A meme related to Youtuber PewDiePie has invaded Indonesia with the hacking of a random gas station in East Java, likely to be the work of super devoted fans of the vlogger in the country.
Two videos were recently posted on Youtube showing the price sign at a Pertamina gas station in the regency of Tulungagung appearing to show a running text that reads “-Synchr0n1z3d Subscribe to Pewdiepie” instead of listing fuel prices.
PewDiePie is the alias of Felix Kjellberg, a 29-year-old popular gaming Youtuber from Sweden. He has been the platform’s most subscribed content creator since 2013 and currently has more than 77 million subscribers.
“Subscribe to PewDiePie” has become a meme since last month, when hackers who claim to be fans of the Youtuber claimed they hacked around 50,000 printers around the world to print posters bearing the message. While there was no way of knowing the exact number of printers that were hacked, people around the world, such as from the UK, US, Spain, Chile, Argentina, and Australia reported that their printers churned out pro-PewDiePie messages.
The meme is likely a retaliation by PewDiePie’s legion of devoted fans against Youtube for the platform’s failure to include the Swede in the annual “Youtube Rewind” year-in-review video for two years running, as well as to keep PewDiePie on top of the most subscribers list on Youtube with Indian Youtube channel T-Series fast closing in.
PewDiePie supporters have warned of more possible hackings featuring the meme, and the gas station hacking in East Java is likely to be one realization of that threat, if not the work of some internet trolls with nothing better to do. It’s not yet known if the price sign has been fixed as of today, and there have been no reports of the authorities potentially investigating the hacking.
Does PewDiePie deserve more subscribers anyway? Youtube’s exclusion of PewDiePie from Rewind is probably an implication from his increasingly questionable views over the past few years. For one, he recently said he “really enjoyed” a video on an anti-Semitic channel, which includes racial slurs and white supremacist messages.
He also lost partnerships with Disney and Youtube last year for showing Nazi imagery in his videos, including one that featured a sign that read “Death to all Jews”, which he tried to pass off as satire but his critics described as an attempt at mainstreaming the alt-right. ;
We hope that whoever was behind the gas station hacking was aware of PewDiePie’s controversies. If we’ve learned anything recently, it’s that many Youtube personalities don’t exactly make the best heroes, let alone be people to hack gas stations for.
