The controversial YouTuber PewDiePie is being used by the New York police to make their social media presence more interesting and fun.
What does the police want to achieve? Social media is important for the police. On Twitter or Facebook, they post wanted notices and inform followers about important events. It is therefore essential to reach as many people as possible.
However, this is difficult with dry reports. Social media channels are usually successful when they are funny and entertaining. Accordingly, the New York police (NYPD) wants to continue their education.
The police need more followers
How do the officers plan to be funnier? The police are naturally looking for “role models” who show how it should be done and how to generate many followers with funny posts.
For this, the successful YouTuber Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg has been used as an example. He currently has 98 million subscribers on YouTube. Even though he had to give up the number 1 spot.
This is how the officers proceed during the training: In the examples from the social media training of the New York police, mainly tweets from the YouTuber from the years 2014 and 2015 are used.
A representative of the NYPD stated: “The use of social media accounts has also helped to solve and prevent crimes through tips, education, and interaction with the community.”
The number of followers has significantly increased since the training, which is a good thing.
Why is PewDiePie controversial? The well-known but controversial YouTuber has not exactly stood out for his exemplary behavior in the past.
For instance, he released videos with anti-Semitic jokes and even paid two men in 2017 to show a sign reading “Death to all Jews” in a video. The YouTuber explained that this was just an experiment to see what people would do for money, and he distanced himself from anti-Semitism.
After this incident, Maker Studios and Google terminated their contracts with Felix Kjellberg.
Later, Kjellberg became notorious for racially insulting a teammate during a round of PUBG. He also apologized for this.
