Unbeknown to them at the time, Jake and Logan Paul set the wheels in motion for a wild ride like no other when they joined popular video-sharing platform Vine in 2013.
Some 13 years later, the polarizing brothers from Ohio stand tall as two of the richest and most recognizable content creators on the planet after following up their early success on the now-extinct Vine by becoming pioneers of the modern YouTuber era.
Logan, who shared a boxing ring with all-time great Floyd Mayweather in 2021, has found his true calling in the wrestling industry as a WWE superstar, while Jake has put all his attention on boxing to become one of the sport’s biggest cash cows.
Their astonishing journey has been nothing short of a rollercoaster, with some infamous lows coming amidst the unprecedented highs. And while high-profile love interests have been and gone, mom Pam has been there for the entire ride.
In her new book, which is titled ‘F*** the Pauls’ and released today, Pam lifts the lid on her turbulent life as the mother of one of the world’s most dysfunctional families, which also includes her brash and often offensive ex-husband Greg, the boys’ father.
Prior to their divorce over two decades ago, Pam – who remarried within the space of a few months – claimed that Greg’s vicious parenting approach provided early trauma for Jake and Logan.
Pam pictured with her sons Jake (left) and Logan (right) in Long Beach, California, in 2019
Jake and Logan Paul have enjoyed a chaotic rise to superstardom over the past 12 years
‘It was a Friday night, and Greg and I had plans to go to our friend’s house with the kids,’ she recalls. ‘Before we were out the door, Greg noticed that one of the boys had peeled off some wallpaper border in our bathroom next to the toilet.
‘He was furious. “Who peeled the paper off the wall?” he roared.
‘Neither confessed, which set Greg off. He grabbed both of the boys, who were screaming and crying, and locked them in the bathroom.
‘”I’m not letting you out until one of you confesses,” he bellowed through the door. I pleaded for him to stop. It’s just wallpaper. They’re kids. But I was afraid, too.
‘Finally, Logan coerced Jake to admit to peeling the paper. Greg threw open the door and yanked Jake by the arm. He dragged him over to the couch and spanked him.
‘”Stop! Stop it!” I cried as he pushed me away. Then he hauled Jake up the stairs and locked him in a bedroom.
‘As I rushed up the stairs to comfort Jake, Greg blocked the bottom of the stairs like a human barricade. “You’re not going up here,” he said, breathing heavily and guarding the stairs with his body. “Leave him alone.”
‘If he was so angry over a little bit of wallpaper, I dreaded imagining what he would do to me if I continued to press him.
‘As I looked up the staircase and heard my child crying, I was completely frozen. This was not how I wanted to raise my children, in fear and violence.’
Pam has recalled Logan and Jake’s turbulent upbringing under brash father Greg (left)
Mom Pam, who has released a new book, has been by her sons’ side every step of the way
After taking Logan and driving straight to her friend’s house, Pam’s previous complaints about their marriage meant there was no need for an explanation. ‘All my friends knew how Greg was,’ she added.
How Greg was, according to Pam, was controlling, manipulative and abusive – particularly when she became a mom for the first time. After giving birth to Logan, she recalls how her husband’s character shifted for the worse.
‘Unfortunately, he became more critical of me after I gave birth,’ Pam said. ‘One day, while I was working out in my leotard doing my Kathy Smith Step Aerobics, Greg came up behind me.
‘”Your butt isn’t as tight as it was last year,” he said mockingly.
‘I thought to myself, how rude. But like the non-confrontational person that I was, I had no rebuttal.’
Among Greg’s other alleged insults were that her ‘arms are just getting bigger, not stronger’ after a workout, and perhaps most disgustingly of all, that he could only look at her from the neck up while she was pregnant.
‘This all may seem trivial, but as someone who was very conscientious about how I looked, these words eroded my self-esteem one comment at a time,’ she fumes.
‘If he didn’t like what I was wearing, he’d mock me until I changed. I stared at myself in the mirror. I felt controlled. I let him say or do whatever he wanted without making a scene.
‘Like when he left me with a three-month-old Logan to go mountain climbing with another woman for two weeks. I knew they were sleeping in the same tent while I woke up alone in an empty house to feed my child. It bothered me, but I never said anything.’
Before their divorce, Pam claims ex-husband Greg was violent towards both of her children
The divorce was therefore inevitable. ‘The truth is, part of me was relieved when he was gone. I could breathe easier. When I was around Greg, I twisted and reshaped who I was, trying desperately to fit into the ever-shrinking box he seemed to want me in.’
