Popular variety YouTuber ‘Jschlatt’ has changed the thumbnail for his most recent video following intense criticism over the image, which many viewers called out as racist.
Jschlatt is a fairly prominent YouTuber, best known for his comedic gaming content and interactions with other content creators in such games as Among Us, Minecraft and various Jackbox titles.
One such Jackbox game, called ‘Survive the Internet,’ aims for players’ to take their teammates’ words and “twist” them after being given a certain prompt — leading to what Jschlatt called ‘the most absurd things possible.’
The YouTuber’s most recent upload of this Jackbox title has been met with intense criticism, however, due to the thumbnail he originally used for the video, which was uploaded on March 21, 2021.
The thumbnail included a picture of a shocked Jschlatt next to a crude drawing of a human face, which was mostly blacked-out with dark-colored ink, with the word “Blackface” written in all caps on top of it.
This particular image did not go over well with viewers, who were quick to call him out for what they felt was a racist caricature that made light of a serious issue of inequality.
“Saying that this is just a joke literally proves the point that he’s racist,” one critic tweeted of the matter. “Blackface was literally made to make fun of black people!”
antiblackness racism jschlatt //saying that this is just a joke literally proves the point that he’s racist….blackface was literally made to make fun of black people! pic.twitter.com/YRqrbJQCoq
— 🎸 (@monomaniiia) March 21, 2021
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“Literally it’s so hurtful, that anytime we even try to call out this stuff, they try to make it out as if we’re overreacting or that we’re crazy for calling it racist, which it is!” another said.
Literally it’s so hurtful that anytime we even try to call out this stuff they try to make it out as if we’re overreacting or that we’re crazy for calling it racist, which it is!
— Kaiyoblu loves rui 💖💖 (@Lilbottlecap1) March 21, 2021
However, others were quick to note that Jschlatt wasn’t the one who drew the caricature during the video; instead, it seems that it was drawn by fellow ‘faceless’ YouTuber Swaggersouls, who brought up the topic during a portion of the video in response to a prompt that read, “I’m always craving saying slurs.”
(Topic begins at 4:46)
This didn’t stop Jschlatt from receiving criticism for using the picture in his thumbnail, prompting him to change the initial image to something far less offensive — the Twitter logo, with the words “Dumb Bird” over the top.
Still, others are not happy with this particular move, with commenters decrying the thumbnail change as “passive-aggressive,” as Jschlatt has not officially responded to the controversy at the time of writing.
