The Paul Brothers Are America, Baby
When covering the Paul brothers — two Vine stars turned YouTube stars turned American nightmares — so much of the coverage seems to converge on one question: “what do you do?” But the Paul brothers, much like Kim Kardashian before them, don’t really do anything, and that’s kind of the point. They mug for cameras, they vlog, and they live in a reality show of their own making, producing their own fake and complicated storylines. (A particularly notable one had Jake and Logan both kissing Jake’s potentially real/potentially fake ex-girlfriend, Alissa Violet.) When asking about the Paul brothers, one should ask not what they do but what they are doing.
The Paul brothers, on camera, are disgusting. And they are disgusting in a uniquely American way. Just last night, Logan Paul got in hot water for filming up-close the body of a man who had recently committed suicide in Japan (wrapping voyeuristic Orientalism and general degradation up with a bow). The video, now removed, had the title “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest…” just in case you thought that dishonoring a man’s corpse was incidental. And younger brother Jake Paul lost a plum Disney gig because he set too many couches on fire in his Hollywood home. His conflict with his neighbors had reached a point that it was national news. Incidents like these spark outrage among non-fans. Adults write news articles and Tweets and are generally disgusted by the behavior of these two. But their fans — who are mostly childhood and preteen girls — they seem unfazed.
What is it about YouTube that every time the outside looks in, we are horrified by what we see? YouTube is a juggernaut, with stars producing and creating their own content. And that content is largely deeply boring and highly unregulated — people unboxing toys, Eastern Europeans fulfilling algorithmic nightmares for toddler views, neo-Nazis rambling for forty five minutes at a stretch, a million people saying “hey guys,” and the occasionally useful makeup tutorial. We’re only horrified because we’re looking at ourselves.
As I have been saying to anyone who will listen in a bar since this summer, the Paul brothers (specifically Jake, but you get one, you get the other) are the children’s Trump. They are a cult of carefully constructed white identity that is meant to inspire fervent loyalty, distrust of outsiders, and the ability to own a narrative while making beacoup bucks. The Pauls are on a mission to monetize every moment, and — not only that — but have a fanbase that understands and appreciates that need. As Jake Paul’s motto attests: Every day, bro.
The Paul brothers were born in a Cleveland-adjacent suburb, Westlake. They had a typical upper-middle-class existence, and now they are international celebrities for the under-ten set. The way Jake Paul tells it (primarily in the song Ohio Fried Chicken) Ohio is the center of the South. The only thing Jake Paul’s Ohio is missing is a Confederate flag. (Although, I would argue, that the Paul entourage’s tend toward white faces is its own flag.) At the end of the song, Chance Sutton, part of Jake Paul’s entourage, says, “Didn’t we grow up in the suburbs?” to which his vlogging partner, Anthony responds, “That doesn’t matter.” And, truly, it doesn’t.
It doesn’t matter because their fans don’t care. And their fans don’t care because they’ve been told not to care. In a 2017 interview, Jake Paul said his world of fake relationships, fake wives, and fake identity was “like the WWE” in that everyone knows it is fake, and doesn’t care. But, unlike million dollar wrestling shows, it is less clear what is fake and real in Jake and Logan’s world. Surrounded by videos of a similar ilk where people are truly living out their lives (however sanitized), it isn’t immediately apparent to me — never mind their eight-year-old fans — what is real and what is falsified. And they like it that way. Earlier this year, when Jake was under fire in the press for being a terrible neighbor, he staged his own arrest and told his fans it was a “lesson that not everything you see in the media is real and you can fake anything and twist everything the way that you want.” He equates YouTubers (like himself) who post fake stuff with the media who, according to him, also post “fake stuff.” Everything negative is fake news.
We remain horrified by singular instances, but we miss the larger picture of indoctrination and general callousness that earmarks YouTube entertainment. Young girls, and all children, have always had the ability to freak out with diehard loyalty for their favorite star. But, unlike past generations (The Beatles never asked their fans to terrorize a Cleveland bar), the YouTubers, like the Paul brothers, are wielding that in a way that will soon get out of control. The Paul brothers are a symptom, not the disease.
Anyway, I just want this on record for when our first YouTuber candidate becomes an issue and we all die.
