"The entire premise of this is ridiculous" - Asmongold provides his take on Final Fantasy XIV being accused of "cultural appropriation"

On February 18, 2023, Twitch star Zack "Asmongold" took to his alternate channel, Zackrawrr, to play Lost Ark and Hi-Fi RUSH. Before playing these games, he spent a few hours reacting to popular internet posts.

Asmongold was browsing through his official subreddit when he came across a post in which a non-governmental organization accused Square Enix and Final Fantasy XIV of "cultural appropriation." The former "demanded" that the latter remove an in-game costume set called the "Far Northern Attire."

Upon seeing this, the Austin, Texas-based content creator provided his take on the matter, claiming that cultural appropriation is "politically correct segregation." He then opined:

"Yeah, this is just annoying and stupid. Cultural appropriation is just politically correct segregation. It's f***king annoying. It's obnoxious and I don't like it. The entire premise of this is ridiculous. There's nothing that is making fun of this at all!"

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Asmongold provides his opinion about an NGO accusing Square Enix and Final Fantasy XIV of "cultural appropriation"

During his February 18 broadcast, Asmongold came across a post by Redditor u/ConsiderationTotal57 who shared a tweet by an NGO, demanding Square Enix to "immediately remove" an item set from Final Fantasy XIV.

The streamer read it out loud to his viewers, saying:

"'Non-governmental organization accuses Square Enix of cultural appropriation, demands cash shop outfits to be removed from the shop.'"

Shortly after, Zack logged onto the social media platform to find the relevant tweet and continued to read the NGO's statement:

"'Square Enix, a multi-billion dollar company, making profit from selling Sámi cultural property, as a costume set in their popular MMO, Final Fantasy XIV.' 'The deliberate misappropriation of protected and protectable Sámi intangible cultural property...' Oh, so actually, they don't really own it. 'The approach is outdated.' Okay? 'Our concern was dismissed by Square Enix.' Based Square Enix. 'Square Enix sees the mining of indigenous cultures as 'legitimate.''"

Based on the tweet, the NGO demanded Square Enix to "stop infringing" on Sámi cultural property and remove the aforementioned item from the in-game shop. They also stated that they were "open to a dialog."

Timestamp: 00:45:50

Asmongold's initial reaction was to claim that the situation was "annoying and stupid." After suggesting that cultural appropriation is "politically correct segregation," the One True King (OTK) co-founder stated:

"You can't steal a culture. Everybody has access to these things. Like, if you want to dress up, using a Katana and you're from Germany, that's fine! This 'cultural appropriation,' what are you talking about? Shut up! 'It's not copyrighted.' Yeah, it's not. Nobody should take these people seriously at all! What a joke!"

The World of Warcraft gamer continued further, saying:

"Why does anybody care? So, okay, these people don't like it. Okay, well, everybody else thinks it's great. So shut up! What are we talking about here? Yeah, Square Enix just like, they complained and Square Enix is just like, 'Okay sure. All right, sure. Let's take your complaint and then you're going in the garbage. All right. Problem solved!'"

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Fans react to Asmongold's take

The YouTube comments section was bustling with fan reactions, as more than 1,560 community members weighed in on the streamer's take. Some of the most relevant fan reactions were along these lines:

Fans in the YouTube comments section reacting to the streamer's take (Image via Asmongold Clips/YouTube)

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Asmongold is a popular Twitch content creator who is best known for hosting MMORPG-focused livestreams and currently boasts 3,364,102 followers on his channel. He has, however, been broadcasting on his alternate channel. Readers who are interested to know why Asmongold is livestreaming on his alternate channel can do so by clicking here.