The Center Of The Ring
On New Year’s Day 2018, Logan Paul filmed and uploaded a video of his team encountering a cadaver in Aokigahara forest, Japan. From an objective standpoint, Logan Paul’s horrific lack of judgement this day cost him a great deal both monetarily and in status. Now excluded from the Google Preferred ad program, dropped from two YouTube Premium shows, and 60,000 subscribers below the previous day’s gain, Paul was disconnected from his power. When Olajide William Olatunji (hereafter primarily referred to as “KSI”) challenged Paul to a boxing match just a month later, Logan Paul seized the opportunity to not only regain his old fame on the internet, but to help himself expand his brand into the mainstream. This project explores how Paul went from a YouTuber posting a dead body on the Internet to fighting in London all in an eight month span.
Because this subject is so complex, I have drawn my project into five separate modules united by a web. There is no particular order to exploring them; each has its own strengths and shortcomings, and none completely embody my project. This project is meant to be perused like Benjamin's vision of the flâneur in the arcades, where meaning is gained by the act of traveling.
Certain aspects of this project are disturbing. There are images that are shocking, but they are included as part of a legitimate conversation about that which is problematic. I deliberately do not address the issues of self-harm or include any images from Paul's inciting video.
- Chronological Timeline: Originally, this section was meant to embody the entire project. A combination of messy (sometimes personal) analysis and textual breakdowns of pivotal videos and events occurring between 01/01/18 and 10/17/18, this module became nearly illegible by the time I was completing it. As such, it exists as my corpus in exile; the logical representation of a series of events and an imperfect guide to understanding them.
- Making a Micro-Celebrity: Paul's video in Aokigahara was not off-brand by message, but rather by magnitude. This module analyzes Paul's micro-celebrity identity as it was in the early days of 2018 and as it pushed forward out of the liminality of YouTube.
- Punching the Other: A post-colonial analysis of Logan Paul producing his new mature identity in opposition to his opponent. Includes a synthesis of theory by bell hooks, Corinne Lysandra Mason, and Michael Messner.
- Reading the Ugly: What does it mean for a young white man to gaze at a problematic mirror of his own identity? In this shorter, looser autobiographical section, I attempt to find an answer as to whether I should have chosen to write on Logan Paul at all.
- Loose Threads & Sources Cited: Again, Paul is such a bizarre figure that I felt the need to include topics I did not address in my project proper. Also included in this module are my sources cited.
