On a Friday afternoon, I paused my work as I watched the highly anticipated last installment of what you can probably call a YouTube documentary.

The cast of characters? OG YouTuber Shane Dawson who has a penchant for creating in-depth videos on the internet’s most hated and, well, one of internet’s most hated, Jake Paul (second only to none other than his older brother Logan who earlier this year posted a vlog shot in Japan’s suicide forest which showed a dead body).

What is going on here? 

Now let me make it clear that I’ve never watched a Jake Paul video in my life (what any self-respecting adult would say), but I also had no idea who Shane Dawson was until the first Jake video dropped. And yet, I find myself glued to the screen excited for the one hour and 45-minute finale after having watched each minute of every preceding video Shane has churned out on the topic. And, I’m not the only one.

The very first video in this series posted three weeks ago now has 21 million views. And the last part which was posted 24 hours ago? 13 million and rising.

“Is Jake Paul a sociopath?” That is the question Shane sought to answer as he jumped into the rabbit hole of the YouTuber’s downward spiral from fame. Shane hypothesizes that it takes a special type of person to be a YouTuber. He goes on to research on the 21-year old’s YouTube history, family background, and even surrounding controversies.

It seems like an uncanny tandem: Shane, seemingly wiser in YouTube years, and Jake, young, reckless and crass. The question on everybody’s mind, will the young Paul redeem himself in this series?

YouTube killed the Vine star…

This whole thing plays out on YouTube which is fitting. It’s the next big controversy and it’s trending but there’s something peculiar about a seven-part-long series cut up into videos that run 40 minutes to almost two hours long each.

See, this is what YouTube has done. It’s created spectacles out of people and the next explosive thing to watch is what the audience jumps to. This is precisely how former Vine star Jake Paul has grown his YouTube empire. But, at a time when audience attention spans rival those of a goldfish and people have been trained to watch short, excitable, attention-grabbing bursts of nonsense in video form, this longer documentary format is refreshing. And surprisingly, it’s a success.

Spoiler alert

Those who hated Jake hated Shane for doing the series, knowing fully well that the series will humanize Jake no matter how shitty of a person he really is. Spoiler alert: We find midway through the series that Jake is unlikely to be a sociopath. Instead, at the end of the series, what we find is a confused kid who can’t process emotions or controversy.

Those who love Jake, well, I judge them — and that’s the thing. We want the bad guys to get called out. We don’t want redemption for them, for people like Jake who’s been accused of racism and abuse, recklessly burning down a pool, climbing atop a news van, and the list goes on. 

More spoilers: Any villain will seem less evil when we get to know them. That is what has happened here. Shane Paul has effectively humanized the YouTube superstar. And, some will argue, he’s humanized the worst of them.

So is there redemption after all? If the view count is to be believed, probably. As to if that’s a good thing, I leave that to the audience to decide.

One thing’s for sure: YouTube is an ongoing show and this is just one of the chapters.