*** EDITOR'S NOTE: Because of the sensitivity and controversy surrounding the featured subject, comments have been turned off. This post also contains potential spoilers for our overseas readers… please read with caution. ***
Along with the couple who made
Dr. Phil earlier this month in Angela Babicz & Nelson Thomas, we accidentally forgot about that other romantic success story from
Ex On The Beach: the newly minted "MTV King" (and Nelson's fellow Young Buck)
Cory Wharton and fellow season 1 single (and Angela's enemies in that house)
Taylor Selfridge. It was last year before season 2 that we looked at when
she appeared in a video of a winter pool party full of Icy Hot at the house of the one & only
Jake Paul, who had quite a summer with his girl
Tana Mongeau, including the wedding that made news for whether it made the YouTube's ultimate power couple an actual married couple or not... and for which an MTV YouTube series followed her from turning legal age right to the altar.
Jake is one half of the most infamous set of brothers YouTube has ever produced, and it's his older brother
Logan Paul who no doubt has the biggest notoriety. Like his brother, Logan began his journey to recognition in the social universe on a platform that's not with us anymore in Vine, and by the time of his 19th birthday he had already amassed over 3 million followers across all of social media. His videos on Vine and Facebook would help to garner Logan over 300 million views and plenty of advertising revenue in the six figures to go into the bank.
Soon, YouTube would join in the party, with a channel dedicated to daily vlogs from Logan that would have nearly 16 million subscribers. Cameos on actual TV series would soon follow: Law & Order: SVU, playing himself on Freeform's Stichers, a YouTube Red movie, and commercials for Pepsi, Hanes, HBO and Comcast. He also got write screenplay for two adult films, and trained with the prestigious entertainment troupes, Upright Citizens Brigade and The Groundlings. And Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson invited him to be part of YouTube content surrounding the Baywatch movie.
But all of this success would soon take a Humpty Dumpty-like fall... a Paul single that sampled a 2008 hit, "Handlebars" from Flobots, got a shellacking from the public and its original artists for its lyrics of sexual objectification of women and led to it eventually being deleted. And earlier this year, he took a side in the theory that the earth is flat, and made a "mockumentary" on the subject. But these were minor items compared to what is the lowest point of his career, and the always present bug of controversy that seems to follow him and Jake everywhere they go nowadays.
Of course, everyone by now knows the one very reason why Logan has amassed an immense hatred towards him from the social verse, and it can be attributed to one video he posted on New Year's Eve 2017. Paul and his friends took a trip to Japan to help ring in 2018 in the Far East, and where he climbed to a moving forklift in a fish market, stripped his clothes off in a crowded street, and threw a Pokemon Ball to a Tokyo policeman.
When they were planning to camp in the woods at the base of Mount Fuji outside Tokyo, their trip through the forest saw his cameras catch the corpse of a recently deceased man who committed suicide in Aokigahara, and they immediately notified authorities and rerouted their plans. Once their vlog of this moment garnered over 6 million views, it immediately caught fire and immense criticism from around the spectrum, including fellow YouTubers condemning him for being insensitive to victims of suicide and even fueling many to write petitions to have his YouTube channel suspended.
The result of a video gone bad was immense: it being immediately taken down, Paul writing a public apology that wasn't enough for most of the public to accept, and YouTube downscaling his status with the platform when ads were pulled from his videos, films he had planned with the company getting shelved, and a temporary hiatus from social media. He had learned his lesson the hard way, and an eventual response vlog of over 30 million views that saw looked into the serious topic of suicide prevention that is certainly no laughing matter.
This year alone, more controversy for Logan: on his podcast ImPaulsive, his joke of planning to "go gay for just one month" saw the gay & lesbian community go for his head. One of the strongest advocates of the LGBTQ+ community, GLAAD, led the criticism for him, and once again Paul had to learn the hard way that hurting people in a playful way could have big consequences... eventually, he not only apologized for his poor choice of words and had a gay activist on his podcast.
Last week, Logan was in east London for the UK stop of a cross-Atlantic press tour to promote his rematch in the boxing ring with British YouTuber
KSI, aka Olajide "JJ" Olatunji, a year after they first brought their rivalry into one where they settled it in the sweet science. After the ladder won a fight on Super Bowl LII weekend to gain YouTube's Boxing Championship belt, he sent out a formal challenge to a two-fight series against Logan as did his brother Deji (ComedyShortsGamer) who sent a similar one to the younger Paul.
Jake scored a 5th round TKO over Deji, which led him to call out Chris Brown and inspired the online competition where controversial YouTuber PewDiePie and Indian record label T-Series fought not in the ring, but online to see who would become the first to get to 100 million YouTube followers which the ladder won. But for the main event, the fight between Logan and KSI ended in a majority draw decision... and all eyes are set on their rematch on November 9th in Los Angeles, which also includes pro boxers Devin Haney and Billy Joe Saunders as part of the undercard.
Whenever either of the Paul brothers say or do something out of the ordinary, social media always take notice just as quick as a timeline refresh. It was after Logan took a verbal rabbit punch at KSI in mentioning rumors that his counterpart forced several girls to get abortions after he had sex with them at the meeting with the British press that the Internet came together once again to condemn and cancel him altogether… not that they did after what happened over a year ago. Logan again went to his podcast to clear the air, making mention of Alabama's recent proposed abortion ban.
Prior to that presser, also last weekend in London the cast of
The Challenge: War of the Worlds 2 got together to tape the end-of-season reunion which should appear air around the holidays back home in the U.S. As Mike The Miz tends to his wrestling career and a new life as a dad, co-hosting the closing ceremonies of this season are Champs vs. Stars alum Justina Valentine and -- taking LoLo Jones' role of athlete co-host -- NBA star Nick "Swaggy P" Young, whom my YouTube channel exclusively caught him munching on some chips at the Warriors 2018 victory parade. And if a
fight caught on camera between two of the challengers the night before their reunion is a sign, then the final act of 2019 in
The Challenge should be juicy.
By the oddest of coincidences, three notable people shared the same flight from London to Los Angeles, which takes a half day's duration of some 12 hours in duration, but there's also factoring in the 8-hour time difference between the west coast of the U.S. and Britain (which is where time is measured for the entire world). One of them is Logan after his press tour... the other two are the resident bromance of
The Challenge's British invasion:
Rogan O'Connor and
Joss Mooney. As we in America have just seen episode 7 of this season air (and as those in the U.K. are just now getting to watch WOTW2 on a few weeks' delay), we've just seen Joss win in elimination, and Rogan play it safe to avoid competing against his closest ally in the house... as well as him continuing to see Geordie Shore's Australian import Dee Nguyen.
When this
Dreamboy saw that the older half of the Paul brothers was on the same flight as him and Joss, Rogan captioned on Twitter @Rogan_OConnor and Instagram @RogueSnaps,
"Rogues & Logues 😛👊🏽
#WarReady #LondonToLA @LoganPaul." Could we be having a collaboration between Team Jogan and Team 10 in the future? Don't bet against it...
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