ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT'S ME, JAKE

How societal menace and serial disrupter JAKE PAUL is trying to change the sport of boxing, influence influencer culture, and, gulp, maybe change the world, too.

- MICKEY RAPKIN

ON A HOT EARLY SUMMER AFTERNOON JAKE PAUL SITS IN HIS BACKYARD, TELLING ME ABOUT THE TIME GOD SPOKE TO HIM.

We're poolside at his $16 million house on the north side of Puerto Rico, where he lives and trains. And while I'maware thata chat with God is exactly the kind of story a YouTube-provocateur-turned-pro-boxer might invent for clicks, this is not a bit.

On his podcast, BS w/ Jake Paul, the 27-year-old comesoffas abrash shit-talker (and he is, recently claiming that Conor McGregor tweets at 3:00 A.M. on coke). But Paul is more thoughtful IRL, nervous almost, clutching his left forearm as he speaks. His features are softer, too; he looks like the villain in The Karate Kid if you drew him from memory.

"I'm going to explain something that can't be explained with words," he tells me, slowly and deliberately. "And that's really how I describe it to people." He was under the influence of the psychedelic DMT a few years ago. "It's like you go into this space where you fully understand human consciousness and the universe and how everything is interconnected, and that the whole universe is just one being." As he tells it, both times he tried DMT, God laid out the same mission for him. It's a big one. We'll get to God's plan soon. But I had to wonder if our Lord also had a few questions for Paul first.

Paul's reputation precedes him. As high school kids in Westlake, Ohio, he and his older brother, Logan, made their names on the short-form-video site Vine, where their Jackass-style bro comedy attracted millions of followers (and brands chasing that clout) in 2013. Their fame outlived the app, so they migrated to YouTube. In 2016, Disney hired Paul to play (what else?) a YouTuber on a show called Bizaardvark. Midway through season 2, they split: Paul's brand of hijinks (setting fire to furniture in an empty pool) was off-brand for the Mouse.