In his latest video, controversial YouTuber Jake Paul announced he’s discontinuing his behind-the-scenes docuseries Jake Paul Uncut, but says he wants to find a way to be “more real” with his fanbase going forward.
“This YouTube space and this YouTube world we live in is so crazy. It’s so fast-paced, and it can suck you dry as a person before you even realize it,” he says, speaking one-on-one to the camera.
It’s a rare, quiet format for the contentious YouTuber, who’s primarily known for his havoc-wreaking stunts and for spending a lot of his videos shouting at his 18 million subscribers to “buy dat merch.” (That said, it’s worth noting this video has eight ad breaks and lower-third popups every so often directing viewers to Paul’s shop).
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In the video, Paul says it’s been a rough year. That’s apparent in his YouTube numbers, too. Here are the monthly views and subscribers he netted in 2018.
“What I’ve realized is that I need to connect more with you guys and be more open,” he adds. He explains that when Jake Paul Uncut kicked off in November with an episode about his breakup with fellow YouTuber Erika Costell, it was meant to be a weekly window into his real life — a way for viewers to see a side of him they normally don’t. That included showing viewers the candid day-to-day “nightmare” of dealing with the many, many lawsuits filed against Paul and his creator collective Team 10, he says.
But after two half-hour episodes — one in November and one in December — “the Jake Paul Uncut thing became too real for a lot of the parties involved,” he explains. “A lot of the parties involved didn’t want to have that much realness or that much content about their lives out there on social media.”
Paul says he gets it. But on the other hand, “This is our lives,” he says. “We are on social media. This is who we are as people. We should be able to put it out there so other people can learn and grow from us, and see where we are emotionally.”
The third episode of Jake Paul Uncut was due to drop Feb. 1, but it — and the rest of the series — has been shelved. Going forward, Paul still wants to make content that shows viewers what real life is like for him on a personal level. Doing so will involve finding people who “understand why that content can change YouTube as a platform, and understand why that content can be amazing and not just detrimental, not just ‘oh, I don’t want my life out there,’” he says.
You can watch the video in full below:
