The Giant Beastcast: Episode 91

TACO BELL WEDDING!!!

Oh boy, more expiration date nightmares?

@scribble: You've put me down the rabbit hole of IT Crowd clips - I don't have time to do this again!

Nothin' like a good ol' Beast on a Friday morning!

For anyone that somehow didn't already know, that description is all you need to read to know Dan is in the East office. It has all the telltale signs, like cheese.

Taco Bell. Wedding. Dan Rupert you are one crazy mother fucker.

It's so weird that Americans have to do their taxes. In the UK the government just does it. Like I've never once even thought about taxes, it just happens.

@dixavd: I'm in that same rabbit hole too :O

Itch.io is the Bandcamp of video games

ALEX WITH THE VOLCEL JOKES

I've never watched a Pewdiepie video, but that drama was all over Reddit the last couple days and enough information got exposed to make the Beastcast's breakdown of it look incredibly ignorant. If it was a topic I cared more about I'd be incredibly disappointed with the crew.

A Costume Quest cartoon makes the most sense. It was obvious they were always going for that style. I always felt like Psychonauts would work really well as a cartoon too.

@hotsauceao: What information?

You would if you were self employed, or a freelance contractor.

In the UK (and the republic of Ireland) most employees are PAYE, 'Pay as you earn', which taken directly from your gross salary (minus any tax credits you may have) , which in the US, they don't and the onus is on you to declare your earnings.

As someone halfway through taking the CPA exam, the first 10 minutes made my day. You guys get close enough. (@danryckert SE Tax explanation: If you're a W-2 employee, your company pays half your taxes [other than income tax]. The "self employment" tax is basically just your half plus the half your company 'would have' paid.)

@hotsauceao: Are they breitbarting this story?

The more you know.

Having been both sides of it, It is certainly less sweaty when your employer is doing the collection. I recently got a surprise tax bill from 2015 when I freelanced. *sad face*

In Germany you also do your own taxes. It's fairly simple once you've done it one or two times.

@paulunga: Let's just call it what it is, lies.

They don't know anything about this story and decided he was exactly what the WSJ says he is.

Alex again being the moral busybody decides that the jokes are not funny so he should be thrown off his relationships.

I think it's funny, i'm Jewish and i wasn't even a big fan of him before.

Do better Giantbomb...just say you don't know if you can't be botherd to research this.

Hey, Shane, shooters won't treat you well forever. It's time to look into some old-man games. Drew could sort you out. Racing and Flight sims are fantastic. Your spacial awareness actually peaks in your mid 60s, so you'll be dogfighting better and better as years go by for a looong ass time.

Also, I'm 38, I have RSI so my hands are all shitty and I still shred people in For Honor. Got a K:D of 1:80, which is higher than what I usually ran in shooters back in my 20s.

Do not give up on games. Lots of games are made for olds :)

@owack6: What did the WSJ say he is? More importantly, what did the GBE guys say he is?

Alex didn't decide anything, he gave his opinion. Youtube and Disney already made their decisions.

Just because there is some more context to Pewdiepie's jokes that the WSJ didn't include, does not change this whole story. In fact it doesn't change much of anything. I still have my views that what he did was shitty, and you still have yours.

@masterrain: @avantegardener: You also have to pay attention to tax in the UK if your job includes taxable benifits like a company car, even that is a confusing mess that I barely get my head around so having to do it all yourself sounds nightmarish.

Correction: In Sniper Elite 4, the player cannot shoot Hitler's gnads as he only has one ball. ?

The segment on Pewdiepie was ill-informed. If you are going to accuse someone of being antisemitic, get your ducks in a row first.

Here is a much better description of the story from Ethan Klein, who is coincidentally a Jew.

@aethelred: They never accused him of being antisemitic..

To anyone wondering, those words Alex said are basically redpill/MRA lingo for people who don't have sex by choice or not by choice.

Don't do any more research

Is For Honor a sort of "if you're gonna play multiplayer do it now while everyone else is" kind of game?

Getting that impression for some reason.

THE BEAST!!!

Alex said, and I quote, that he made "antisemitic jokes." Vinny said, "It does not fall in a grey area," and Alex adds, "Even if you try to contextualize it."

Bullshit.

Yeah, saw that stuff. It's just... not funny to me and still offensive, even in context. Also, which part did we get wrong? We all agreed we don't think he's actually an antisemite (I mean, we hope) but he did some dumb stuff. Your post makes me think you believe it's a better description of the story because it aligns with your beliefs. Help me align my ducks.

@aethelred: "Death to all jews" is antisemitic even with the context. By definition.

Saying it was just a joke or "Oh but it was in response to this particular thing" does not exclude that.

Wolfenstein has swastikas and Nazis in it. Is the game antisemitic? Or is the context important?

The actual crazy thing about passbooks is that people still use them.

