Over the weekend, random Swedish guy who’s somehow massively famous for playing video games Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg made headlines once again after another racist outburst.
This time around, Kjellberg dropped a very offensive slur used against Black people during a live stream of him playing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, in such a casual way that it sure seems like he’s said it before. In the wake of the incident, indie game developer Sean Vanaman filed for all PewDiePie content involving his studio to be erased from the internet, and now Kjellberg has released another apology posted—where else?—on his YouTube account.
In the video, which comes across as somewhat more sincere than his apology for making anti-Semitic jokes earlier this year, Kjellberg says, “Whenever I go online and hear players using the same kind of language I did, I find it extremely immature and stupid, and I hate how personally I fed into that part of gaming as well.” He adds that the word “just sort of slipped out” in “the heat of the moment,” where “I said the worst word I can think of.”
“I’m not going to make any excuses for what I did, because there are no excuses for it,” he says. “I’m just an idiot, but that doesn’t make what I said or how I said it okay.” He goes on to say that he’s sorry “if I offended, hurt or disappointed anyone with all of this. Being in the position I am, I should know better,” and that he wants to improve moving forward. How acceptable you find that apology depends on how much you can relate to having a racial slur be the first word that comes to mind “in the heat of the moment,” but the real proof will be if Kjellberg can take his own words to heart and seriously knock this racist nonsense the fuck off forever.
In that vein, here is a list of alternate outbursts that roll right off the tongue and aren’t hateful reminders of centuries of racist oppression and violence that PewDiePie can totally use next time he gets mad playing video games, free of charge:
Pissgibbon
Cockwaddle
Sausagefoot
Shitliver
Farttaxi
Sewertoot
Stinkyfork
Shovelcock
Steve Bannon
Okay, maybe that last one is pretty hateful. But the point still stands.