burner0321/status/1379103348364865536?s=21 Trigger Warnings: anti-semitism, mentions of genocide, racism, n* slur, r* slur, ableism, lesbophobia, racism Please prioritize your health and safety, and do not engage with this thread or this post if you will get triggered by any of the aforementioned. I love you, please take care of yourself, first.

So, let’s talk Technoblade’s history of making “edgy” jokes. When CCs tend to use edginess as a cover for offensive humor, they tend to do so to cover up the fact that their humor involves taking shots at minorities or employs harmful stereotypes, without addressing why people get offended by such jokes. However, when I call Technoblade’s old humor edgy, this is not what I mean. The reason I do not think people are justified in demanding an apology or addressing of the jokes in the Twitter thread is because they do not use the minorities or horrible things they address as the punchline. A joke can be in bad taste, without being malicious. This is edgy humor. In explaining my point, I want to address as many of the specific things in the thread as possible.

1) I don’t fully understand the “was Hitler a lesbian?” tweet or the title of that video, so I won’t address that. If someone has something to say about it, feel free to reply to this post, I’d love to see what you think of it.

2) Next, we have the, “titling my next video ‘mvp++ is worse than nazi germany’” tweet. What is the joke in this tweet? The joke is that the comparison between a Minecraft game and a fascist regime that caused genocide is ridiculous, and as such, would be effective clickbait, and draw people into the video. The joke is not that Nazi Germany should be taken lightly; it is actually the complete opposite.

3) Next, “#askpewds do you have any constructive criticism for Nazi Germany.” Frankly, without the context of timeframe or what the hell was going on within the Twittersphere at the time, I can only make a reach as to what this joke meant. I assume it’s in reference to the time period during which Pewdiepie was being framed as a fascist by several media outlets, and could either be a joke on the fact that people believe Pewdiepie to be a neo-Nazi, or a shot at Pewdiepie himself, by playing on the fact that he actually does espouse neo-Nazi beliefs. Again, the punchline is far from, “Nazi Germany was good,” or anything along those lines. Edgy, not anti-semitic.

4) The vampireZ tweet. The joke here is, “why did vampireZ think this was a good idea,” not, “haha get it, black people kill people.” As with many of these kinds of jokes, the existence of the word, “black” in the joke makes people think he is insulting black people. In reality, the tweet points out that the game is fitting into the history of media portraying black people as the more aggressive, violent, and/or murderous characters, and is like, “hey, isn’t this kinda fucked?”

5) This tweet actually does make an offensive joke that is malicious in its intent. Congratulations, we are five tweets in, and we finally found a joke that makes minorities the punchline. I completely understand people’s criticisms of this one. The punchline here is, “haha, I’m one of those entitled people who claims that racial profiling is the reason I was wronged,” and this minimizes the fact that racial profiling is an real, serious, and widespread problem. This tweet makes it seem like people claim that racial profiling is the reason they are excluded from spaces or that punitive actions that were enacted upon them are doing so unjustly. This can be extrapolated from the fact that it’s ridiculous to think that a) a Minecraft server would racially profile someone, and b) that a white person would be racially profiled.

6) This tweet literally just seems like a sarcastic response to someone who was accused of being a white supremacist and/or racist. Presumably, SealPlays was defending himself of not being racist, and Technoblade responded sarcastically that he was "totally” trying to recruit him to the KKK. I literally see no reason someone thought this was malicious? This does not make light of the KKK, and it doesn’t make black people or any other group or individual victimized by the KKK the punchline.

7) The slavery jokes. Presumably, the slavery jokes are in reference to the times on his Skyblock, SMP Earth, and/or Dream SMP streams and videos, during which Technoblade has done bits about making some of his friends slaves for him, so he has to do less work. Again, slavery jokes might be in bad taste, but there was literally no racial context to this, given that he wasn’t make jokes about any black CCs being his slaves. This is not to mention that he always played up the role of the one telling the people what to do, making it out to be a very negative role that only an arrogant, selfish, and/or callous person would fill. Think, Alec Baldwin playing Trump. This part of the thread is, however, so vague, that it’s hard to know exactly what instances the OP is even talking about.

There are several reasons I am personally angered by this section of the thread, but in an effort to make this post shorter, I’ll only discuss two: One, there are genuinely things that CCs, including Technoblade, have said, that carry ignorant and malicious connotations. The racial profiling joke is just one example. To create a thread where most of the examples are absolute bullshit, lack context, and/or were misinterpreted on your part is a disservice to minorities who want to have productive conversations about genuinely harmful things. I want to talk about this idea that minorities who talk about their experiences with microaggressions, such as racial profiling, are seeking attention/using an excuse/lying. But that one tweet is so buried under this mountain of bullshit that has everyone talking over each other and screaming, that the one conversation we should be having cannot be had. Two, I am utterly exhausted at watching people misinterpet jokes. As I have already said again and again, just because a joke mentions something horrible, does not mean it is malicious, or that it even harms anyone. A joke needs to make light of something horrible and/or make minorities the punchline to cross the line from “edgy” to “explicitly offensive.”

I would like to make a disclaimer: there is always two sides to a CC doing something wrong. There is the CC, who may or may not have had malicious intent, and there is the audience, who may or may not take offense to what was done or said. Both of these are separate, and I will treat them as such. What I am examining in this post is mostly the first thing - were the things said or jokes made meant with racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc., intent, or are people unjustified in stating that they were? That being said, and this is important: anyone is allowed to take offense to and not forgive a CC for making a joke or saying something, no matter what. Even if a joke was meant satirically or does not actually offend minorities, if you, as an individual, take offense to it and were deeply hurt by it, that is fucking valid. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. A CC can apologize for something, and that can mean that objectively, they are not a bad person and/or have grown, but that does not mean you have to forgive them. There are two sides to this coin, and they are not inherently dependent upon each other.

If someone is offended by any of the jokes Techno made, that is perfectly valid and understandable. Even if I or anyone else comes to the objective conclusion that any given joke doesn’t have malicious intent, that doesn’t erase minorities’ very real feelings about such.

#i wrote all of this a few days ago #the only thing i wrote just now was the first paragraph #just wanted to put that out there #techno critical #mcyttwt #racism #anti-semitism #lesbophobia #mcyt #.txt #/neg #discourse

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