@aethelred: I'm not saying the context isn't important, but what part of the context regarding PewDiePie's "Death to all Jews" joke makes it not antisemitic?
Like, I can't think of much context that suddenly refutes a joke like that being regarded as antisemitic.

I've been having a pretty rough week, but when I woke up this morning I knew that Vinny, Jeff, Alex, and Dan were going to do their best to put a smile on my face. I know you guys aren't my real friends but you guys are god friends.

I'm smiling again already.

I just got to the Pewdiepie segment of the Beastcast. From all the articles and reports that I've read, it seems like the Beast Crew got most/all of the facts right. Pewdiepie DID say these things, WSJ DID write a report, etc. The only part you can maybe take umbrage with is that the Beast Crew editorialized how they personally felt into the re-telling of the news, which is fine/expected/what the Beast Crew do because they are people.

Like, if you don't wanna get called out for being a hack, don't make hacky jokes.

I think in this case the context is irrelevant. For all the hubub about the actual comments, this issue is ultimately is about someone pissing off their sponsors and paying the price for it. You work for someone else, you play by their rules if you want to keep getting paid. The instant he signed up with Disney (Disney!) he placed limitations on himself about the kinds of things he could say and do on his channel. If he didn't realize that, that's on him.

He's a moron for no other reason that he thought he could collect a paychecks from Disney and Google and then put up that kind of content without consequence. Regardless of how he might have intended it, it's certainly reasonably foreseeable that a lot of people are going to take it the wrong way. It's also reasonably foreseeable that his sponsors aren't exactly going to dig deep into his intended meaning or not. If what he said generates a bad look for them, they're going to run as far away as possible as fast as possible.

That's the danger of Youtubers not really having editors for their content. There's no one there to tell you that maaaaaaaaaaaybe that's not the best idea.

@paulunga: This has to be the biggest burn I've read on here, holy crap. I would be fucking upset for real if someone would call me this stuff.

@owack6: Read up what YouTube and Capitalism in general stand for instead of moving the goalposts next time. PewDiePie is as free to choose but so are the advertisers and "moneygivers". Everything that goes against these rules are contestable. The Beastcast are actually discussing why PewDiePies choices are wrong by principle and not whether or not he should be banned because he is unfunny so actually listen to the podcast next time.

@cementface9: Vinny was by far the most damning in this segment compared to Alex, you can hear his disappointment to the situation and on how many ways this situation is bad for PewDiePie. Alex was of course the lead but thats because they allowed him to be the "master" of this segment.

@magmamud: This PewDiePie drama situation is akin to blaming the ocean because many whales get stranded undeservely instead of doing your best to safe the whales instead but thats Free Speech Warriors for you.

Also gotta love people who write the truth is out there and then don't respond back when you ask them for a source.

EDIT: Also gotta love that theres almost no merit in depending PewDiePie's actions judging by the comment section. Not only that but I thought defending somebody unrelated to you over the internet is frowned up upon, "white knighting" and all that.

Dan is like that character they put in a movie with a lot to explain who is new and doesn't know anything and they can do lots of exposition at them and have it be justified.

Also laughed at Alex bringing up incel and volcel and then quickly backing out.

Pewdiepie's joke of having Fiverr people hold up/say super offensive things is a super shitty joke (and unoriginal). Maybe the WSJ framed it weirdly and that video they made was kind of misleading... it's still a super shitty joke, and The Pewds has been casually making rape jokes etc. for years in his videos.

But I'm also a hypocrite because I grew up a fan of South Park and that show also wasn't afraid to rely on shock humor. I guess South Park is able to get away with it because that humor usually was told by Cartman and he eventually got his comeuppance at the end of every episode. But it's still there.

Obviously Pewdiepie will be fine, but hopefully him and the hundreds of YT personalities that copy him learn a lesson from this and try not to rely so heavily from shock humor in the future.

Is it just me or was Dan 2 seconds away from comparing a filet to a McRib?

I'm gonna get super pedantic and feel free to ignore it but I don't get very many chances to correct people about this. As a Jew with a gentile father myself, I can say with some authority that whether anyone likes it or not Vinny's kids are fully Jewish based on their mother. In practice this means nothing of course I just thought it might contribute to your point.

Hearing that Dan used to be forced to explore old abandoned/condemned (and probably for a good reason) houses with one of his stepmoms explains a bit.

Do people honestly get offended by Youtubers making jokes? Grow a spine. This is getting really pathetic. If you don't like someone’s jokes, leave them be and don't consume their content. That's the adult thing to do. That's what I have done when I haven't enjoyed someone’s personality. Who cares if a damn YouTuber apologises or not? It's like people make being offended their business. It just seems so absurd, especially from grown adults. The only people who I could imaging caring are people who actively consume the YouTuber’s content and people who feel the self-righteous need to let everyone know where they stand morally, despite it not affecting them at all, as if they need some feeling of validation for having their opinions affirmed. These social justice segments really drag the mood of the podcast down, especially as they feel like one sided monologues.