This is to say that I had never watched a Logan Paul video, though I was aware he existed as I follow a lot of Gay Twitter and they keep me abreast of such goings-on, and was largely going to avoid the conversation about his despicable video where he went to Aokigahara (the famed Suicide Forest), discovered an actual dead body, and instead of calling the authorities decided instead to use the footage for a YouTube video. I really don't need to see the video (though I did catch clips of it in a news reel), as it feels like common sense that you don't exploit someone's painful depression and final moments to get clicks onto your YouTube channel; it in fact feels like the exact opposite of common sense. Logan Paul, if you need a wakeup call that your life is a mess, when you have Rosanna Pansino of all people, literally the sweetest human being this side of Lin-Manuel Miranda, going after you relentlessly on Twitter you are doing something wrong. Seriously-I've been following Ro on social media for years, and I've never heard her say anything bad about anyone (her mascot is a smiling cookie!), but she's posted about you at least four times that I've caught. You have crossed the line into terrible person.
So, like I said, I wasn't going to say anything about Logan Paul, as it felt like most people had had their say and I agreed with it, and why bring attention to such a heinous act (and judging by some of the videos he and his brother have as their screen-grabbed titles, this is not an isolated incident). But then I started to feel like an angle of this story was being under-exposed, and that was the power of simply boycotting a show or channel, not just saying you're going to do it, but actually quitting it and not looking back, because consistency when it comes to social media is truly a lost art.
Me talking about Logan Paul and saying I'm going to stop watching his videos is a moot point-I don't watch them now, and I never will. But I've noticed through the years that people's calls for improvement in entertainment in some aspect, or disparaging a person's career but then continuing to follow it seems to be a hollower and hollower threat. Public behavior in an entertainment field is not measured by the value of your love/hate ratio on Twitter. It's valued by your worth to advertisers, which unless you reach a near-criminal level like Bill O'Reilly (which admittedly Paul may soon be at), is almost entirely driven by eyeballs. So if you want to stop someone like Logan Paul, or someone whose artistic achievements you think are not worthwhile, you have to be willing to follow through and actually walk the walk.
This doesn't just have to be after something truly heinous like Logan Paul. I can off-the-top-of-my-head think of several situations where I realized an entertainment culture was no longer providing value to my life or really to the world, and then simply just cut it out of my life completely. The first would be YouTube culture. For years I would watch channels like Marcus Butler or Zoella, thinking "this is cool"-a cheeky insight into a group of friends both individually and collectively. It felt like harmless fun, and generally I liked some of the accent challenges and Q&A aspects of this culture. But it continually became overtly dramatic (addressing even the most minor of slights or controversies with heavy-handed videos), uninspired (whereas it felt like previously they'd gone after unique spins on their channels, after a while it was just them doing Q&A's complaining about not getting enough time to do the videos they wanted to do), and perhaps most glaringly, insanely commercial. I'm not aware of the monetary ramifications of being a fledgling YouTube star (I'm sure they're not the greatest), but turning virtually every video into a commercial for a different product you clearly don't use is a great way to turn off your audience. I think the straw that broke the camel's back, though, was when Colleen Ballinger and Joshua Evans got a divorce mere months after making a fortune on their YouTube channel chronicling their engagement and marriage. It felt phony and false, like they were the sort of people who would treat real life like a soap opera, and I don't condone that. I'm not one of the impressionable young fans who watch this and think this is how you're supposed to behave as an adult, but millions of people are, and I said "I'm done, this is toxic," and then unsubscribed to virtually every channel that didn't have a specific purpose (like baking, fitness, or ASMR), or weren't the Holy Trinity or the Vlogbrothers (all of whom have stayed pretty grounded through the years, and in the case of the latter, is how I've ended my Tuesdays and Fridays for so long I don't know that I would be able to stop even on principle).
And unlike other people who I notice claim they're "never watching again" but then commenting on it again in a few weeks later, I just never looked back. I've never watched any of those channels since. In fact today is the first day in years I've checked to see if some of them still exist (and they do, in many cases doing the same tired format they did years ago). And this is the point here-you have to be willing to actually follow-through when you say you're not going to see something of a person whose career choices you don't like or whose artistic choices you don't support. I did the same thing 15 years ago when I decided that reality television was a cesspool. Since that time, I have watched reality television only twice (not counting the occasional The Voice video on YouTube, as those auditions are a rabbit hole); one was Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List (which, as it's Griffin who is a comedian and an actress, was more a weekly standup act than a reality show) and Food Network Star this last year, a show I kind of liked but again because I like cooking TV shows & because it avoids the pitfalls of trying to be reality when it's really not. I've never watched The Bachelor, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, or any Real Housewives installment. I sometimes get side-eye over this, but I don't see the point. I don't mind that other people do (I have a lot of friends who do), but I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't indulge in such things because it took away scripted programming hours and because what little shows I did see, I thought felt kind of stupid. There are way too many movies, books, good TV shows, and life experiences to be had to be sacrificing hours upon hours devoted to something that's simply a guilty pleasure. And if all you're watching is trash TV and guilty pleasures, you're neglecting yourself of art or substantive entertainment. Stop watching Logan Paul, and take a critical look at what's actually on your subscription feeds or DVR lists or Netflix queue, and maybe add something that could challenge you a little bit as a replacement. Some may complain that at 22 Logan Paul is too young to have his career in YouTube be over, but perhaps a better question is-has he done anything of value to warrant that career to begin with? I suspect the answer should be obvious to anyone who's seen more than one prank video, and perhaps we should mourn less Logan Paul and instead mourn the actually talented young performers whose place in our entertainment world of whom he's taken the place.
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