Tag: reflection

My Takeaway from the Jake Paul Series

If you’ve been involved in the Youtube world, then you would know that a few days ago, Shane Dawson wrapped up his eight-part series on Jake Paul. The series ended in an almost two-hour long finale, a good 90 percent centered around the final interview that Shane had been building up to throughout the series.

Despite my qualms about the second episode, I watched the series in its entirety. I will say that while I admire the amount of research Shane went through, approaching multiple different people that were involved in Jake Paul’s life in order to get their perspectives, I have to say that in the end, Shane let his bias show a little too brightly.

Not in the sense that he ignored that Jake Paul is a sociopath (which he’s not), but in the sense that in the end he went a little too light on calling out his past. He did ask about the assault case, the cheating situation, and other such things that people had been wondering about. He provided advice on what Jake Paul should do, to which the latter figure seemed enthusiastic to accept. But the interview as a whole was a little underwhelming. Shane promised that the interview would allow no mercy, and spent the whole series making that promise, but when he got to the actual interview, I couldn’t help but be bored. I sat there, constantly checking how much time was left, wondering when the harder questions were going to come in. In the end, I felt that we weren’t given what we were promised, because Shane learned to like Jake Paul.

And, to be honest, I did feel some sympathy towards Jake Paul. Throughout the show, the strained and frayed family dynamic came up, which provides some insight on who Jake Paul is behind the scenes. His Dad raised him to believe it was okay to act like this, and his brother did some awful things that would mess with someone. Working with a father and brother, as well, is also very dangerous, as it blurs the line between work and family. It can destroy families.

There’s also the fact that Jake Paul holds himself in a toxic situation, living in the Team 10 house and almost never taking a break. Even his girlfriend can sense it, and wants them to move away so that they aren’t constantly in the limelight. That kind of situation would mess with anyone.

And yet, at the same time, I hesitate to sympathize. The situation between Alyssa and Jake still makes me wonder, especially as some aspects to each side of their stories holds differences, making it difficult to believe one person or another. Shane never fully fleshed out the situation through third-parties without bias, adding a sense of dissatisfaction and uncertainty. The uncertainty makes me hesitate.

Also, despite him being in a messed up situation, we can’t ignore the fact that Jake Paul has done some crappy things. There were bad choices he made outside of the ones discussed in the series, and they were choices that he made. Of course, college males can act as dumb as him, but being an influential figure, especially with a demographic of kids 8-16, he needs to know better. And I’m glad Shane pointed that out, cause in certain ways Jake didn’t seem to understand the amount of influence he actually had on kids. Constant merch plugging, his music, and pranks, his talk against school, all of that can leave an impact on a kid, shaping their views. He didn’t seem to understand that.

Now, in the end, Jake promised to change things. But words don’t mean anything if no one acts on them. I want to see him act on it, and the best way I can imagine that being is taking an extended break from Youtube-possibly even moving back out to Ohio. To think on himself and his actions, to come back and change his content. I won’t believe the guy until he’s actually presented the social sphere with his change, and possibly moved himself into a situation where he has a break from the chaos. While I do hope that he does improve, I will only believe it when I see it.

Returning to the World I Knew Before

I don’t know if I’ve indicated before, but I have a long history of being a huge nerd.

Or rather, a geek (yes, there is a difference). I wasn’t the techy “build your own computer and digs math” type, which would have classified me as a nerd (by stereotypical standards). No, I have always preferred pop culture and literature, preferring to spend my time playing games and dabbling in a bit of anime. But the biggest highlight of being a geek was going to conventions.

The two biggest conventions I went to were Wondercon, which functions as a mini-Comic Con, situated in Anaheim, and Anime Expo, the largest Anime convention in North America. I went to these conventions every year from when I was thirteen until I went to college, when scheduling began interfering. It got to a point where I kind of got sick of them.

But in college, things changed. For some reason, I had it in my head that I should “grow out” of my geekiness, or at least keep it more private. Perhaps it was because I looked around and saw all the other geeks around me at school made me uncomfortable. They were just too stereo-typically geeky. That’s not to say that some of my high school friends weren’t, but these guys just fit the bill too well.

The disassociation might also have been partially influenced by the fact that I never fit the bit for someone who was geeky. Yeah, I wear glasses and at one point cut my hair short and dressed less-than-pleasantly, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about my face, my figure. I looked more like the kind of person geeks and nerds would wish would be into the same stuff as them. And this isn’t out of an inflation of my own ego. I’ve had enough creepy experiences to know exactly what position I was in. I look more like I belong in a Starbucks.

