I made a TikTok account to share my normal life as a dad. Then people started thinking I was Logan Paul, and everything changed.

Rodney Petersen is a 34-year-old TikToker with 130,000 followers. Rodney Petersen and Logan Paul via YouTube TikToker Rodney Petersen keeps getting mistaken for controversial YouTuber Logan Paul. Petersen said it has exposed him to negative comments, but also helped him grow his platform.

  Here’s the story of how Petersen used the comparisons to his advantage, as told to Charissa Cheong.   This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rodney Petersen, and it has been edited for length and clarity. For most of my life, I basically never went on social media.

I didn’t have a Facebook account, and I’d certainly never been on TikTok. I was just a dad to four kids who spent most of my time at work building fences.  One day, in 2020, my wife showed me some funny TikTok videos, and we got hooked on them.

We decided to start individual TikTok accounts and hold a competition for who could reach 1,000 followers first. She blew me completely out of the water, but even after she beat me I continued posting, mainly about my hobbies, which are music and ju-jitsu — a form of Japanese martial arts — as well as my children.  My account was growing, and I was building a community of followers.

But then people started to say they thought I looked like Logan Paul, and my experience on TikTok was transformed. Being compared to Logan Paul has led to some negative commentsIn early 2021, I’d never heard of YouTuber-turned-boxer Logan Paul. But when people started flooding my comments section saying they thought I looked like him, I googled him and discovered he’s a hugely popular influencer with a controversial past.

  A post shared by Logan Paul (@loganpaul) Most famously, he made headlines in in December 2017, when he posted a video of him and his friends discovering a body in Japan’s so-called “suicide forest,” drawing huge global backlash. As a result, I sometimes receive negative comments from viewers, such as from a person who commented “you and your brother are jokes of the world,” as if I was actually Logan himself, which is so strange. @rodneypetersen0 Reply to @xavier22ooo5 i hope you’re having an awesome day #loganpaullookalike #doppleganger #rodneypetersen ♬ Roxanne – Instrumental – Califa Azul Still, my son told me he watches Paul’s videos and looks up to him as a role model, so I didn’t really mind the comparisons at first, although I don’t see the resemblance at all — we’re both above six feet and have blonde hair and a beard, but when I look in the mirror, I obviously see myself, not someone else.

  @rodneypetersen0 Reply to @stormyethan #loganpaul #notloganpaul #doppleganger @impaulsive #rodneypetersen @loganpaul @ksi ♬ Write This Down – Instrumental – SoulChef  I look skinnier than Paul and have a thinner face, so I often receive comments from people calling me “Logan Paul after drugs,” or the “cracked out” version of Paul. While these aren’t exactly flattering, it doesn’t bother me and I’ve learned to let these comments go straight in one ear and out of the other.   @rodneypetersen0 Reply to @stormyethan #loganpaul #notloganpaul #doppleganger @impaulsive #rodneypetersen @loganpaul @ksi ♬ Write This Down – Instrumental – SoulChef  I sometimes reply to negative comments by making a joke and putting a positive spin on them.

I know that my TikTok videos are going to be up on the internet for a long time, and if my kids were to see them one day, I’d want to have set a good example for them by responding kindly to everyone.  Personally, I’ve grown to really like Paul. I don’t often have the time to sit and watch an entire episode of his podcast, but I do watch snippets of his content, and I think that over time he’s stopped acting a fool and has done a lot of good things.

I don’t think it’s fair to judge anyone solely on their mistakes.   I’m now using the comparisons to Logan Paul as a way to generate more views and create new content When I first started getting compared to Paul, I tried to avoid engaging with the comments because I didn’t want to be known as a doppelganger and then never be able to escape that online identity.  However, when I started experimenting with making content about it, I noticed that videos in which I talked about Paul would do really well.

So I just decided to roll with it.   A post shared by Logan Paul (@loganpaul) I rebranded my TikTok account by changing my profile description to “not Logan Paul,” and have made videos recreating Logan’s old videos and doing impressions of him. I now have over 130,000 TikTok followers, while this last time last year, I only had around 7,000.

 In June, Logan’s brother Jake commented on one of my videos, joking, “Bro why haven’t you texted me back. ” It was really cool to see him get in on the joke. Some of my fans said they’d love to see a collab between me and Logan or Jake, which I would definitely love to do if the opporunity arose.

@rodneypetersen0 Replying to @kalak_tupilak Prime Parody #notloganpaul #rodneypetersen #staypositive #logang #whatspoppin ♬ original sound – Rodney Petersen I’m happy to run with this Logan Paul doppelganger bit as long as it keeps bringing me views. In a funny way, I’ve found that it’s allowing more people to find me and get to know who I am. People used to come up to me in the street because they thought I was Logan Paul, but now, they know that I’m his doppelganger on TikTok, they know my accounts and real name, and they want a picture with the actual me.

 Eventually, I would like to go back to focusing on my dreams in martial arts and music, but for now, looking like Logan Paul is bringing me the extra cash I need to be able to chase those dreams, so I’m going to make the most of it.  For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider’s Digital Culture team here. Read the original article on Insider.