KSI leaves social media after using racist language in Sidemen video

The YouTuber has apologised for his language

The popular YouTuber shot to fame in the early 2010s through his gaming videos on the platform, before going on to form The Sidemen, a group of other YouTubers.

Together, they regularly make videos featuring challenges, sketches and their versions of gameshows, often alongside other content creators and online personalities.

In their most recent video, the group took on a 'Countdown challenge', and just like in the television show they had to create the longest word from a set of nine letters.

In a team with the nickname 'N*****'', KSI said he was struggling to find an answer, before revealing his answer was a racial slur.

He said: "We need points and I don't mean this maliciously, but the word is P***."

This was followed by raucous laughter from his fellow YouTubers like Chunkz and Yung Filly, with KSI then saying he was "sorry" for resorting to the word.

But the video was met with a huge backlash online, including from comedian Guz Khan, who is of Pakistani Punjabi descent.

KSI has since issued a grovelling apology, and announced he would be taking a break from social media as a result.

He tweeted: "I wanna apologise for saying a racial slur in a recent Sidemen video. There’s no excuse, no matter the circumstances, I shouldn’t have said it and I’m sorry.

"I’ve always said to my audience that they shouldn’t worship me or put me on a pedestal because I’m human. Im not perfect, I’m gonna mess up in life, and lately I’ve been messing up a lot.

"So I’ve decided I’m gonna just take a break from social media for a while."

Along with criticising KSI, some called out the other stars in the video for their laughter.

The video in question appears to have been deleted from The Sidemen's YouTube account, which has over 18m subscribers.

KSI himself has 16.2m subscribers on the platform.

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