Voices: Logan Paul proves it – you CAN come back from being cancelled

Some people are just natural born villains. Simon Cowell, Carol Baskin, Gordon Ramsay – those people who we don’t just hate, but who seem to revel in our hatred and thrive on it.

In professional wrestling they call those types of people “heels”, and for a long time YouTuber-turned-businessman-turned-soft-drink-magnate-turned-actual-wrestler Logan Paul was the biggest heel of them all.

He was a cocky, arrogant, shameless millionaire who made mindless engagement-bait for children, and whose entire presentation embodied the worst excesses of the “influencer” age of social media. At one point it didn’t seem like you could go a week without hearing about the latest terrible thing he and his equally insufferable brother Jake had done in their ceaseless quest for clicks.

So why do I suddenly like him so much?

Hey, I’m not proud of it – if anything I’m just as baffled as you are – but I do. I’ve actually liked Logan for a long time now, and it eats me up inside. This week I thought he had finally given me an off-ramp from my evolving fandom when it was revealed that his drink company Prime Hydration was facing a lawsuit over its alleged use of “forever chemicals” in its products, potentially putting users at risk of specific types of cancers. “Great news,” I thought (not about the cancer, obviously). “Finally, an excuse to go back to hating both Paul brothers instead of just one.”

Unfortunately for me and every single would-be-hater reading this, Logan responded to the allegations in a manner that was professional, thorough and well sourced. I know, right? I’m just as shocked as you are. Remember when he used to just scream all the time?

In the video, Paul claims that his company manufactures its drinks and bottles according to the same standards and practices that most other major brands adhere to. He cites specific statutes and regulations, explaining all the while how his company is compliant with the rules as set out by the United States Food and Drug Administration. He also effectively eviscerates the claims made against him, pointing out that the results of the “testing done by one of the lawyers of the plaintiff”, which allegedly found forever chemicals in his drinks, are totally unverifiable – and how even if they were, his products would still be well within tolerance according to current food safety laws.

It remains to be seen what happens with the lawsuit going forward, but Paul’s response – which part of me expected to devolve into defensiveness and name-calling – was a reminder of just how far the social media star has come since his early Vine days.

It also provides a stark contrast to his infamous 2018 controversy, in which he was criticised for filming a dead body during a trip to Japan’s famous “suicide forest” and uploading the footage to his YouTube channel. In that instance, Paul posted a follow-up video apologising for the footage, saying that he “should have never posted” it. While his response certainly appeared sincere, many people didn’t fully accept his apology, feeling that it didn’t really address just how deeply disturbing the incident was.

Logan has grown a lot since then, as this new video demonstrates. He has a certain savviness about him that was missing back in 2018. It’s not that this new version of Logan would have come up with a better apology for that incident – it’s that he never would have found himself in that position in the first place.

In many ways, Logan Paul has become the poster boy for what it looks like when a person learns the right lessons from a “cancellation” and comes back stronger than ever. He has a legitimacy about him now – as a businessman with Prime, as an entertainer with his work in WWE, and as a family man, with the recent announcement of his wife’s pregnancy – that he simply didn’t have before. I don’t blame people for not liking him – some wounds don’t heal quickly – but you can’t deny that he’s put the work in.

The fact is that at this point, if you don’t like Logan Paul, you clearly haven’t been paying close enough attention.

Jake still sucks, though.