On Reading The Ugly
Though Logan Paul is far from my favorite YouTuber, he does represent a particular genre of media that I have recently become fascinated by: problematic white men on YouTube. There is a generation of men not so different from me who remain isolated in digital worlds, similar to the young "redditors" Massanari notes have their desires reified while the platform continues to ignore and marginalize others (Massanari, 2). Instead of "geek-friendly spaces" in Reddit reinforcing "liminal and performative" shapes of white masculinity, we find the algorithm promoting videos based not only on internal merit but on controversial value (Massanari, 4). Controversial content has come to be associated with whiteness, continually highlighted by the commercial domination of YouTubers like Jake Paul, Logan Paul, and PewDiePie. It would seem to have skin like mine and to employ controversy on YouTube is a recipe for success, giving further credibility to Safiya Noble's formative work in Algorithms of Oppression. In her anthropological study of Yelp users of color, Noble writes that the design of the site "is taking on new dimensions of control and influence over [a Black shop-owner's] representation" (Noble, 179). The Google algorithms that drive traffic through Yelp are built on the same infrastructure as those employed by YouTube, giving us a rather bleak outlook; by including white voices only, there is by nature a bred exclusion (Jenkins, 119). If the algorithm is allowed to dictate the future of YouTube, content will grow more efficiently streamlined toward white masculinity.
Returning to the question at hand, why did I write about this topic? When I study and publish projects on Logan Paul or Donald Trump, is problematizing their voices worth the negative value of adding to their score within the algorithms? If my work becomes autoethnography and "ethnographic work requires not just a clear head but fire in the belly", then what use is a mind clouded by the smoke of a self-consuming inferno? (Boellstorff et al., 57).
Here is where Logan Paul, a man who takes pride in his semi-rural background just as I do, enters back into my life. By looking into the abyss of his content, I am certain that Paul's style has stared back into me. I have found myself occasionally chuckling at non-harmful jokes within Paul's content, and almost began to believe his narrative within certain videos. Complicate this with Paul's recent video addressing his own struggle with mental illness, and the figure of the man becomes sympathetic outside of his brand. Though I cannot abide by what he stands for or what he does, I can now understand that he is indeed a human and, if we met outside of a YouTube context, we might even have some things in common.
And yet, I cannot abide by Paul as he stands currently. The answer I have roughly decided on is that these projects are all I can do. As a self-identified white, normative man, I am the epitome of the hegemony my academic idols seek to deconstruct. I cannot say for sure that my reckless usage of hooks, a prominent feminist scholar, in "Punching the Other", concerning masculinity and race, is not problematic. I can only hope that in using
Principle of Care (129)
Subject position affects my ethnography (66)
There is a story I used to tell to people who asked me why I study post-colonial theory. Sitting in my dorm room sometime in early 2014, I looked over the possible books that I could use to entertain myself while I ate my turkey sandwich. Looking for something light, I found myself staring at one thin text titled Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Though I had not read this particular book for some years, I had always loved Hunter S. Thompson's bizarre Gonzo style. However, when I cracked it open this day, I found that some of the joy had left this novel. Instead, I was left wondering: why is the traveller so privileged? What about those who are not in this position, who are off the road? This question later became my senior thesis, and marked a critical point in my academic development of beginning to criticize the work that I love. Previously coming from a background of studying archaic English novels, I had restricted myself to criticizing books that were far out of the registry of popular culture that I did not particularly identify with. But one can only analyze so many cobwebs before one turns to the spider at hand.
Deconstructing my beloved texts came to represent an exorcism of colonial ghosts, a selfish endeavor to determine if I could possibly justify enjoying the myths I had formed my identity around while simultaneously eviscerating them. How exactly does a young white man go about "fixing" his own personal canon, full of men disillusioned young men like him? As I grew older, this question became a sort of twisted autoethnography. If "ethnographic work requires not just a clear head but fire in the belly", then I possessed a mind clouded by the smoke from an all-consuming inferno (Boellstorff et al., 57). Down went Norman Maclean, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Milius, Jack London, Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola; all found wanting.
In writing, I came to realize a truth: I do not claim to know
Simply put, I do not feel like criticizing that which is Other to me is the most productive use of my time. As an aspiring post-colonial scholar, I have pored over texts about race, gender, sexuality, and hegemony more than the average bear. And yet, as an active participant in my own normative identity, I cannot begin to understand an identity outside of my own. So where does the desire to destroy go? Not toward that which is different from me, but toward that which is the same.
And here is where Logan Paul enters the framework. Paul is a year and half younger than me, takes pride in his semi-rural background like I do, and believes just as strongly in the myth of redemptive violence.
have the unique ability to come at the hegemony from the inside
As someone who has gotten paid more for using my body than my mind
powered by perverse desire to see the classics shown most often in dorm-room posters
in my various subcultures. Wary of how "potentially risky research [can] expose an already vulnerable community", I made conscious choices to only strike
Should he?
There is a story I used to tell to people who asked me why I study post-colonial theory. Sitting in my dorm room sometime in early 2014, I looked over the possible books that I could use to entertain myself while I ate my turkey sandwich. Looking for something light, I found myself staring at one thin text titled Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Though I had not read this particular book for some years, I had always loved Hunter S. Thompson's bizarre stylings and social parody. However, when I cracked it open this day, I found that some of the joy had left this novel. Instead, I was left wondering: why is the traveller so privileged? What about those who are not in this position, the underprivileged? This question later became my senior thesis, and marked a critical point in my academic development of beginning to criticize the work that I considered not only valuable to the , but personally important to me. Deconstructing my beloved texts came to represent an exorcism of colonial ghosts, a selfish endeavor to determine if I could possibly justify enjoying the myths I had formed my identity around while simultaneously eviscerating them.
