Who's Logan Paul? Who gives a shit
A friend of mine mentioned the Logan Paul Situation, which made me realize I have more thoughts on the subject than I realized. I didn't know who Logan Paul was until he blew up over his latest controversy, and I've been avoiding the subject because of its obvious stupidity. But I think this situation illustrates some interesting powers at play in our lives today, and I want to take this opportunity to write about them!
Before I continue, if you'd like to know more about the situation, I'd recommend checking out this summary by @adnanshaikh on Steemit, this response by @debilog on Steemit, and this masterful video by @wetheunicorns on Twitter.
Long story short, Logan Paul is a YouTuber/Vlogger who took his schtick Too Far and is getting his ass kicked by public opinion.
YouTube & Vlogging Matter... A Lot
One of the reasons this story got so big is that a lot of people don't seem to realize how popular and important YouTube and its creators are. One way to size this up is by looking at the numbers.
Logan, for example, had over 15 million subscribers on YouTube, which is a really big number, but doesn't put him in the top 10 (PewDiePie, who you may remember from his controversy, has over 50M).
And believe it or not, it was actually Tony Lamination who put this into perspective for me-- she gets like 65M views a video, versus the leading cable news station's measly 2M or so. That's a huge difference!
So clearly numbers are part of the story, but also think about what these numbers mean: how can tens of millions of people actively follow someone like Logan Paul, and yet so many people NOT know who he is? Going by the numbers, almost 1 out of every 6 people in this country follow him!
from a parody of youtube culture
The answer? It's all in the demographics. The average age of all the people (like me) who have been catching up on who Logan Paul is and why we should care is clearly older than the average age of the people who follow him.
So basically we have all these people like Logan Paul (who isn't even at the front of the pack!) making all this money from making content for millions of young folks on the internet. At the same time, we have millions of old people who don't have a clue about how big this community is, what sorts of people are in it, what is and is not popular, and why any of it matters.
The Culture Industry Has Changed
The immense separation between the younger folks on YouTube and the older folks who don't get it is one of my most eye-opening takeaways from this whole situation. Personally, YouTube's long been one of my main haunts on the web, and I guess I took for granted how many people there are who still don't know what it's all about.
Think about it: could Logan Paul have "made it" a generation ago? Of course his content isn't anything remarkably original-- I'd add it to the long line of ignorant physical and countercultural comedy descended from the likes of Bam Margera and Jackass-- but think what it took for THEM to "make it!" They had to be famous from skating and music and other projects BEFORE they landed their reality shows and TV spots.
Now that (just about) everyone has an HD video camera in their phone and connection to broadband and a platform like YouTube, they can skip all that career-making and contract-signing bullshit and get straight to creating content and building their brands!
This decentralization of media and culture is both a blessing and a curse. I think it's great that almost anyone with a camera and a personality can get big these days, but at the same time, what about all the people whose livelihoods depended on the way the Culture Industry USED to work?
For example, if I used to run a camera for Jackass to pay my bills, what do I do now? Try to land a gig running camera for Logan Paul? Or do I try to become a Logan Paul myself? And what are my odds of making it-- how many other millions of d-list YouTubers would I have to beat out for my chance at the top? And how would I pay my bills in the meantime?
I really think that Sole captures it perfectly in My Brand.
here it is live if you have to have video with your music
When Everyone's #Winning, Who Gets Hurt?
People have been quick to point out that this isn't the first time Logan Paul has been an asshole, and I'm not surprised. I've heard lots of people making the case that YouTube should crack down on assholes like Logan, but just look how well that's working for Twitter when it comes to Trump, or Facebook when it comes to Fake News!
At the end of the day, these are all non-trivial problems to solve, and the incentive to solve them is just not there. If I'm running Twitter or Facebook and people are spending time on my platform and driving ad revenues and making free content for me, why the FUCK would I rock the boat?! Sure, people are pissed at me, but we all know that hate clicks are just as valuable as regular clicks, if not more valuable!
One obvious victim in the Logan situation is the victim of suicide who was exploited in Logan's video, as well as the family of the victim and the larger communities that Logan exploited as well. I think one of the reasons Logan caught shit THIS time, rather than any of the other times, is because he was in someone else's country, fucking with someone else's culture, and although the country and the world are trying really hard to forget why we have such a rich history of fighting racism, there are still certain things that you just don't do.
And Logan did a lot of those things at the same damn time. Because that's what he does! He's a clown for the views, and in a certain sense, we're complicit for egging him on just as much as YouTube is complicit for hosting his content. Rumor has it his subscribers INCREASED in the wake of his controversy, which is exactly what I'm talking about-- and another rumor has it that he made money off his apology videos! Placing the blame solely on YouTube erases the fact that we're the ones googling his name and watching his shit; we're the ones making an audience for him, and we're the ones lining his pockets as he makes a fool of himself.
We're to blame, too. But we can also do something about it. We can unsubscribe from Logan's channel, we can ignore other assholes who continue to do similar stupid shit, and we can go out into the world and make a positive difference, whether by punching Nazis or talking to our neighbors or petting our cats-- just about ANYTHING would be more socially beneficent than watching Logan Paul and his ilk.