Tana y Jake: Lessons to Learn

No, of course I haven't gone all "drama blog" on you, but as you know, I do watch my share of drama channels on YouTube, because it's entertaining. We could sit down and talk whether drama channels are the new gladiator games of the world, where we gather to watch others destroy their own lives of the lives of other. Why do we, as humans, find so entertaining the disgrace and suffering of others? Oh well, that's a topic for another post.

Souce: Google Images and Flipboard.

In today's post I'd like to talk about a case I've seen on drama channels, which has gotten some hype. This is abour to YouTubers, Tana Mongeau and Jake Paul. Both of them have pretty much livestyle channels, and have been in quite a lot of drama on their own. Their style is irreverent, down right vulgar, from what I've seen, and have also been featured in Shane Dawson's docu-series.

I believe both of them have been banned from large YouTube conventions, such as VideoCon, and in Tana's case, she got some notoriety when she reacted to the banning by declaring she would do her own convention - TanaCon - which was an absolute disaster.

Jake Paul... well, I don't know much about him and haven't heard of him until Shane's docu-series, where Shane wanted to stablish whether he of his brother Logan, or both were sociopaths.

Both Tana and Jake like to party, are wrapped in constant drama and lead what looks like irresponsible lives. It seems like they just burn through the days, and up until Shane's series on each of them, it seemed like life was catching up with them, which was sad, since they are both quite young. They are both YouTube celebrities and it seems they own their fortune to the platform. From what I gather, Tana also got a reality TV series on MTV for her 21st birthday.

After Shane's series on each of them, it seems they've got together (this was this year), and appeared to begin dating. It was never quite clear that they were dating, as they seemed to be dating other people, specially Jake. Much of what happened with them was quite under the radar for anyone that wasn't following their antics, until suddenly they decided to get engaged and then married quite fast. As the news exploded, specially around their odd wedding, the news of them hit the drama channels I follow, and a bunch of recipes and videos were unloaded. They were news for a couple of days and then the novelty died out.

So, what's the deal? First of all, their whole relationship looks fake, and particularly Tana often mentions that the whole thing is "for clout". She has 4,9 million subscribers and he has 19 million. As a marketing move to get her growing, wouldn't be so bad for her. For him... well, maybe he could reach another segment of the market with her. However, their behavior is peculiar, and this is where we can learn a few things.

Both of them are clearly young and immature, but of the both of them, Jake is one to have a manipulative, abusive tendency. It has been put to evidence plenty of times, that he doesn't treat well his girlfriends, and likes to humilate them, taunt them and play rather heavy "jokes" on them. There are people on record talking about physical abuse as well. Tana is notoriously irresponsible, prone to leave everything to others and trust herself on others. She abuses of her staff and people she considers under her, but cowers in the presence of those she perceives as above her.

The things I saw that draw my attention were the dynamics and how Jake seemed to be imposing on Tana and leading her on. For instance, Tana has an MTV reality show that goes around her 21st birthday. On a birthday party planned and paid handsomely, Jake pulled some stunts that pretty much ruined the whole effort. He knew someone he doesn't like was on the guest list. He demanded Tana to uninvite the person. Tana tasked someone else to do it, but it's not clear whether it happened or not.

Either way, Jake drove to the party, made Tana leave her party to talk to him, and then, even though the person Jake wanted removed was gone, he decided he wanted to go home and took Tana with him. Note this: he made Tana, who needs public attention for the growth of her channel, and who needs the attention to feel good about herself, to leave a celebration that's all about her.

Around that time, Tana managed to be accepted again at VideoCon. She did her stunts, like disregarding time, being appalingly late and then, when told she was late, she denied it and threw a temper tantrum. She was surrounded by her adoring fans, who are all kids who take Tana's chronic tardiness as her personal mark. She makes them wait and they wait on her, not realizing the disrespect she shows with her tardiness.

Jake has been banned from VideoCon for a while. Through Tana, he managed to make her and her staff ask for him to be accepted again, allegedly, because he was her boyfriend and wanted to surprise her. He was barred, like, from the premises and all, from what I gather. He got her to get his prohibition lifted, and so he "surprised" her by walking on the stage when she was being interviewed, in front of her loving fans, in an activity all about Tana, and said he had a poem. This poem was supposed to be about their relationship, and it was really bad, but the worse part was the begining of it, where he stated in no uncertain terms, and much vulgarity, that Tana was pretty much a whore who gave him oral sex the first time they met. This in front of her fans, in an activity dedicated to her.

