Jake Paul Wants You to Forget He's a Parasite
By: The Zeitgeist Editorial Team
Let’s make one thing clear: Jake Paul’s story isn’t one of redemption. It’s a tale of capitalist rot wrapped in a sob story to make you think a guy who built his brand off of setting swimming pools on fire and exploiting controversies deserves your sympathy. And let’s be honest, the world doesn’t need another media puff piece glorifying a guy who, by his own admission, planned to kill himself in some twisted stunt, just so he could get back at the haters.
We’re not here to cheer for anyone’s death—no matter how much of a parasite they are—but we’d be lying if we said the world wouldn’t be a slightly better place without Jake Paul. A recently released (Oct. 9th) USA Today fluff piece by Josh Peter is basically jerking off the idea that Paul is a “changed man” because he found meaning in boxing and turned his public hatred into more millions. Really? He went from being the nightmare kid of Disney, getting booted for being too obnoxious even for them, to throwing dirt bike drag races outside his rental, causing property damage, and getting raided by the FBI, all to make sure he had “content” for his hungry followers.
Now we’re supposed to applaud his “resilience” because he pulled himself up by his Lamborghini’s bootstraps and started investing in consumer brands? This guy has somehow parlayed a complete lack of morals and endless scandals into becoming the face of a venture capital fund. Jake Paul is what happens when you slap a pretty face on capitalist nihilism. He makes headlines for co-founding a deodorant brand and gets featured as a success story in Fortune, all while brushing off the endless list of allegations, scams, and outright harm he's caused.
And yet, here we are, being spoon-fed this sob story about his “dark times”—how life “hit him in the face” because his brother filmed a dead body, and Jake himself just tried to “do good” but lost millions in deals because of a morality clause. Poor guy, right? Except, he’s the same guy who allegedly scammed his young audience with his failed online platform Edfluence, tossed out racist slurs, and threw parties in the middle of a pandemic while hospitals overflowed.
What makes this even worse is that Jake Paul thrives on this shit. He knows exactly what he’s doing, leaning into controversy because it pays. He turned his name into a brand, then into an empire—no matter how many people got hurt in the process. Hell, his entire strategy, as he puts it, is “content is king.” Doesn’t matter if that content is exploitative or if he’s actively endangering people. Just eyeballs and exposure, right?
The real kicker is how this piece tries to humanize him. His dad was abusive, he was lost, and boxing gave him “purpose.” And now he’s got kids coming up to him asking for autographs, and suddenly we’re supposed to forget about everything else? Nah, let’s not do that. Jake Paul is rich because he played the game without a conscience, and every time the world tried to hold him accountable, he just found a new way to spin it, cash out, and move on. He’s not a role model; he’s a cautionary tale of what happens when capitalism rewards the worst kind of behavior.
The narrative that he “grew up” is convenient, but it’s just that—a narrative. Let’s not mistake a change in tactics for actual growth. Jake Paul is still playing the same game, only now he’s wearing a different mask. And while he might have avoided driving off that cliff, he’s still dragging us all through the toxic sludge of influencer culture, one branded deodorant at a time.
—The Zeitgeist