Dude bro influencer Logan Paul has spent the last few years trying to convince the internet he really loves Pok\u00e9mon. The YouTuber routinely posts about his Pok\u00e9mon 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 Pok\u00e9mon games.<\/p>\n
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On Monday, X user @tiaradraws posed a question to the internet: “why is every man\u2019s 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 Pok\u00e9mon 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 Pok\u00e9mon 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!<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“If he\u2019s taken damage? Hypnosis \u2014> Dream Eater will put your opponent to sleep, suck their HP, and replenish yours,” Paul argued. “With the right trainer, he can\u2019t be killed.”<\/p>\n
Already, there’s stuff to nitpick. According to Pok\u00e9mon 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.<\/p>\n
![\"14-Gengar\"](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/14-gengar.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
\n <\/picture>Graphic: Polygon | Source images: Game Freak\/Nintendo, The Pok\u00e9mon Company<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\nBut OK. Maybe he’s not a competitive nerd; most Pok\u00e9mon fans aren’t. The next bit by Paul is what most Pok\u00e9mon fans are honing in on:<\/p>\n
“Not to mention he\u2019s immune to normal, fighting, and ground-type moves, rendering even the strongest Pok\u00e9mon like Machamp absolutely useless.”<\/p>\n
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!<\/p>\n
Maybe Paul hasn’t been keeping up with the latest games. There’s a ton of Pok\u00e9mon titles, and many of them play more or less the same.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
(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 \u2014 only for them to spit out an AI accusation.)<\/p>\n
It could be that Paul really does love Gengar. But given his actions in the past \u2014 like his role in pumping up the price of Pok\u00e9mon cards \u2014 millions of people aren’t willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n
“It would be lovely to see you actually try and play a single Pok\u00e9mon game and see the look on your face when your Gengar faints immediately to an earthquake,” one Pok\u00e9mon fan wrote.<\/p>\n
Is it AI? Is Paul just a genwunner? You be the judge.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n