Pickup's reputation has never really been good... we did have The Game and the VH1 show that made it popular for awhile but it still didn't have a good reputation.
But let's just be real here... there ARE lots of super cringy, sleezy, weird ass dudes in the PUA space.
You can't deny that shit.
One of the reasons that I left the community back in 2007 was that guys from private forums (like the Mystery/LoveSystem's Lounge, or the PUA Lairs I was in) would go and find girls that I had slept with and tell them about LRs that I had written about them (it was normal to post photos back then), they would call up vendors that I had recommended and tell them fucked up things about me, they would go to social groups I was involved in and spread weird rumors about me... the community was a giant toxic shithole.
The PUA community always has had, still has, and probably will always have lots of weird ass fucking dudes in it (no offense if you're a weird ass dude, lol). It's literally designed for people who have no social skills to develop themselves and get better with women.
I'm in Ukraine at the moment and I see guys doing approaches on the main street over here just about every day... sometimes, I'll see 5+ different guys doing approaches on the street in a day. Almost all of them are foreign PUAs who came here to do daygame.
Ask Tony D... when he was here, we saw these guys groping this chick one time, trying to get a recording for their pickup video.
Most of the guys I see doing approaches out here are weird... haven't washed or shaved in what looks like forever, approaching every girl they see, acting overly "alpha" or whatever.
And that's normal because that's what most guys need to go through when they go from a basement dwelling virgin to a guy who can hook up with women on a consistent basis... lots of trial and error, changing what you're doing, what you're saying, how you look at yourself, etc.
This community is literally about fucking girls... and it's designed for guys who have problems getting laid. It's normal that there's going to be weird guys involved in it and a lot of weird shit happening with it and that weird shit is going to be exposed, caught on video, and shown to the world.
As far as Pewdiepie is concerned, he's just making videos. The guy literally makes a video a day... probably doesn't think much about them... just finds things that will get emotion, cause people to laugh, cringe, or whatever else and then does a video about it and then moves on to the next one.
As far as the guys in the videos, that sucks that the videos were used like they were but they were and they'll have to deal with the results that come from it. And hopefully they learned not to upload videos like that again in the future.