PewDiePie explains ISIS tweet that got him temporarily kicked off Twitter
LOS ANGELES -- Tweeting a joke about the Islamic State (ISIS) is never a good idea, especially if you're famous.
Twitter briefly suspended YouTuber PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg)'s account on Wednesday after he posted that he and JackSepticEye (Seán William McLoughlin) had joined the terrorist organization.
The social media website saw PewDiePie's tweet, coupled with a more graphic profile picture (which has since been changed) and wanted to make sure his account had not been hacked, a source familiar with the situation told Mashable.
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The ISIS comment was made during a series of tweets about verification on Twitter. The YouTube star had unverified himself in protest of Twitter's verification process, which he thinks is irritating.
The Swedish YouTuber, who has more than 47 million subscribers to his channel, had his account suspended on Twitter for less than an hour.
As Kjellberg says in a video explaining his side of the story, he decided to un-verify himself on Twitter because the "verification process" is "fucking annoying."
The video is about six minutes long featuring an ongoing rant about the verification process and people who are verified or not.
"I did this yesterday as a joke -- it was really funny because you can see a lot of people joined in, I added a globe instead," he said. "But then America woke up and that's when shit got stupid." Kjellberg had place a world emoji after his name on Twitter to replace the verification checkmark.
The "shit" he is referring to is a tweet by Sky News that PewDiePie was unverified because of "suspected relations with ISIS."
"Everyone started freaking out, so dumb," he says in the video, before pulling up a Mashable article and mocking journalism.
He ended the video with a final point: "Does this shit fucking matter? Absolutely not."
Saba was a Los Angeles-based reporter who covers all things digital entertainment, including YouTube, streaming services and digital influencers. Prior to that, she spent two years at the Los Angeles Times covering entertainment for the Calendar and Company Town sections. Saba grew up in Santa Monica and graduated from Boston University with a B.S. in journalism and B.A. in political science. When not reporting, she is usually binge watching shows online or looking for new coffee shops to frequent.
