Logan Paul’s redemption arc is proceeding exactly as planned

At the onset of 2018, Logan Paul was, by his own admission, the most hated man in the world. After posting a video of a dead body found in Japan’s “suicide forest,” Aokigahara, the then-22-year-old vlogger suddenly became an infamous household name, sparking worldwide anger and criticism. Over the ensuing weeks, Paul would issue numerous apologies and promises to do better; he released a mini-documentary video in which he spoke with suicide prevention organizations and suicide attempt survivors. He went on Good Morning America to explain his “horrible lapse of judgment.”

Like any disgraced celebrity, Paul faded into the background for a very short time, reappearing in headlines occasionally for poor-taste stunts and beef with other YouTubers. In July, the vlogger announced that he was currently working on a documentary about “everything that’s happened this year, all the stuff that went down in January, where I was at in my life and kind of the psyche of what actually happened.” Later that month, he told YouTuber Casey Neistat that his upcoming fight with controversial UK YouTuber KSI was part of his overall plan to move forward.

“I think America, in general, they love redemption stories,” Paul told Neistat. “My life is now a story about someone who is winning. Someone who self-imploded and, like I said, was the architect of their own destruction. And struggle, vulnerability.” He’s correct: eight months later, thousands flocked to Manchester to watch Paul fight YouTuber KSI. Hundreds of thousands more tuned in online.

For Paul, the match wasn’t about the fight, but rather “being able to get hit in the face, whether they’re a result of your own actions or not.” (In this case, he readily admits, it is.) Throughout the Manchester match, whether it was Logan, Jake Paul, KSI, or Deji, there was a great deal of praise and respect heaped on those who managed to withstand a pummeling and stay on their feet. After Logan Paul’s fight ended, YouTube and match commentator True Geordie told him he’d “proven his heart” by getting the pudding knocked out of him.

KSI and Paul ended their match in a draw and the promise of a rematch, but win or lose, the fight was a brilliant step toward the Redemption of Logan Paul™. There is no clear “villain” in this scenario. KSI is hardly without controversy, thanks to scandals like a video from 2012’s Eurogamer Expo, wherein he harassed women on camera. The British YouTuber also chose to pull Paul’s girlfriend, actress Chloe Bennet, into focus by using her as a point of insult and objectification during fight press conferences; at the weigh-in the day before the match, KSI even showed up wearing a mask of Bennet’s face. The move gave Paul the moral high-ground he was seeking. To further prove his apparent growth, Paul deleted a video in which he raps about “riding your girl with no handlebars,” explaining afterward that it no longer represents him.

It’s easy to write Paul off as another careless creator, the worst example of vapid modern celebrity culture, but his actions triggered a tidal wave of consequences. It’s impossible to talk about YouTube in 2018 without examining the Aokigahara forest video. He wasn’t just a disgraced YouTuber; he was a catalyst for changes to the platform. How he’s able to recover from this black eye on his reputation, if at all, could speak to how future creators may dig themselves out of controversy.

Whether people tuned into the fight to support this so-called new Logan Paul or watch him get rocked in the face is irrelevant. It all adds up to press and profit. We may not have official numbers yet on how much money the fight made, but thousands attended the event live. Online, more than 800,000 people paid to watch it for $10 a stream — a respectable number, even with the million or so people who pirated the fight on Twitch. Logan sold merch for the fight, and, like his brother Jake, KSI, and Deji, Logan Paul also released a diss track ahead of the fight that’s since racked up more than 13 million views. Over the last 30 days, his subscriber count has also climbed by nearly 400,000, according to YouTube metric site SocialBlade. Data from YouTube SubscriberCounter shows much of that growth is pinned to the day of the fight.

In describing the documentary to Neistat, Paul explained his story with detachment. It’s about “the story of a young man from Ohio, a seemingly regular kid — being me of course — falling into the social media machine, building an audience, garnering false power through views which equates to money which equates to success,” Paul says. And then he loses it all overnight, to become “the most hated man in the world, in the snap of a finger.”

Paul certainly took a hit in the wake of the video, but did he really lose it all? His channel remains on YouTube. His merch still sells. His name has more recognition than ever before, and even when people apparently hate him, they’re still lining his pockets with cash to watch him in a tournament of pure machismo. It’s unlikely that Paul’s loudest critics were fans before his brush with controversy, and we know that millions have remained loyal to him through even the worst of his year. The question the documentary poses, Paul says, is how a person recovers from such a scandal. Specifically, “It possible for Logan Paul to make a comeback?” — once again phrasing it in a way that suggests an outsider contemplating someone else’s screw-ups. Months after Paul blew up his own life, he’s managed to fail up. Exploring that question through a documentary begins to feel redundant. We already know the answer.