Social media star Logan Paul is opening up about his whirlwind rise to internet fame. The 24-year-old recently sat down with actor Russell Brand and reflected on how YouTube is the reason why he’s reached this level of notoriety in such a short period of time. Logan also revealed that he’s matured a lot since he first started uploading videos to the streaming platform and, because of that, watching any of his old videos makes him “cringe.”

“I’ve always been a late bloomer, I’ve always been late to mature. My content…when you go back four or five years ago, a lot of it is cringe,” he admitted to Russell on the January 19, 2020 episode of Under The Skin podcast. “It’s high energy, it’s fun, but it’s like this cringe, weird version of myself… I had to learn and forge my way to become this likable guy.”

As they continued their candid conversation, Logan also said that at the start of his internet fame, he didn’t care about the impact his actions had on people.

“I was not focused on the impact of my content so much as just producing the next piece of crazy content that I could. I did not think about the impact, also didn’t really care,” he told listeners.

Logan started to be conscious of how his content affected viewers after his controversial 2017 video taken in Japan’s Aokigahara forest. He said that situation helped him to grow and realize he didn’t like the person he had become.

“It took that for me to realize that what I was doing was so f**king wrong and that social media was creating a person that was just not me. My only motivator was views. I wanted views. Views equated to money, views equated to subscribers, which equated to success,” he said. “I started to skew the person that was Logan Paul. That kid that was on Vine, Logan, was now becoming this influencer who all he cared about was making the most noise that he could…There was no foresight into the content we were creating.”

Throughout the rest of the podcast episode, Logan and Russell touched on topics like their creative processes, the impact of fame and the YouTube star’s newfound boxing career.

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