Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story
In the debut episode of Paul American, a new reality show currently airing on Max, YouTuber, influencer, and wrestler Logan Paul creates a PowerPoint presentation for his fiancée, Danish supermodel Nina Agdal, to convince her that appearing on a reality show would be beneficial to their relationship. Logan and his younger brother Jake Paul — also a YouTuber and influencer who found his feet in boxing — have been famous for more than a decade, and the reality show, Logan Agdal explains, will be the culmination of their journey together. “This show is part of my natural evolution,” Logan says, holding up a slide with a graphic illustrating the steps of development from ape to Homo sapiens. Each number in the chart represents a stage in Logan’s career, from the defunct short-form video platform Vine, where the Paul brothers got their start, to vlogging, podcasting, and, finally, wrestling and live boxing. Logan says the “family reality show” is a crucial step in this years-long process.
Agdal laughs: The approach is clearly tongue-in-cheek, and yet it fits with the goal of “Paul American,” which is to present Logan and Jake for the first time as fully-fledged individuals, rather than half-wild Neanderthals. Given everything we know about reality TV—its slick editing, its fictional plotlines, its behind-the-scenes manipulations—it might seem odd to think of the genre as an opportunity to showcase true, multifaceted individuality. Still, it’s all relative. Compared to the Pauls’ previous work, “Paul American” is practically “The Brothers Karamazov.”
Until now, sincerity and depth of character haven’t been a priority for either Paul. As teenagers, they emerged from the Wild West of the 1920s internet, which saw the explosion of social media and DIY content creation platforms. Born in Ohio to Pam, a nurse, and Greg, a real estate agent, roofer, and unpredictable character who often appears on the show with a hunting knife strapped to his forearm (“Cancel culture can suck my ass all day,” he says at one point), the brothers each found early success in 2013, creating six-second Vines filled with jokes and puns. A couple of years later, they moved to Los Angeles and expanded their business to YouTube. Jake performed physically risky, increasingly outrageous stunts in the home of influential group Team 10 (built a massive snow slide outside his mansion; turned his house into a trampoline park), while Logan earned a reputation as a stuntman and prankster in his own video blogs (transported sixty thousand pounds of snow to California; scared his new roommate with a live alligator).
As their careers progressed, Logan and Jake’s branding became increasingly cartoonish. Both tall, blond, and muscular—similar enough to be twins, though Jake now sports a thick, prominent beard while Logan’s is shorter—the brothers bickered frequently. Logan stole Jake’s love interest, and each released a diss track about the other. (Logan: “I’m a savage, you’re average / I’m a beast, I’m going crazy / This song will be the death of you / I’m going to be an only child.” Jake: “You crave the view, call it the Kalahari / You’re a karate kid, I’m Mr. Miyagi / You’re just a Prius, I’m a Bugatti.”) They rode in flashy cars and flashed thick wads of bills; they wore frozen watches worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and created chaos and controversy. (In a 2017 vlog, Logan filmed the body of a suicide victim in Japan, for which he later apologized; in 2020, Jake’s Calabasas mansion was raided for guns.) Before they even stepped into the actual ring, they were already pitching themselves as boxers, characters unlike any other, with nicknames to match (Jake: Problem Child; Logan: Maverick). Unsurprisingly, their content resonated with young people, and after amassing nearly a hundred and fifty million followers across major platforms, they began to parlay their online success into real-world endeavors. Logan, now thirty, became a WWE champion with his own energy drink, Prime; Jake, twenty-eight, became a boxer with a line of men’s grooming products, W. (“You probably smell like… buy W at Walmart.”)
In all their endeavors, the Pauls' primary goal has been to attract as many viewers and likes as possible, something they openly discuss on the show. “When your content gets a lot of attention, that's success,” Logan says. Controversy has played well with the brothers' target audience: Logan's diss track of Jake, for example, became “his most viewed video of all time,” something he now regrets, and “Paul American”
Sourse: newyorker.com
