Tana Mongeau is film lucah artis indonesiathe only YouTuber whose controversial reputation can rival Jake Paul's.
Which is why it's oddly fitting that they're engaged, after a whirlwind (read: extremely public) romance that started with an innocuous selfie on Snapchat and ended with a proposal during her 21st birthday trip to Las Vegas just two months later.
Before last year, Mongeau was a brash vlogger known for doing whatever she wanted, and sharing every detail of her escapades in wild Storytime rants. When VidCon declined to give her a Featured Creator badge for its 2018 event, that tenacity led her to organizing TanaCon, an alternate convention that took place in the Marriott across the street from the building that housed VidCon. But when a 19, going on 20-year-old tries to singlehandedly plan a convention for 5,000 attendees in about 40 days, it's bound to fall apart. The disaster that was TanaCon has been compared to Fyre Fest, and it was the subject of YouTuber-turned-documentarian Shane Dawson's first docu-series.
TanaCon pushed Mongeau from a miffed YouTuber to a widely hated, but closely followed online celebrity. The controversy didn't stop there; earlier this year, she posted a photo of herself in bed and fans noticed the bed frame in the background was suspiciously similar to fellow pariah Jake Paul's, and deduced that the two were seeing each other.
The internet still hasn't reached a consensus on whether the two are actually a couple or if they're faking the relationship for clout -- both, after all, subscribe to YouTube prank culture. They're leaning into it, and have appeared in each other's videos and Instagram posts since fans made their relationship public. Paul even surprised Mongeau on stage during her VidCon Q&A to woo her with a very NSFW poem that rhymes "the day I met Tana" with "she ate my banana."
Whatever the outcome, Mongeau is still coming out victorious. For someone who was finally allowed to legally drink three weeks ago, she's accomplished a lot: Not only is she the star of her own MTV reality show, Tana Turns 21, but she was also invited to this year's VidCon as a Featured Creator.
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Mashable sat down with Mongeau at VidCon last week, where she unpacked her engagement, learning to rein in her impulsivity, and her thoughts on cancel culture.
Mashable: First of all, happy birthday.
Mongeau: Thank you!
How's your VidCon going?
Really, really good so far. This is obviously my first VidCon as a Featured Creator and I feel like I'm just walking around like, wow, 13-year-old me would have died for this. It finally does feel very full circle. I'm so ridiculously happy to be here, and I feel so welcomed.
I know last year was lots of chaos — how is this year compared to last year?
This year is definitely still chaos. I think chaos is gonna follow me no matter where I go, I'm gonna be 45 with a year full of chaos, and that's just kind of the bottom line. But I think the difference is, I've learned to handle the chaos, I've learned how to control it. I've grown a lot as a person. I feel like I'm so much less impulsive. I feel like I'm trying to calculate what I can for what the world throws me. Honestly, I feel 20 years older than last year. I literally look at who I was a year ago and I'm like damn. I just feel a lot more in my place ... nothing is shitty.
Yeah. And going off what you said about being impulsive — last year's TanaCon was an impulsive, petty lashing out at VidCon.
Yeah! Yeah.
Do you feel more emotionally mature than last year?
Absolutely! I think realizing that I'm an impulsive person, and realizing how to control that is a big thing for me. It was a mixture of a lot of things, TanaCon, it wasn't just lashing out. I think it was a lot of pain and wanting to change the industry, and wanting to create a space for creators that wasn't there. But I definitely didn't do things right at all. I think it was a really big learning experience for me. I think it forced me to wake up, look in the mirror, and be like, 'How am I gonna grow from this? How am I gonna change?' That's all you really can do when you make a mistake. Grow from it.
And that sentiment of wanting to make more of a space, letting creators have more control, do you think that was heard by VidCon?
I think that the thing VidCon and I have always had in common is that we both are idealists. What we want is a safe and comfortable space for creators to meet their fans, and for us to come together and make that ideal one big thing is so beautiful to me. For them to even hear me, for them to talk to me and want to work with me was such an honor.
Going back to that point about being impulsive: Was your engagement impulsive?
I guess you can call it impulsive, but that's a decision that's not hurting anyone. That's a decision that was out of how much we care about each other. We're both very wild people when we come together; we do some wild shit, and it's super, super fun. In a way I guess you could say that, sure, but not in a bad way.
Right, and you've had a few very public relationships since starting on YouTube.
Yes! I am a public girl.
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How is your relationship with Jake different from your past relationships? What made you say, 'This is who I want to marry.'
Wow, I think it's very real. Jake and I, always for years, from the moment we met each other have been like, wow, 'you are me in another person,' in so many ways. And the ways we're both different, I feel like we help each other grow. And I think that's the most beautiful thing about our relationship, no matter what it is, no matter the title, no matter what people think. At the end of the day, in the places that I lack, I feel like he helps me grow, and the places he lacks, I feel like I help him grow. I think we come together and we're just unstoppable, you know? It makes me happy because I think ... we're very real.
