Culture

Jake Paul Is Getting Dragged For Vlogging Black Lives Matter Looting For YouTube Views

"The BLM movement is NOT an opportunity for you to film a YouTube video and post it for revenue."

by Michelle Rennex  2 June 2020
jake paul looting

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YouTuber Jake Paul has landed in hot water again after footage of him, at an Arizona mall that was being looted, made its way online.

Moving along from his previous foot in mouth moment where he claimed that anxiety is a “self-made” problem”, Jake has now been forced to explain himself again after he was featured in Instagram stories alongside people vandalising Scottsdale Mall.

Shared to Twitter by New York Times internet report, Taylor Lorenz, footage from Andrew Blue — Jake’s own videographer and photographer — shows Jake Paul, at minimum, holding what appears to be a bottle of looted vodka from a burgled P.F Chang’s. But Jake has since denied actually partaking in any looting or vandalism.

Posting on his own story, Jake Paul filmed the aftermath of getting tear gassed for simply trying to “film the events and brutality that were unfolding in Arizona”.

The looting and protests in Arizona come after the police murder of George Floyd, an innocent black man from Minneapolis, who’s breathing was restricted after ex-officer Derek Chauvin placed a knee on his neck for eight minutes.

While the protests started peacefully, protesters turned to looting and vandalism after they realised justice wasn’t being served and that black lives were still being disregarded and disrespected.

In a statement on his social accounts, Jake Paul claims that he did not partake in anything and was merely there to “film the events”.

“To be absolutely clear, neither I nor anyone in our group was engaged in any looting or vandalism,” Paul wrote. “For context, we spent the day doing our part to peacefully protest one of the most horrific injustices our country has ever seen, which led us [to] being tear-gassed for filming the events and brutality that were unfolding in Arizona.”

“We filmed everything we saw in an effort to share our experience and bring more attention to the anger felt in every neighbourhood we travelled through,” he continued. “We were strictly documenting, not engaging.”

However, people aren’t happy that Jake Paul inserted himself into a situation at all, and were especially concerned with the YouTuber’s decision to go where people were looting instead of where protests for change were happening.

In the Instagram videos uploaded by his own videographer, Scottsdale Mall was filled with white people destroying store fronts and looting goods. But the Arizona protests for George Floyd were happening in downtown Phoenix, an almost four hour walk away.

From this, people quickly accused Jake Paul of exploiting and profiting off the Black Lives Matter movement. Going to the point of action simply to “document” what was happening to likely post in a monetised video for his 20 million YouTube subscribers is in poor taste.

Jake Paul’s recent actions were compared to his brother Logan’s controversial decision to similarly “document” his experience at Japan’s Suicide Forest, where he recorded and uploaded a video of a dead body.

This continued trivialisation of real world issues is just proof of the white privilege the Paul brothers have, and continue use for their own gain.

Exploiting the Black Lives Matter movement for attention and views is a strange concept when Jake Paul has the funds to help (thanks to his net worth of 11.5 million dollars) and the influence to bring about some real change with his 36 million followers across both YouTube and Instagram.

But a quirky little vlog about the time you were tear-gassed while hanging with looters must just be a lot more fun, I guess.