By: James Southworth
Before getting into this piece, I'm just going to say that there will probably not be another post in the vein of this one. I don't like making hit pieces on specific people. Now I don't mind when it comes to critiquing a person's content, because I do that in the same vein for movies and music. With YouTube creators, though, hit pieces are a bit more of a dangerous matter to go into. For certain creators, you have very rabid fan bases to deal with, while with others they might be genuinely good people but their content is just awful. For the Paul brothers, the former is very true of them- their extremely rabid prepubescent fan base is the YouTube equivalent of fan bases like those for Twenty One Pilots and Beyonce. But, I don't care. The anger I've built up for the garbage, and oftentimes morally wrong, content these two put up has reached a tipping point.
If you are not familiar with the YouTube creator scene, then you may not know who these two are. But there is a possibility, because they're reached a celebrity status outside of that sphere. Logan and Jake Paul are both vloggers who put out videos pretty much every day. The vlog throughout seemingly every day without ever putting the camera down. I will admit, both of them seem to know what they're doing business-wise. They know the exact amount of time they need to make their videos for, they've hired a team that does constant editing on them so as to make the videos feel quicker, and they both keep constantly energetic personalities. They also both INCESSANTLY promote their merchandise throughout their videos, both even making songs that are entirely dedicated to promoting their merch. These two have made their brand a walking advertisement, and it works. So many young kids have brought into their brand, and call themselves Jake Paulers or Logangsters (cringy, I know). Even though I don't like the way these two do their business, that is not really where my problem with them lies. My problem lies within their content and their disturbingly entitled personalities.
Let's start with Logan Paul, the older brother. He's practically the biggest YouTuber now- yes, I know that PewDiePie has way more subscribers than him, but Logan gets so many views and is still gaining subscribers at an incredibly quick rate. I know a lot of people have said that Logan is the smarter and wiser older brother to Jake (this was when Jake was under fire for a lot of different things), but I have never found that to be true. Logan is just as bad, and recently he's proved that he might be worse. He has done some scummy things in the past, such as faking that he's colorblind just to get views on this video where he claims that these glasses are helping him see color for the first time. I don't know whether that's the worst thing in the world, but something about it still rubs me the wrong way. What really sets him over the edge, though, was a recent video he made where he recorded a dead body in a Japanese suicide forest. I wish I was joking, but I'm not. Logan decided that it would make for a great video to go into this forest and go "ghost hunting". That's a good excuse, but it was clearly not his real purpose. Him and his team break the rules and go off the trail. They find a dead body hanging from a tree. Instead of being like any other sensible decent person and immediately putting the cameras down/calling the police, they proceed to record it. They blurred the body, but not very well, and they kept on recording it for a disturbing amount of time. Logan and his crew were all laughing. You could argue this was a coping mechanism, but Logan is all about making a performance out of all of his videos. It was no different for this one, and I was actually shaking with anger with all the horrific reactions he and his friends were having. Logan has since issues two apologies, but I just can't help but think one thing: what made him think this was a good idea in the first place? Oh I know: all he cares about are the views, and the controversy on this video has helped him rather than hurt him. YouTube didn't do anything about taking down the video, they clearly care about protecting their golden boy. It's just a sickening situation. Even more recently, a YouTube channel showed video clips that reveal how Logan has been disrespectful to Japanese culture as a whole.I just think he likes to do whatever he can to just to generate some sort of controversy. He makes himself look like an compassionless idiot. But he never gets in trouble for it, and he's manipulated his fan base so much that they don't at all see what's wrong with anything he does. I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say he has fans who will fight to the death to defend him. Logan Paul is manipulative and cruel, and I don't think he really cares. Don't support him.
Jake Paul, quite honestly, is just as bad as Logan. I don't think either one is worse than the other, as they both have some awful things under their belt. Whereas Logan's actions are a bigger in scale but more spread out, Jake's have come more in quick succession. One of the primarily most identifiable is when abuse allegations came out against him from his ex Alissa Violet. Jake did respond to these allegations and of course deny them, but it seemed like Alissa had a pretty concrete story to me. I'm not a big fan of her either, but there didn't seem to be any good reason for her to lie, as she is already well-known without Jake. If Jake did abuse her, then that already makes him just as bad as Logan. He also bullied these foreign twins in his team. I can totally believe that, as it seems very clear to me that Jake is just a bully in general. He likes to make scenes in public and disturb his neighbors from living in a peaceful, safe community. He's had to make at least two apology videos already for incidents he has done, and neither of them come across as incredibly sincere at all. Just today, there are videos of him dropping the n-bomb while he freestyle raps. Whatever the case, Jake produces just as bad content as Logan, and yet he too has a fanbase that will support him no matter what. He's convinced his fanbase that you should live this life where you constantly act like a rich entitled moron, and then you can become just like him. It's disheartening, and I don't most of his or Logan's fanbase have much self-awareness.
The bottom line is that these brothers are currently dominating the YouTube platform and turning it into a joke. All these two really do is make vlogs where they use other people as punchlines and are constantly interested in making themselves the main character. Only they are important, and nobody else's problems really matter. These two deserve all the backlash they are getting. While I don't hate them, I certainly don't like them either. It looks like we're gonna have to deal with these two for a while, and it's really quite disappointing to say that they will be dominating YouTube for a long time. They both have been without consequence from YouTube. This strikes me as ironic, as PewDiePie was thrown under the bus for a false Nazi narrative. I understand why advertisers would want to avoid that. He, too, mistakenly dropped the n-bomb, and that made him less advertiser friendly (which I understand why and agree with). Logan and Jake Paul have both done far worse in my opinion, as their actions have been at the expense of other people. These two need to be punished. That is why I'm writing this.
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