This was a factor that had always plagued my adolescent years. Especially during the height of gamer gate, where you could get called a fake gamer or fake nerd for just about breathing the “wrong way”. They never judged the people that looked like (stereotypical) geeks and nerds. They judged the people that didn’t.

It didn’t help that my Mom and sister would make fun of me for being a geek. My sister has become more involved in the culture herself in recent years, which has lightened her take on it, but my Mom would always roll her eyes. She still thinks I’m into things that I’m not (i.e: she thinks everything I watch is anime for some reason). She didn’t stop me from being a part of geek culture, but she didn’t much like the fact that I was so into it, either.

So for most of my college years, I kind of kept things under wrap. I stopped investing myself in geek culture for the most part, although I couldn’t help having my closest friends know what I was into. Everything was going fine.

But then, I started to miss the geek world. I started to miss being involved in the newest game, and missed going to conventions. I missed being a geek. I wasn’t going to suddenly stop dressing decent, but I didn’t want to let go of something I actually enjoyed. It was a big part of my life, and it was something cool to do. I got to see artists I follow in person, discover new artists, and find new things that I didn’t know before in geek culture.

So I’ve decided to come back. My Dad says he can get us into Comic Con, and I am planning on going to Anime Expo, so I guess that’s a good start to breaking back in. While I don’t have much time to be “full geek” (I have school and work), I do plan on enjoying the things I once did.

YA Novels and the Curse of the “Unconventional” Protagonist

Note: when I say “unconventional”, I don’t mean diverse or unusual protagonists: I mean that they are slightly different variations of the same thing. The “unconventional” protagonist always has a similar appearance and an identical attitude, no matter the genre or book. I call them a curse, because they are usually the markers of a bad book, even for ones that had the potential to be good.

Now, the curse of the “unconventional” protagonist. had been a huge part in the young adults novels of my teenage years. It was practically everywhere; the same pale short girl that’s never a brunette, who isn’t “conventionally beautiful” like their mom.

Their main staple is their lack of curves, making them look like twelve years olds (when they’re adamantly sixteen). They have seemingly messy or bland hair, usually an unusual color, and they are always pale. They’re not conventionally attractive, but they have pleasant features, making them appealing to their main love interest. They look like their mothers, but their mothers, being taller, are somehow much the most gorgeous people to walk the face of the Earth, while they’re “cute”. Dressing nice or scandalous is taboo; modest clothes all around. They’re almost always useless and cause more trouble when they do involve themselves, but they’re stubborn, and never take the blame for anything they’ve done.

Almost every young adult book I read, the protagonist can best be identified by what I said above. It almost never changed (the big exception here is the Hunger Games, which featured a non-white woman who was tall and useful) and always had the same outcomes. It caused a lot of serious issues with how I perceived things during my teenage years.

Of course, I wasn’t about to charge into situations I knew I wasn’t useful in. In fact, the stubborn and useless factor actually got on my nerves. It even got to the point where I’d skip entire portions of books if I knew the protagonist was about to do something insanely stupid because “they’re not a useless child”. What really hurt was my perceptions of myself and romance.

My appearance heavily contrasts from the typical main protagonist; I am tall, I have olive skin that tans really easily, and I have dark brown eyes and hair. I lean more on the conventional side of attractiveness, in that I don’t look like a twelve year old. As a teenager, this made me very insecure about my features. I wanted to be like the main protagonists (before I realized how much of a stupid idea that was). I wanted to be short, and pale, and curve-less. I wanted unusual hair and eye colors. You may think that’s stupid, but when it’s all you see in the books you read, it doesn’t seem so stupid. At least, it didn’t seem so stupid to thirteen year-old me.

Girls that I look like get constantly trashed in comparison to the main protagonist, getting written off as sluts and mean girls who are insanely preppy and stupid. At the same time, the books with the “unconventional” protagonist gets pushed as “beneficial for all girls”, despite the obvious bashing of “conventional” girls. When that idea is getting shoved down your throat all the time, it really starts to affect how you see yourself. They’re extremely damaging, and can psychologically affect girls as young as ten to see themselves in a negative light. Worst part is, most won’t even realize until they’re practically adults, if then.

Now, I have seen improvements in the YA genre. I have noticed a growing diversification in main protagonists, which is quite refreshing. But the curse is still there, and it still maintains a presence. A weakening presence, but a presence. It needs to be targeted, and stopped once and for all.