Paul American Wants You to Know the Paul Brothers Work Hard
“Look, we’re polarizing, man,” Logan Paul says about himself and his content creator, podcaster, and boxer brother Jake Paul on Good Morning America. “It’s either ‘I’m rocking with those guys, I see the hustle, I respect it,’ or ‘screw them.’” The Paul brothers know they’re controversial: their new show, Paul American, has 8 episodes, around 40 minutes long. Paul American, and the Paul brothers’ press tour around the show don’t care about something as wimpy as feelings so much as they want the audience to know they work hard. Can you hate two people with a good work ethic?
The first few seconds of the series premiere feature Jake hopping out of a big car and holding up his phone as an apology for being late. “I’m trading crypto!” is his big excuse. As the Paul family gets out of the car, as clowns do at the circus, Logic and Marshmello’s song “Everyday” kicks in. What does “work” consist of for these two guys, former Vine creators turned YouTubers turned fighters (professionally and against each other) turned podcasters turned reality TV stars? That would be the net public good that is “content.” We watch them train, we watch them bicker, we watch them riff, and we watch them post.
For longtime fans of the Paul brothers, the show is yet another way to engage with them beyond watching their Instagram Reels or their fights, or buying their merch. But there’s a kind of artfulness to Paul American. “I’d say he’s a genius creator with one of the best work ethics in the world,” Jake says about Logan when forced to compliment his brother during the promo. They’re trying to push the show as their highest peak of effort as a form of legitimacy. These are two guys who worked so hard that they got to meet the president! But it’s the least interesting stuff on screen. Jake Paul telling Mike Tyson they have to fight because an ayahuasca journey showed him that happening? Well, that’s closer to something resembling compelling television. Paul American is at its best when it buys into its mythology that this is an American fairytale.
There are those moments, but mostly the show wants you to know that the Pauls have earned everything that’s come their way. To hate them would be to deny their efforts, their strategies, and their knowledge of the internet playing field. “Having your content be received by a lot of eyeballs is a success,” Logan says. Though they protest that they’ve changed from the guys who once did bad things on the internet, the one thing that matters above everything else is those viewing metrics. The metrics mean more than hard-earned cash. The metrics are the cash. Earning views and dollars is representative of all that this country stands for: that your job can be anything you want, so long as you bully people into believing it is so.
