The Verge reports that a video published by YouTuber Felix Kjellberg – aka PewDiePie – ripping on a channel of songs and nursery rhymes for toddlers called CocoMelon has been taken down by the network because it “encouraged harassment” of the other channel’s creators. Kjellberg’s video called the kids’ channel audience “a bunch of fucking virgins” and showed child actors attacking the channel with plastic weapons. This video was an allegedly comically overstated response to CocoMelon knocking Kjellberg’s out of the number one spot as YouTube’s most subscribed.
Now, I don’t know much about this PewDiePie character besides the fact that he’s a bro-y gamer from Sweden whose humor has crossed a line on several occasions. I know the word “controversial” has been ascribed to him many times in media reports. He’s worth a lot of money, so I guess being an edgelord works out for people sometimes. But why would someone attack a kid’s channel?
Here’s why: CocoMelon is fucking awful. It’s unwatchable. Videos for toddlers are by their nature not going to be very appealing to adults, but they should at least be tolerable. Cocomelon videos are fucking crimes. If you haven’t seen this one, try to picture what these lyrics would sound like in a song: “Shoes. Shoes. Time to wear your shoes. Yes, yes, yes, I want to wear my shoes.” It’s abominable. And the worst part is you know the assholes that created it just learned how to game YouTube’s search algorithms better than people with actual talent.
YouTube should go fuck themselves for taking down PewDiePie’s video. I didn’t even get to see it and still attacking the nightmare factory that is CocoMelon has valorized him in my mind.