And I think he understands me. I think love is so much about understanding, and I've been in a lot of relationships that were very fun, but in the back of my head, I'm like, 'I don't know if this person understands me.'
I always know that Jake could look at me from across the room and he knows what I'm thinking. That's the difference.
I know your engagement was met with a lot of backlash from the public.
Yeah.
Because one, you're very young, and two, you're both YouTube's controversial figures.
That's true!
How do you respond to that?
At the end of the day, we're just two people with a lot of people spectating us. We know that, and we like to have fun, and we like to play on that. At the end of the day, we're not gonna focus on the people that hate on it, or expect everyone to understand it, because we are in a very unique position that most people aren't in. And we're just having fun and putting it online.
I don't know what tomorrow holds in that regard, and I'm not gonna live my life in fear of backlash or in fear of what people have to say about me. I just want to have a good time, that's what we're doing, you know?
I don't know if you're familiar with Dani Cohn, she's 15 ...
Yeah!
She was also met with significant backlash for not really having a real wedding. There's been a lot of criticism with your and Jake's relationship as being not real, and for likes. How do you respond to that?
Obviously, everything that Jake and I are doing started off as completely real. I texted him straight out of my [last] relationship like 'Be my rebound. Hi.'
We never ever, ever thought it would go on camera, at all. I've always felt like Jake and I have a special connection, friendship, romantic, whatever it may be. And we were just hanging out, and I wanted it to be completely off camera, and the public found out.
I posted a Snapchat, they saw the wood from his bed in the background. Someone caught us at a party, and people were putting it all together. It ended up publicizing itself. I never wanted that.
And I think when you're both in a position where something that was originally meant to be secret gets taken away from you. The public, they find out, they scrutinize it, they have a million things to say about it ... you're kind of faced with two options. You can let that get you down, pressure you, upset you. But Jake and I both being very controversial, wild people who love the internet and the way that it works, decided to play on that. I don't understand how anybody can be mad at that.
Because at the end of the day, we told you from the beginning, we wanted it to be a fucking secret.
Obviously, because of how publicized it is at this point, there's always going to be people that don't understand it or say that it's not real, but what is real? If we're happy and we have a great time with each other, and we make each other the best versions of ourselves, and we're taking it day by day? That's all I can really ask for, as a 21-year-old girl in this crazy space with millions of people commenting on everything I do.
So yeah, fuck the haters.
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So a lot of your relationship has beenvery public — you tweeted right after you got engaged, everything's in a vlog. Where do you draw the line between what youwill share and what's too personal for you?
That's really hard for me. I often have trouble with that, because I've always been a very, very open book as a person. And from day one on the internet I have shared absolutely everything, as it's happening real time, straight to Twitter. I've always been like that.
What I'm putting online is still me, you know what I mean? So to me, there doesn't really have to be a line. I think that it's important to take time for yourself and to make sure to have those real moments when you're in bed at night, when you're with yourself. I try to keep as healthy of a balance as I possibly can. But also YouTube, and making content, is my number one passion. I love to share it all online.
Yeah, totally. And in one of your interviews for MTV [Tana Turns 21]you mentioned that you're the "black sheep of YouTube."
Mhmm, yeah.
You've been canceled, a few times.
Oh yeah, hard.
How do you respond to that? How do you come back from that? What is your self-preservation technique?
I think that realizing that cancel culture ... it's a very crazy realization. I think that for anybody that wasn't fully aware of it, when this James Charles and Tati situation happened, everyone really saw how they woke up one day. And James Charles was completely canceled, and the next day, he was perfectly fine. And everyone was like 'What the fuck just happened?'
I think after going through some scandals and realizing that if I'm growing as a person, and I'm acknowledging my mistakes, and I'm constantly bettering myself to be the best me that I can possibly be, what more can I really be?
I'm always going to give my fans a realistic expectation and let them know that if you think I'm never gonna make a mistake again, go find another YouTuber. I will always make mistakes. I am a human being. And if you're going to cancel people for that and give them no room to grow, what really is that? That makes no sense to me.
It's really not that there's a self-preservation technique to me, but it's always that I'm gonna be as authentically myself as I possibly can. That comes with making a lot of mistakes.
I'm that bitch!
I think with YouTubers especially, there's a whole lot of pressure to be positive and wholesome and perfect. Why don't you embrace that?
I think it's unrealistic. I think coming online to millions of young, impressionable people and saying 'I'm happy all the time and my life is perfect.' And building this ideal for you to envy my life because it's so perfect ... we choose what we put out to the world and the image we want to portray.
I think to set such an unrealistic ideal to young people is so much more damaging, in my opinion. I'm always going to be realistic with how I'm feeling, and coming online and saying 'I'm sad today. I'm upset. I got my heart broken. I'm going through it. I look like shit.' Showing these people that the people they idolize and put on pedestals are just human beings just like you.
I don't know, I think that's more helpful to the young girl or young boy in school to let them know it's OK to not be OK.
The second episode of Tana Turns 21— which follows Tana in the early stages of her relationship with Paul — premiered Tuesday.
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