Chances are, you know Logan Paul’s name but not for his “hilarious” vlogs and “fantastic” personality. If you were on social media at all in late December and early January, you at the very least caught wind of his controversial vlog in the Aokigahara forest, but here’s a refresher: Logan Paul found a hanged dead body, filmed his reaction to it, and posted the video for his (mainly) tween audience to see. This resulted in major backlash not only for the creator but for the platform that allowed his video to be on the trending page. To compensate, YouTube stripped Paul of his YouTube Red series.
Following these events, it seemed that Logan Paul may have actually regretted his choice. His first written apology was sloppy, but his video seemed sincere. During a three-week video hiatus, he announced that he planned to donate one million dollars to an organization promoting suicide awareness, as well as to create a series interviewing those that had attempted suicide to show that it gets better. This was a publicity stunt, absolutely, but he didn’t have to follow through with this. If he didn’t feel remorse for the pain he had caused, he at least felt remorse over the fact that he had done something wrong, and he seemed to be willing to make things right.
Flash forward to the week of February 5 for his triumphant return to YouTube, and it appears he hasn’t learned a darn thing.
Courtesy of: Babe
In his first week of videos, his audience was met with Paul boasting that even in his absence (in which he should have been reflecting on a change in attitude), he had gained one million subscribers. In another video, he put on a fake beard, joked about looking like a pedophile, pretended to have a seizure, then ran around and asked college-aged kids their opinion on himself (in disguise, of course). All of this is childish and ignorant, but it isn’t even why this article is being written.
By the end of the week, Logan Paul expressed to us just how little he cares about other living things. One of his koi fish had gotten sick, and instead of seeking assistance from a vet, letting it heal on its own or allowing it to die peacefully, Paul decided it would be a good idea to take the fish out of the water. He then proceeded to give the fish CPR on his deck, jeering the entire time. But he didn’t stop there. Paul somehow decided it would then be a good idea to swish the fish around the surface of the water, apparently with the intention of “[getting] oxygen circulating through its lungs.”
But that’s not all, folks. In the same video, Paul addressed that he has a bit of a rat problem. He then took the camera outside to reveal to us a dead rat. He claimed that no rat can come into his home without being punished, tased the dead animal and then raised it from the ground with the electric current still shocking the animal.
PETA was almost immediately on Logan Paul’s tail. One of the organization’s Instagram posts took Logan Paul’s own phrases and said, “TRUE mavericks don’t find humor in suffering & death. It’s time to stop.” From there, the story blew up. Countless people began denouncing Paul, saying that his time should have ended back with the suicide forest incident and that he should be “canceled.”
YouTube responded far more swiftly to this scandal than the last. The video was taken down and in a tweet, YouTube announced that it had temporarily suspended Paul’s videos from ads (though by the time this article is posted, they may be back up). While this action was certainly appreciated, many still felt it wasn’t enough and demanded that his channel be deleted.
But YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki feels Paul doesn’t deserve that just yet. YouTube has a “three strikes, you’re out” rule, and Logan Paul has not yet met those three strikes. A YouTube spokesperson said, “We believe he has exhibited a pattern of behavior in his videos that makes his channel not only unsuitable for advertisers but also potentially damaging to the broader creator community,” and yet his channel remains. Apparently, displaying a dead body, mocking an entire culture and abusing animals are not damaging enough. So, what will be the breaking point?
Up until these past few months, Logan Paul has been very advertiser-friendly. YouTube was raking in a lot of money from Logan Paul videos. We like to think that YouTube is a fun site run by people like you and me, but it hasn’t been that way for close to a decade. YouTube is a multimillion-dollar corporation. It may have certain ethical standards, but first and foremost, YouTube is in it for the money. If Paul was a smaller creator, his channel would be gone at the drop of a hat. But Logan Paul is not losing momentum. Scandals have brought him more subscribers, more ad revenue and more merch revenue. As long as the benefits outweigh the costs, YouTube will continue to string him along.
If Logan Paul does another atrocious act in the next month, perhaps we’ll see his channel go. If not, he will be here to stay. Why? The news is fleeting. We are hit with so much information on a daily basis that we filter out the old for the new. No one will care what Logan Paul did in a couple months. There may be some soft, grudging remarks about how he did something wrong that one time, in the grand scheme of things it won’t matter. His “Logang” is loyal. If they stuck with him back in December, they will stick with him until the end. He’ll continue to make videos and boast about his house, his car, his money and his life until YouTube does something about it.