Jake Paul Looting

Overview

Jake Paul Looting refers to a viral video of YouTuber Jake Paul in a Scottsdale, Arizona mall during the late May 2020 protests against police brutality due to the death of George Floyd. The videos, first published to Instagram show Paul taking a bottle of Vodka from a looter outside a P.F. Chang's and inside a mall trespassing while others break into individual businesses. The video led to outrage against Paul on Twitter and Reddit causing him to release the statement denying being apart of any looting or illegal activity.

Background

On May 31st, 2020, photographer/videographer for Jake Paul, Andrew Blue uploaded videos of Jake Paul to Instagram stories^[7] in Arizona documenting, observing and commenting on the protests and looting at a mall. That same day, Twitter user @mogramick^[8] uploaded the videos from Instagram and posted them to Twitter gained over 14,7 million views in a day. Twitter user @SUGARClNEMA retweeted the video saying, "i repeat FUCK JAKE PAUL he’s a millionaire looting while people are outside protesting, getting shot with rubber bullets, teargas, beat by cops etc." (shown below). The tweet garnered over 185,200 likes and 60,900 retweets in a day.

Developments

On May 31st, 2020, reporter and Twitter user @TaylorLorenz^[1] retweeted the video saying, "YouTube star Jake Paul and his friends were caught “looting” and trashing property in a Scottsdale mall last night amid protests." The tweet received over 25,700 likes and 14,500 retweets in a day. That day, Twitter user @JoshPescatore uploaded a video editing both Jake Paul's Instagram stories and Andrew Blue's to get a better view of "someone breaking into the @PFChangs, stealing a bottle of Vodka, and handing it off to @jakepaul" (shown below). The video accumulated over 90,400 views, 800 likes and 320 retweets in a day.

That day, many Twitter users and fellow YouTubers spoke out against Paul's actions. YouTuber and Twitter user @tyleroakley^[2] tweeted, "fuck you @jakepaul" which received over 119,900 likes and 17,100 retweets in a day (shown below). Redditor JoblessHoaf posted to r/KSI^[6] saying, "Jake Paul decided to loot a mall for fashion items like the scumbag he is even when he has MILLIONS in his bank. He is using this movement as a way for him to benefit only himself. Please, everyone on this Reddit repost and bring light to this so he doesn’t get away with this" which accumulated over 5,100 points (98% upvoted) in a day.

Keemstar also commented on the video by reposting Jake Paul's father's video speaking out against vandalism and looting captioned, "Maybe Greg Paul should talk to his son Jake Paul who went out looting last night! Unreal!" (shown below). The tweet garnered over 5,700 likes and 440 retweets in a day. BBC^[5] and Deadline^[4] published articles covering the controversial videos.

Jake Paul's Statement

On May 31st, 2020, Jake Paul^[3] responded in a tweet denying that he was apart of any looting or vandalism (shown below). The tweet garnered over 18,300 likes and 9,500 retweets in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References