PewDiePie can teach us a lot--about Youtube's corporate sleaze.

According to journalists, PewDiePie makes a lot of money. Although no one knows exactly how much, they're sure it's in the millions, anywhere from 4 to 15. Up until recently, every article centered around the fact that that Swedish man whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, makes a lot of money. Something something video games, something something stupid videos, but mostly, he makes a lot of money. It's as if journalists love talking about money. Maybe because they don't make any. Their preoocupation with money is second only to their love accusing people of being Nazis. Which is now what journalists are writing about PewDiePie.

Three journalists from the Wall Street Journal watched an entire year of PewDiePie's shit-posting, and found off-the-cuff jokes in his videos - which won't come as a surprise to his millions of followers. It seems to me that their time could have been better spent. The three journalists succeeded in making a financial dent in PewDiePie's life, and he's had to apologize for the jokes taken out of context. But PewDiePie also blamed the media for their hit piece, and has made several videos railing against the media at large now. And while that is a natural reaction on his part, there is a much bigger and more troubling story here. And it's surprising that it is nowhere to be found in the Wall Street Journal's pulitzer-prize wannabe article: Not only did Youtube have no problems monetizing PewDiePie's "hate speech," taking 45% of Marker Studios' ad revenue, but Youtube's dark underbelly is paved with cash made off of much worse hate speech than some dumb Hitler joke.

In fact, Youtube makes revenue off of ISIS beheading videos and real bona fide Nazi bands.

Youtube's been hosting videos of suicide bombers, and jihadi recruitment videos for years now.

The ADL's list of bigots who rock, i.e. Neo Nazi/White Supremacist bands, feature bands who have channels on Youtube.

The Trichordist went ahead and did a cursory search and discovered those bands are still alive and well and recruiting new members through their music, and making money off of ads running on their videos - with their share to Youtube and Google of course. (I hope the Trichordist author took a hot shower after that search.) Leaving the topic of Nazi & Isis speech aside for a moment, there are Youtube channels created by nifty bot networks scraping other web sites for copyrighted content they're all too happy to monetize. Who runs these bots and where does that money go?

One has to wonder why The Wall Street Journal would choose to focus on what is really a side issue at best when there is a much bigger story out there. But if they did choose to focus on the larger issue of the Youtube economy, they'd have to go and watch more than one channel. It's so hard being a journalist these days.

I can just picture a lot of decks being updated this week, furiously scrubbing him from the list of "influencers," for the latest digital "idea." But be that as it may, Forbes pointed out that despite being yanked from the preferred advertiser status betrothed upon him by Google, and despite being dropped by Disney-owned Maker Studios, he will still make a lot of money this year, from his content and from his subscribers. As much as seven million dollars. Despite the media doing its best to create massive fallout, it seems PewDiePie will be PewDieFine. Sorry.