On Saturday, two YouTubers stepped into the ring to settle their differences with their fists. The whole thing was an obvious farce, a phony showdown between two guys who weren’t even pro fighters. But for a large subset of YouTube fans, it felt very real.
Love him or hate him, there's no denying that streamer Summit1g is one of the most enduringly popular personalities on Twitch. Even his fanbase, however, has its limits. By streaming a few Fortnite matches with YouTube pariah Jake Paul over the weekend, Summit tested them in a big way.
Infamous YouTuber Logan Paul started a Twitch channel yesterday, and he reached 100,000 followers without streaming once. If you go to the channel right now, the chat alternates between spamming racial slurs and ascii penises. Following the Fortnite bandwagon has turned into a mess for the Paul brothers.
Even Logan Paul's comeback tour sucks. The brawny social media star who built an image around being a maverick was shamed early last month when a YouTube video crassly showcasing a suicide victim in Japan convinced the internet that he was an insensitive arsehole.
Scorched by nearly universal criticism, he took a break from his daily video uploads to supposedly reflect on his behaviour. A month later, he is back, but his new stunts don't show that he has learned much at all.
2017's "YouTube Rewind," the end-of-year advertisement for the biggest trends and hottest creators on the platform, urges people to come together after an awful year. This heartfelt sentiment lasts about thirty seconds before the camera plunges back down to earth, where a rooftop party rages. Here, two blonde men look out at the horizon, squad in tow. They are the golden boys of YouTube, the hottest entertainers on the platform. Logan and Jake Paul.
