YouTube's biggest star is in hot water over anti-Semitic 'jokes' - here's what's going on

To call Felix Kjellberg "internet famous" is to sell him short. The name may not be familiar to you, but perhaps his pseudonym is: "Pewdiepie."

YouTube

This is PewDiePie in one of his most recent videos, from December 2.

He's a handsome 27-year-old Swedish man who plays video games, records video blogs, and makes millions of dollars doing so (about $15 million last year, according to Forbes).

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That's also selling him short - Kjellberg makes his job look easy, which is almost certainly a testament to how hard he actually works. He publishes at least one, often several, videos each day. That's before you start talking about the show he made for YouTube, or the video game about him, or his talent agency, or his book.

His YouTube channel just passed 53 million subscribers. His videos casually reach tens of millions of people.

YouTube

He's far and away the most popular YouTuber, by tens of millions of subscribers, which is why it was such a big deal when the Wall Street Journal published a piece this week collecting several instances of Kjellberg using anti-Semitic imagery and phrases in videos he made. Disney, which had a business deal with Kjellberg, immediately dropped him. Google, which owns YouTube, also canned plans for a show starring Kjellberg. And on Thursday, Kjellberg fired back in - what else? - a YouTube video directed at the Wall Street Journal. 

There's a lot to unpack here. Let's dive in.