After taking a few weeks off for quiet contemplation and remorseful introspection (HA! Can you IMAGINE?), YouTube sensation and global pariah Logan Paul returned to vlogging this week with a 12-minute video that opened with him sitting on a beach, sporting a giant beard – à la Castaway – and saying:
“I’m not disgraced!… What other YouTuber you know can take a three-week break and still get a million subscribers?”
Off to a great start. He then gave a hard push to buy his merch and went on an extended rant about how the media twists things.
Over on Twitter, he then made a now-deleted joke saying he’d eat a Tide Pod for every retweet from his 4.2 million followers. Greeeeeeeeaaaaat.
He followed that up with this (via The Verge):
In a video posted on February 5th, Paul discovers that one of his koi fish is sick. He pulls the gasping animal out of the water, pretends to give it CPR-style chest-pumps, then swishes it around in the water like a toy boat to “get oxygen circulating through his lungs.” Later, he tasers [what he refers to as] a dead rat. “No rat comes into my house without getting tased,” he says, while his on-screen companions scream. In another video, Paul puts on a different fake beard, makes jokes about looking like a pedophile, and briefly pretends to have a seizure, before running around and asking college kids for their opinions on Logan Paul.
Again, this is week one of his return.
He hasn’t learned a damn thing.
Thankfully, YouTube is paying attention.
According to The Verge:
YouTube ”temporarily” suspended ads on his channel. The company’s decision reflects its promise to investigate further consequences for Paul specifically, as well as policies that would punish creators who do harm to the YouTube community. In a statement to The Verge, a spokesperson said the decision was not made lightly: “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.”
USA Today notes that:
Paul, who earned an estimated $12.5 million last year, according to Forbes, has been in the crosshairs of YouTube this year, though it’s hardly dented his popularity among his largely teen and kid fan base.
YouTube responded to the public backlash by taking Paul out of its preferred program, which gives higher ad revenues to video creators with large followings, and canceled plans to make a movie with Paul for its premium YouTube Red service.
Along with selling “merchandise” and other deals, YouTube is where Paul makes money. His channel has 16 million subscribers and over 3 billion views for his videos. Unlike other social networks that bring exposure to young people looking to make a name for themselves, like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube rewards them with financial incentives by sharing ad revenues.
(Photos: Pacific Coast News)
