Logan Paul gets ripped apart by Pokémon fans for being a poser

Dude bro influencer Logan Paul has spent the last few years trying to convince the internet he really loves Pokémon. The YouTuber routinely posts about his Pokémon trading card collection, once even calling the $150,000 purchase of a first-edition Charizard card a “nostalgic childhood dream come true.” This week, the boisterous blonde tried polishing his fandom credentials by posting something that seemed completely innocuous: a defense of Gengar, the mischievous ghost-type monster who debuted in the original Pokémon games.

On Monday, X user @tiaradraws posed a question to the internet: “why is every man’s favorite pokemon gengar?” The post, which was punctuated with a crying laughing emoji, blew up. Gengar fans came out in full force to the tune of 2.5 million clicks. Passionate fans explained that the original Pokémon games only had a single line of ghost-type monsters, of which Gengar is a part. The monster, who can only evolve after trading a Haunter to another player, was also much more difficult to get in the days before online connectivity. And with the Pokémon community’s fervent love for the first generation of games, Gengar has retained its allure over the years. We’re not even getting into Gengar’s great anime appearances, or its fantastic merch!

Thinking he was just going to be one of the lads, Logan Paul recently chimed in with his Theory of Gengar. Paul called Gengar “perfect” and an “essential” monster in any trainer’s repertoire.

“If he’s taken damage? Hypnosis —> Dream Eater will put your opponent to sleep, suck their HP, and replenish yours,” Paul argued. “With the right trainer, he can’t be killed.”

Already, there’s stuff to nitpick. According to Pokémon website Smogon, Paul is right when he says the purple puff benefits from having Hypnosis in its moveset. But if we’re talking about battle strategies in Gen 1, Dream Eater was probably not in the wider moveset. In later generations, Hypnosis wouldn’t be in the conversation at all.

But OK. Maybe he’s not a competitive nerd; most Pokémon fans aren’t. The next bit by Paul is what most Pokémon fans are honing in on:

“Not to mention he’s immune to normal, fighting, and ground-type moves, rendering even the strongest Pokémon like Machamp absolutely useless.”

Gengar is not immune to Ground-type moves, though. This is a common misconception by casual fans, who assume that, by its very nature, a ghost should be able to fly. Gengar lost the ability to levitate many generations of games ago!

Maybe Paul hasn’t been keeping up with the latest games. There’s a ton of Pokémon titles, and many of them play more or less the same.

But what’s really killed Paul here is that his post reads as if it were put together by ChatGPT. Fans are latching on to a number of details in Paul’s post, from the short, readable paragraphs, the robotic cadence and diction, as well as the strange collection of praises. Paul doesn’t usually write long posts. When he does write on social media, he doesn’t use things like capital letters or correct punctuation. On X, the last time Paul concluded a sentence with a period was in 2018, when he posted an apology video for taping a dead body for a YouTube video.

(For what it’s worth, I dropped the text into a couple of free AI text detectors, and both claimed that the post was definitely written by a human. But I’ve also put in text that I know for a fact was written by a human on those websites — only for them to spit out an AI accusation.)

It could be that Paul really does love Gengar. But given his actions in the past — like his role in pumping up the price of Pokémon cards — millions of people aren’t willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“It would be lovely to see you actually try and play a single Pokémon game and see the look on your face when your Gengar faints immediately to an earthquake,” one Pokémon fan wrote.

Is it AI? Is Paul just a genwunner? You be the judge.