He is a Swedish YouTuber who goes by the appellation PewDiePie and he appears to be engaged in a virtual tu-tu-main-main with India’s Soap Queen Ekta Kapoor. He tweeted something and she didn’t like it. He made a video, she responded and then he responded and then she responded some more. The Swedish guy clearly doesn’t have a very good opinion of Indians in general and Indian TV shows in particular. In turn Kapoor appears not to have too good an opinion of him either. Many others joined in the war on Twitter-verse – undoubtedly a twitter-storm in the teacup of irrelevance here, but it is amusing too.
For that is the real name of PewDiePie. His YouTube channel is the most subscribed YouTube channel in the world with a staggering 63 million+ subscribers and an obscene 17 billion+ (I think it’s billion, never been good with numbers) views.
Clearly the guy has clout because this rather inane tweet got 37k likes and thousands of retweets as well.
And she decided to respond with this (not that the original tweet was directed at her at all). I think she was aiming for ‘casually dismissive’ but ended up sounding like someone angrily trying (but failing) to administer a quelling put-down.
While some thought that “bhai tu kaun hai” was an epic put-down, others decided to educate Kapoor about individual net worth (Kapoor $13 million, Kjellberg $20 million though some estimates put it at $61 million). Others schooled her about her poor content, industry nepotism and so on – because Kjellberg clearly has a formidable following; someone so not to be messed with.
Some of it is funny, some of it ignorant but overall it is an entertaining and watchable video. It makes some astutely accurate (but unwelcome considering the fact that we Indians don’t have much of a sense of humour about criticism directed as us) comments about Indians on social media, Indian movies and attitudes in general. It is also an irritatingly unflattering look at Ekta’s content and even did a bit of Friends as done by Kapoor. No wonder she is so enraged!
“You seem obsessed,” she said; giving an excellent impression of being reasonably obsessed herself. Because, until now, the YouTuber had not really engaged with her and she appeared to be waging a one sided war which she perhaps imagined showed her as mildly amused and nonchalant (not).
More mocking here where he refers to her and her shows as “overly dramatic” and cracks some rather puerile ‘jokes’ about Indian, their use of English, spellings and usual stuff (including one bit where he doesn’t get a 3 Idiots allusion). There are more uncomfortable home-truths about us in there, but for Kapoor the unkindest cut of all was probably the guy sneeringly telling her that he has no idea who she is. That had to hurt.
She is still trying to sound flippant here, but not managing to pull it off mainly because it’s difficult to understand what she is trying to say in this tweet. She made one or two other responses which also should have been avoided because all of what she said made her come across as touchy and thin-skinned. PewDiePie is popular precisely because he is cutting and irreverent and sarcastic; because he is funny in his unapologetically funny way. If Ekta Kapoor wanted to engage with him, the least she could have done was sound halfway intelligent. As things stand, its game, set and match to him, plus an additional 4 million+ views on video that wouldn’t have happened but for her. I would have said well played Ekta but sarcasm clearly doesn’t go down well with her.
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