After eleven days of deep contemplation and number crunching, the risk management team at Google declared YouTube entertainer Logan Paul to be in Coventry. This in response to the response to his YouTube video featuring a dead Japanese guy swinging dead from a tree as key prop in his latest video. It struck people as a bit insensitive, or it struck one lady as insensitive and nobody wanted to be left off the finger wagging bandwagon that is modern times, so they cried foul as well.
YouTube revoked Paul’s premiere status, meaning, his mug and inane videos for 12-year olds won’t be splattered continuously on the front page of YouTube. Additionally, he was pulled from a show YouTube was producing for their Red channel. This means the reported $17 million Paul earned in 2017 for bringing smiles to the faces of 15 million tweens around the world is about to be diminished considerably.
Google and YouTube don’t keep inventing algorithms and AI programs for fun and science. They figured out long ago that there’s cash in learning the soft spots of large domains of the public at large and herding them like so many cattle to advertiser-sponsored videos. They figured out how to spot trends and to push the living crap out of trending until it’s a phenomenon. If a kid in Kansas is doing well with his video gaming reviews for whatever reason, they migrate him to higher visibility and see if the trend continues. If so, they keep backing the lead horse. They earn the lion share of the advertiser revenue they share in smaller measure with the video producer. They could care less what the content is, only that it catches. Logan Paul was one of their babies that stuck and they backed him like crazy.
Now, they’re ditching him. Even after his pointless forced apology:
“Suicide is not a joke. Depression and mental illness are not a joke. We came here with an intent to focus on the haunted aspect of the forest. This obviously just became very real, and obviously a lot of people are going through a lot of shit in their lives.”
Back to the algorithms to find his replacement. Outside of some political leanings, Google and YouTube are agnostic to the types or quality of content that win. That explains the early success of Fred Figglehorn, or why a certain martial arts guy might be super promoted by YouTube, while ten guys far his superior are ignored. It further explains why they’ve sort of subtly allowed sexual content and pornography onto the site. And why they allow users to rebroadcast pirated videos across their network to the tune of billions of views. Sure they’re cracking down on that. They have policies. And they’ll get right on it, a week from Monday. After they’ve counted their ad dollars from the Mayweather-McGregor fight they don’t own.
Google isn’t an evil entity, it’s merely a hyper-aggressive money making machine without a conscience posing as a humanitarian. Like when a prostitute declares she’s a healer. Actually, that comparison is unfair to the prostitute. Every now and then Google leaves a rent open large enough to peer into their true selves and it’s always ugly. Not illegal, merely ugly. The Logan Paul matter is one of those honest viewing opportunities. If nothing else, this is a defeat for bleached blond people everywhere. Simply stop that. It’s why Japanese people keep hanging themselves.
