Logan Paul and Donald Trump are both dumb just enough for mass appeal but smart enough to market effectively and this is the recipe for their unfathomable and unprecedented success.
Two Masters In Clout Points
We’re only 3 days in and everything's broken already. Iran’s uprising is being supported by people who claim to care about the people of Iran, but would just as easily carpet bomb the region, for safety. Trump is trying to rattle cyber sabers to ensure North Korea starts off the winter games with an artillery barrage, and Logan Paul - the designated dryboy influencer icon this world deserves- decided to make some sweet sweet profits off of, uh, someone who recently committed suicide...?
I’m not going to get too deep into this because what hasn’t been said about the story already, and Logan quickly released a statement which I’m told was an apology, but was actually instead, a new depth in epic self promotion that I didn’t think was possible outside of the Kardashians. Boy was I wrong.
So yeah Logan’s Twitter statement basically was everything short of: “Hey, go buy my merch if you think suicide is bad!” *dabs*
But it wasn’t enough to please the internet, so he then followed it up with a more heartfelt video.
“Is it too late now to say sorry?// cus I’m, getting more views with this apology... OoooOoh”
This heartfelt apology, in the most viral internet controversy fashion, racked up 24 million views (with reposts) in 24 hours!!! And it’s over, Logan’s good again, he was never bad to his preteen fans anyway but at least they’ll understand that suicide isn’t something to take lightly - for social clout, except these kiddies literally didn’t care to begin with. Some of them were talking about how honored the dude who took his life must’ve been to be in a Logan Paul video. So even though this poor soul who looked for a way out and drove himself to suicide could not escape the wrath of the Logan Paulers post mortem.
Here’s the sad truth. Logan Paul is both dumb enough to be super appealing to the masses, but also smart enough to market to them effectively - and this combination is absolutely why he's managed to achieve such insane, unprecedented success.
Sound like someone else you know?
Donald Trump and Logan Paul are both incredible self promoters who provide bottom-of-the-barrel entertainment that our late-stage capitalism brains can’t turn away from, and they get rewarded handsomely for it. Logan brings in $150,000K per Facebook post, and 80K per sponsored Instagram post. He recently bought a 6 million dollar mansion with his t-shirt money, and Donald, well that wetboy manbaby became the president. President deals bitch. President bad dick. And now Trump’s bringing us to the brink of nuclear holocaust with tweets to Kim Jong un that are basically the foreign policy equivalent of “My penis looks like an acorn and I’m incredibly frustrated by this reality.”
If someone told teenage me that this would be how international diplomacy is conducted in the future, I would’ve, first put the Britney Spears Toxic video on pause, and then I would’ve done anything I could to prevent it, like i’d call Trump Tower every day to tell Donald he has a great penis - or even travel back in time to ensure Jack never made the hellish platform, Twitter.
Because Trump’s tweets are dumb as hell but they drive the national discourse, and he’s absolutely aware of this fact, which is why - according to White House insider Maggie Haberman - Trump will purposefully stir shit up whenever he’s out of the headlines for a couple days. And his utter disregard for human decency is rewarded at every turn with clicks, retweets, followers, but most importantly - mainstream media headlines.
Which is exactly what Logan Paul did with his, “Oh shit dude, a suicide - *not clickbait*” video. Logan saw that a real human had taken his life only hours before, and thought only of the social clout he could gain from it. He didn’t turn off the camera and reflect, he just kept making goofy faces, then he went home and edited this video, showed his friends, thought about a sick title and thumbnail, dabbed a couple times and urged his followers to smash that “like” button, which they did, and the video picked up, like, 7 million views in less than a day before it was taken down.
Because that’s precisely what our society rewards - it’s that lizard brain, attention grabbing, bottom-of-the-barrel controversy that makes everyone bust out the Michael Jackson popcorn gif because, “We’re messy bitches who love drama.” And there’s absolutely no reason for someone with 15 million (mostly children) followers to think about accountability because he’s simply too big to fail.
Us, while the world burns.
We rewarded Logan Paul by covering him, which is precisely what he wanted. He was on CNN, for fuck sake. There literally is no such thing as bad press in the post Kardashian world. And since Logan makes most of his money from 13-year-olds armed with their mom’s credit cards, who also happen to think he’s a demigod, he’ll go leave this controversy largely unscathed, but with even more mainstream recognition. Maybe he’ll lose a Tide pod sponsorship, along the way but that’s about it.
And just like Loganpaulers, Trump has his own brand of MAGA chuds who aren’t 13 but have the working brain capacity of 13-year-olds but, like, way more racist.
Which is why Trump’s transparent attempts at grabbing our attention by the pussy has also been relentless, but ultimately successful. Trump can cripple the middle class, start multiple foreign crises and throw virtually anyone under the bus (even Steve Bannon) along the way, and won’t be punished by his base, who love him with the undying passion of a Logan Pauler.
What I’m trying to say is, this is a part of our society. We can’t look away, and we should except more Jake’s, Logan’s and “Cashmeousside girls” to be rewarded as they have been. It’s just the nature of man. We love garbage, and the meritocracy of the internet will gladly provide it for us.
But, let’s end this on a positive note. The internet is full of awful trash fires, but it’s also the reason why a 26-year-old dickhead like myself can command the attention of millions of young minds ready to be educated, and thirst trapped into resisting our proto-fascist administration. So I’m here to urge you, don’t single out the people who take advantage of this system, make the system better instead. Promote things that you like, tell your friends, throw watch parties, not just for my videos - but also other things that you find to be informative and entertaining.
I’ll start with some podcast recommendations of mine:
Chapo Trap House
My own podcast, Millennial Scum (If you can find it on Soundcloud, its only for the real ones)
New York Times - The Daily
NPR’s Up First
Crooked Media’s Pod Save America, Pod Save The World, and Love it Or Leave it.
There’s a serious wave of anti-intellectualism in our culture, and if we want to change that, we have to fight it together. And by dabbin’ on them haters.