They were engaged to marry, and it was going to be a quick marriage, which Jake postponed three times. All the chatting and postponing was communicated through staff. Jake never told Tana in her face that he wanted to postpone, or why. At one point they were talking, and Tana wanted certainty, that the marriage was going to be legal. Jake looked at loss.

Tana was a lot on camera, trying to justify Jake fooling around with other women, as them having an open relationship. It has transpired that they haven't spent the night together either, or had sex. This even though Jake's poem claims she's easy and he can get a blow job out of her upon meeting her.

The wedding itself was not only cheap, but quite evidently fake, and much like a reality TV gypsy wedding, but with no money spent on gaudy, flashy, blinging, excessive stuff. Even a fake fight broke out. Everything about it was tacky, and they charged people $50 to watch it streaming on a streaming service that didn't work. Another TanaCor fraud case?

Once the wedding and the reception was over, Tana went home alone and Jake went to keep partying with some girls. Some suggestive pictures were posted by Jake, of him with his pants open, with two beautiful, thin girls. Tana has some overweight.

The case, for me, it's clear: Jake uses Tana for his own purposes, such as getting into places from which he has been banned, gets access to other viewers, gets higher exposition and gets his hands on a new girlfriend-victim, whom he can torment to his hearts content. For me it's also clear that he doesn't deal well with the fact that Tana is raising, getting forgiven and accepted again, or that she could be celebrated and loved by herself. He needs to impose and flex his muscle to make patent that he can destroy anything good in her life.

Tana, on the other hand, is very immature and has no grasp of what respect or responsability is, two important components of adult life. She actively ditches responsability and thus allows others to make decisions for her, plan for her, but also has no qualms to trample plans, because she doesn't acknowledge consequences. Even when she is the cause, by her ditching responsability, she mentally assigns the blame on someone else, because she makes others responsible for her life.

This avoidance of responsability is what makes her a perfect victim for people like Jake, who can take the power or authority, pretend to be responsible, and then ensnarl her in their game to pile negative consequences on her, offering her a narrow path of solution, which force her to bend to his will, do his bidding and take silently as much humiliation as he wishes to pile on her.

Jake weaponizes responsability by equating it to guilt. You see, responsability is paired with authority: when you are responsible of something, you have the authority to do something about it, and the means to do it. Jake takes the authority, pushes her into a corner, and use responsability/blame to force her when she doesn't comply, or when he wishes to punish her with some "training discipline", to get her used to his particular games.

This dynamics strip her of any respect. Jake molds her into a little less than a doormat, a typical joke-woman, the kind that embodies to his will the stereotipical stupid blond of any misogynistic joke. She's the stupid, the willless, the dirty whore that can be kicked, mocked and will eagerly come back for more. She lets him push her, debase her and ruin everything in her life. In turn, she exercises her disrespect on those that depend on her, like her staff and her fans. She disregards their time, money, effort, advise and everything else.

Now, this sort of behavior isn't just something that happens to YouTubers, but it happens to many people, of many walks of life. Many think that "adulting" is hard and prefer to keep to their childish or teeny behavior for as long as they think they can get away with it. This can be due to a faulty, sheltered upbringing where parents or guardians have failed to teach their kids from young age about responsability, and all the components of it.

The lack of respect can also be result of the upbringing and the environment in which the person developed. Either they themselves were often disrespected, or they grew up seeing people disrespect others, this is something they learned. It might happen that they were never really taught to respect others, or just in words, but that never reflected in actions.

Whether you are being a victim in a situation like Tana's, or a bystander getting affected, it's important first to recognize the situation and understand what's happening. People like Jake can make you think you need them, that the whole world will collapse if you leave them. There reside their power: they need you to stay and be willing. Thing is, the world won't collapse.

The best course of action is always to leave the situation and learn from it. If someone is like Jake, they are not going to get better, they are not going to improve nor will they correct their ways. They may change their path, but only to find a new way to torment you. Once they latched onto a prey, they will use it and abuse it until it dies or escapes. So don't fall for the promises or the hope of change.

Tana and Jake are rushing, but have no direction, no clarity. This is a mistake you shouldn't make. Even if you have no idea what you want to do with your life, there are things you might, like whether you want to travel around the world or have a house and a dog. Take those wishes for your life and make a plan about how to better get them. Learn responsability, don't avoid it. You are not going to be young and strong forever, and you will probably die old and weak. Plan ahead.