My buddy Dave went through almost the same thing with a fishing channel he loved, dude had like 80k subs, got called out in 2019 for some sponsored post he never tagged, lost half his fans overnight. Dave stuck around and said for almost two years the guy barely cracked 5k views a video, just posting quiet stuff about reel repair and lake trips. Then last spring one of his knot tutorial videos randomly blew up to like 900k and the channel came back stronger than it ever was. The thing that saved him, according to Dave, was that the new people found him through how-to stuff and never even knew he had a past. So yeah, the slow ones seem to stick more than the big apology video comebacks, because the apology crowd comes for drama and leaves when the drama is gone, but the repair crowd actually came to learn something. Takes way longer but it feels more solid, if that makes sense.

Doubt that video was some big career killer. Half of YouTube comments are people wishing someone was dead, that's just how the site works. Jake Paul has been in hot water about a hundred times and he's still out here getting millions of views and fighting real boxers. The whole thing probably just fed his brand more than it hurt it. Shock value is kind of his whole thing, so a fake death vid fits right in. Do people even remember stuff like this a year later, or does it just blend into all his other stunts?