Within months of their split, Pam quickly found love again with longtime husband David, whom she went on to marry two years later. Yet only after Greg, who she claims made David the scapegoat for the collapse of their marriage, tried and failed to have one of his sons scupper it.
Pam says: ‘Jake still remembers his dad coaching him on how to object to the wedding during the vows. (Thankfully, we didn’t include that part in the ceremony.)’
When they went their separate ways, Greg and Pam would never have dreamed of how their relationship as parents would ultimately unfold.
After a difficult time in school – which saw the teenagers both tormented by classmates over their early internet fame – Logan and Jake dropped out to focus fully on their blossoming online careers, a move which would ultimately pay off.
Though just as they began to thrust themselves towards superstardom, there were seismic setbacks for both brothers.
In 2017, Jake was fired from a lucrative acting role on Disney Channel due to his wild antics and dangerous social-media stunts, including setting furniture on fire in his backyard and disrupting his neighbors on a regular basis.
Jake was fired from a lucrative acting role on Disney channel in 2017 due to his wild antics and dangerous social-media stunts
Shortly after, Logan stumbled into a scandal when he filmed a video of a suicide victim in Japan
Around the same time, however, Logan stumbled upon a controversy far more serious when he filmed and shared a horrific video from Aokigahara forest in Japan, known as a frequent site of suicides, which showed an apparent suicide victim.
The fallout proved almost catastrophic.
‘I went to sleep peacefully. Then the next morning, all hell broke loose. My niece Syd’s face was distressed. “Aunt Pam. Logan posted a video of a dead guy in Japan. It’s really bad.” I barely processed her words,’ Pam recounts.
‘Ok, my kids have done a million stunts on the internet. It can’t be that bad. Yes, I was probably a little desensitized.
‘I looked at my internet browser on my phone. Logan’s face was splashed across the mainstream media outlets. I was in shock. How did this happen?’
‘It still makes me feel nauseous in my body to talk about it. My mind was reeling.
‘Why didn’t he stop filming? Why didn’t the other kids stop filming? Why was this edited together? Why was this posted?
‘Up until this moment, I felt like my internet-famous family was building a plane as we were flying it. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we were still flying high up in the sky at lightning speed. Now, it felt like our engine caught on fire, and suddenly we had to make an emergency landing.’
A Change.org petition calling for Logan’s YouTube channel to be taken down received over 720,000 signatures, before he released two separate apologies within a matter of days.
YouTube released a statement condemning ‘the actions of one creator’ and Paul subsequently paid the price. His channels were removed from the ad-program Google Preferred, dealing him a major financial blow. A number of his upcoming film appearances on YouTube were either put on hold or scrapped altogether.
Both brothers have had to overcome setbacks on the way to becoming social-media titans
‘For a moment in time, my son was the most hated man in the world. It’s hard to describe what that feels like as that man’s mother,’ Pam explains. ‘Is it defensiveness mixed with horror? Panic? It is mostly deeply painful. You feel it in your own body.’
Of course, Logan rebounded from the scandal and, quite depressingly, even used it to his advantage to eventually become one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world.
But shortly before the Suicide Forest outrage, there was more anguish for Pam and the Paul family when, early into his online fame, Jake very nearly paid the price for legal complacency.
After being hit with countless lawsuits while trying to navigate the YouTube industry, the future boxing star failed to appreciate the seriousness of them, almost sending him into bankruptcy.
‘I was at a concert at Edgewater Beach when Greg called me with the news,’ Pam remembers. ‘Jake is almost bankrupt,’ he said in a panic.
‘How was this possible? I thought. Jake was working around the clock on videos and working at Disney, and he had managed to get millions of dollars in investments.
‘Money was evaporating into thin air. The number of lawsuits fled against him kept piling up like dirty dishes in a sink.
Pam recalls in her explosive new book how Jake even came close to bankruptcy at one stage
‘We were both scared for Jake. It’s hard to really put into words how horrified you can be when you see your kid being sued for not thousands but millions of dollars. None of my friends or family had ever experienced anything on this scale.
‘I had to pray.’
For all of his faults, Greg remains a devoted and loyal father. And at his time of need he provided the vital intervention to keep Jake’s head above water.
‘Whenever we resolved one issue, another one would pop up. Jake didn’t have the capital to make some of the big moves his advisors had entangled him in at the start of his career, so GP came in clutch,’ Pam says.
‘Greg made it his mission to help Jake claw back the money he was losing due to poor business advice. Right at the eleventh hour, Greg wound up retrieving some of that money.’
‘F*** the Pauls’: Written by their Mother by Pam Stepnick is published by Fedd Books, January 27
