Sociopaths is a trending word right now thanks to Shane Dawson’s the Mind of Jake Paul
series and the responses from Jake, his family as well as the winder internet.
While Shane’s subject is Jake, he has regularly mentioned his brother and a lot of the characteristic
traits of a sociopath can be applied to Logan, too.
So…while Shane is busy looking at Jake, we are going to shift our attention to the
other Paul brother for one second and ask is – Is Logan Paul a Sociopath.
Hello and welcome back to Life’s Biggest Questions – where today we are picking up
on the trending topic of sociopaths.
I am your host Rebecca Felgate and I want to ask you before we get into this I want
to ask you what you think – are the Pauls sociopaths, and are there any other celebrities
that you think also fit the bill.
So, as of the publication of this video, there have been three parts to Shane Dawson’s
series.
Part two was almost entirely dedicated to the psychology of the sociopath in which some
really interesting points were raised by Therapist Kati Morton.
She said that 1 in 25 people fits the criteria of Sociopath and she identifies those traits
so we can spot them.
Some people might be asking why it matters – and I suppose what Shane and Kati are
getting at is that it matters because Sociopaths are not who they present themselves to be.
While it is certainly a anti social behavioural disorder – Sociopaths seemingly do not have
the ability to love.
It is also thought that the 4% of the population that are suspected to be Sociopathic are responsible
for 50% of crimes.
To determine whether or not Logan Paul is a sociopath, we are going to hold him up to
the key traits Kati identified and see if he fits the bill.
These traits are a god complex, a charming and charismatic personality, intensity and
spontaneity, a controlling, manipulative and dominating personality, high intelligence,
a lack of guilt, remorse and empathy, and a tendency to lie.
Like Logan said in his recent video, Dear Shane Dawson, perhaps the labelling of sociopath
is pretty black and white, and instead it is more a sliding scale, so we are going to
decide where Logan fits on that scale and then I guess you can decide whether or not
that matters to you.
So one of the key traits is a grandiose sense of self worth….
And, well, come on… this one is obvious.
Logan Paul is arrogant.
It is not like he doesn’t have reason to be proud of himself, he does have an empire
of 18 million Youtube Subscribers and a successful clothing brand as well as a host of acting
credits.
That being said, he is in no way humble and has often labelled himself as the greatest
youtuber of all time, saying he will overtake Pewdiepie one day.
Put it this way, his self belief is off the charts…so it is a big tick there.
This leads me on to the Charming and Charistmatic thing.
While we can absolutely call Logan Charismatic, his arrogance kind of gets in the way of him
yielding any charm.
He does not come across as universally likable, which is something that a sociopath would
aim to be.
BUT that being said, he himself has claimed that the way he acts is in order to gain views,
and he actually does seem in some ways charming to people he meets one on one, so maybe he
has just realised that arrogance sells better than charm…which would be a realisation
a sociopath would have.
None the less, if we are going textbook…I don’t think we can award him charm…so
it is a 2 out of three so far.
Sociopaths have a history of early behavioural problems – while it has been claimed his
brother was more of a bully than he was, some people have accused him of not being kind,
some things may have been covered up but none the less, with what evidence we have we can’t
say this applied to him.
Sociopaths are supposed to be emotional imitators and will often make grand but hallow gestures
to try and present normal emotion, but often go overboard in trying to prove they have
these feelings.
Evidence of this can maybe be found in Logan’s – I gave my Mom 10 thousand dollars for
Christmas video, or some of the videos he has made with his ex girlfriends, but he is
nowhere near as guilty of this as his brother with the whole Jerkia thing, that being said…that
has been very successful for Jake, and I note that Logan is now involved with Clogang…
sweeping new girlfriend Chloe Bennett away on a vacation to Paris and declaring he loves
her after just a short period of dating, posting Instagram odes to her… although it seems
a little less performative than his brothers romance…so I am going to give him a 0.5
for this – which means he is on 2 and a half out of 5.
– Editors…put some insta links at the end of the script to highlight this point.
Okay, this is where it gets more convincing, sociopaths are intense, impulsive and spontaneous
to the point of compulsion.
Logan Paul is EXTREMELY intense and very impulsive.
He just bought a micropig, a snow plough, he buys ridiculous things like massive ball
pits and spends a whole day jumping around… he is elaborate and a lot of his decisions
don’t seem well thought out.
That being said, this is no ordinary guy – he is a youtuber and he has made his name on
being spontaneous and seemingly reckless -is this the way he is in real life or is this
just a performance?
I can only go with what we know and is shown, so for now, without knowing the real him…if
there is a real him, we have to give him this one.
8 out of ten on the character trait front.
Here is the scariest bit about sociopaths – they have no empathy, they feel no guilt
or shame and show no remorse.
This is the side of the personality disorder that makes sociopaths more able criminals.
It is a normal human emotion to feel empathy for others and it has to be said there have
been worrying instances where Logan has seemed devoid of this key humanising trait.
The big example is his suicide forest video.
One, does a person who feels empathy go into a known suicide spot go in dressed like THIS?
Two, do they goof around before entry…and is THIS their reaction to seeing a person
hanging.
This is a person with no shame and no empathy.
A huge tick.
Afterwards he put on a good show of feeling shame and remorse in his apology video, but
this video would not have been made if he hadn’t been called out.
He was also very quick to get back to business as usual.
Many say this was a performance of remorse and not true remorse, and I have to agree.
I remember reading an article saying his redeption arc following his fight with KSI was going
exactly as planned.
Interesting.
I think we are on 11 out of thirteen now.
Next we move to the need to dominate and control others and win at all costs.
We don’t know as much about his private life and he has been at the centre of less
friend loss and bully scandals than his brother, but if his fight with KSI and the dialogue
surrounding it says anything, I would say that yeah…this applies….
13 out of 15..ish.
I can’t tell you if he is a gifted liar because I am not personally involved with
him so we are going to have to leave that out for now… leaving one pretty key point
– high intelligence.
This is where a lot of critics will breathe a sigh of relief, for it seems that only a
fool would be stupid enough to film a dead man in a forest and call it a good business
idea … but let us be reminded that intelligence comes in many forms.
Sociopaths are not emotionally intelligent – they do not understand empathy as we know,
they can only play at it.
I hate to say it, but Logan IS clearly intelligent in a number of key ways – if he were not
business savvy, he simply couldn’t garner a following of nearly 20 million and build
a successful clothing brand.
Yes, he made a empathetically stupid mistake, but…remember that redemption arc from the
fight?
It couldn’t have been scripted better.
If you don’t like the conversation, change it.
Control it.
That.
Smart move, Logan…
Smart move.
So, all things considered, by my count, Logan fulfills around 14 of around 17 or so Sociopathic
character traits – which may not render him a black and white 100% sociopath – but
if it is a sliding scale he is after…he is at the higher end.
But, we are going on what we see…I guess only those truly close to him would be able
to tell you for sure.
In Logan’s Dear Shane Dawson video, he asks why it even matters.
He says…
“If your friend has sociopathic tendencies he is not going to stab you in the middle
of the night when he you are not looking” – and sure, maybe not….
But it would mean that your friend doesn’t really care about you, does not feel emotionally
invested in you and that you are a disposable object to them.
The question is – how comfortable would that make you feel?
A further question I would like to explore is why Sociopaths seem to be so successful
in business – does regular human emotion set us back in the work place?
If we can spot a sociopath, does this mean we could be more mindful to allow those who
do have feelings to succeed too… or, have we paved our own way to a robot take over…
okay that may be a bit dramatic, but all of the kind of questions we love to ask here
at LBQ.