The cycle is complete: Logan Paul is back to being an insufferable shit on YouTube
Every year on Earth is a miracle. The days grow short in autumn, plants and animals retreating from the freeze of winter. The spring and summer bring renewed life, but only for a few short months before the process begins again. It’s routine, but wondrous—the circle of life played out in macro scale.
So, too, does the internet scandal follow a cycle. Take, for example, walking advertisement for the decline of America’s international reputation Logan Paul. Only two days into 2018, Paul became infamous for recording (and editing! and uploading!) footage of a suicide victim while traipsing through Japan like some towheaded embodiment of the very concept of total ignorance. Thus began a full-fledged scandal. YouTube’s fertile earth, for Paul, froze over. But, nothing is forever, and following a video that attempted to make amends for his complete dipshittery, Paul has emerged from hibernation, blinking slowly in the sunlight of a new season and running at full gallop from his shame cave back into old routines.
In a video titled “LOGAN PAUL IS BACK!” the ever-subtle vlogger is reintroduced to his public through a mock movie trailer, a deep-voiced narrator describing the “maverick”’s return over footage of a fake-bearded Paul climbing around a beach like Tom Hanks in Castaway. Somehow, it only gets worse from there.
Paul makes jokes about how many millions of subscribers he gained while away from YouTube, uses the narrator to undermine his apology video by describing how “he was seen swallowing his tears on social media like a little baby,” and generally heralds his return as a triumph over adversity rather than the reality of an inexplicable millionaire returning back to the stage he only left after metaphorically barfing all over it by spinning around in circles like an idiot child.
There are Tide Pod jokes, the word “epic,” lots and lots of merch shilling (to make up for the ad revenue he complains of losing) from in front of the 22-year-old’s pool and mansion, claims on how educated he’s become on suicide awareness, and, following a promise that he’s back for good, just a general dare to the viewer to cancel their internet plan forever.
Spring has come again and, as long as the merch crops grow well, Paul should enjoy a bountiful summer. But then again, internet scandals, like nature, move in seasons and Paul, already stumbling his way toward renewing the cycle, acknowledges he “went too hard in Japan” before suggesting that he and brother Jake go to North Korea, poke Kim Jong-Un “in his chubby little tummy,” and make him so happy he agrees to “disarm all of his nuclear warheads.”
“It’s time to light this bitch up again,” he yells soon after detailing this plan. God help us all, the cycle is starting up again, maybe for the last time.