PewDiePie’s long-standing race with the popular Indian music label T-Series has seen a new twist after the Swedish YouTuber posted a video on 9 March in response to Indian netizens’ take on his competition with T-Series.
The video shows supporters of both camps having their say on the issue, with one woman, for instance, finding PewDiePie’s “B**ch Lasagna” song more insulting than filled with light-hearted humour.
PewDiePie appeared to be quick to react:
“I called T-Series b**ch lasagna!” the YouTuber laughingly explained. “That’s not even an insult! I’m sorry, come back to me, I’m sorry for calling you a b**ch lasagna!”
The stance earned a lot of favour from the audience, with many posting their words of support for Pewds right in comments:
"I am a gamer girl and I love pewds, " one loyal fan wrote, followed by others.
"Im an Indian. I've been a fan of Pewds since many years. And I will be a fan of him forever," another subscriber posted, adding further:
"I won't let my king down."
"A lot of pakistanis watch pewdiepie because tseries is indian lmao," yet another fan wrote.
One boy in the video, meanwhile, reminded the general public of India going online at a galloping pace due to cheap WI-FI courteously provided by the promising mobile network Jio, and PewDiePie shared his sincere happiness about the development.
“So basically, India is getting internet”, PewDiePie commented on India’s technological advances. “Which is a good thing. I wouldn’t joke like, ‘Ugh, that’s so bad!’”
However, it is the boy in the blue shirt, not the vlogger himself who won the most of attention from the audience, with many noting how reasonable the boy's comment is:
"This kid knows what's up," one subscriber wrote, with another one weighing in:
"The kid in the blue shirt should be in the thumbnail."
Being an individual creator, Pewds garnered a surprising amount of supporters after the video emerged, with many hoping for his win over the Indian corporate structure, although many eagerly threw their weight behind T-Series, citing its grandiose archive of Hindi music.
Amid the fierce battle for subscribers, which reached its climax last autumn as the sub gap started to narrow at a worrisome, at least for Felix Kjellberg, pace, certain promotional moves couldn’t help but stir controversy. One of the latest ones was Pewds’ diss video which contained a “you Indian you lose” line, which many users, despite a storm of online criticism, remarked was like a spinoff of the YouTuber’s “You laugh you lose” challenge videos.
Since T-Series is an Indian label, Pewds decided to impromptu put respective video titles and some other meme references related to India into the footage, which crowds of Indians instantly believed to be racist and humiliating. T-Series head, Bhushan Kumar, however, issued no comment on the matter, but days later, came up with an address on Twitter, emotionally calling on people to backdoor their way into the YouTube contest and give their votes to the Bollywood music studio.
The sub gap continues to fluctuate, meanwhile, with PewDiePie’s devotees currently amounting to 88,769,534 people, whereas his rival has racked up 88,804,751 fans to date. Despite certain scepticism over the mater, Pewds’ fans are hoping for the better, advocating for a creative individual rather than a profit-seeking company to be crowned as the most-subscribed vlogger and hence, YouTube’s face.
