There is no denying that Logan Paul is one of the biggest YouTuber’s out there. With over 15 million subscribers alone his outreach is huge. Typically Logan isn’t that problematic, but his latest video is proving otherwise. Maybe he’s even worse than his problematic brother Jake Paul.
Logan’s latest video, which has been recently deleted, was called “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest…” and the thumbnail for the video showed a dead man who committed suicide.
The video starts out with a suicide warning and then shows Logan and his friends driving to Aokigahara, which is dubbed the Suicide Forest, where they are going to go camping.
While walking through the forest they found someone who has committed suicide. Logan is freaking out and he and his friends walk closer to the body while filming. They get extremely close and the camera pans up and down the man’s body. They go stand next to the dead body and Logan makes a light joke and laughs. Then he starts freaking out, being loud and disrespectful.
Naturally, people are coming from Logan for how rude and disrespectful this video is. To use a man’s death and suicide for views is beyond insensitive.
On top of that, he is using Aokigahara and Asia’s mental illness issues as click bait. Aokigahara’s nickname is the Suicide Forest for a reason. Mental illness is not widely talked about or accepted in Asia which attributes to the high suicide rates. Logan uses that to his advantage for views and doesn’t once talk about the history of Aokigahara.
Logan apologized for the video after he deleted it. His apology could have been a lot better. He says that he is human who makes mistakes and wanted to spread suicide awareness. But the only thing that was made aware was that Logan is insensitive and will do anything, like use someone’s death for views.
He then says he makes a “15 minutes TV show EVERY SINGLE DAY for the past 460+ days. One may understand that it’s easy to get caught up in the moment without fully weighing the possible ramifications.”
His fans are defending him to a certain capacity saying that laughter is a coping mechanism. But the reality is that he uploaded a video of a man who committed suicide and exploited his death for views. Even if he didn’t monetize the video there is no denying that he is using this video for attention. It’s beyond heartless.
At the end of the video, he says his reason for posting it is because he’s a vlogger. He documents his life and because this happened to him he gives himself permission to share it.
If Logan actually wanted to spread suicide awareness and not just ostracize a man’s death for YouTube views he wouldn’t have shown any of the footage of the man and instead talked about mental illness and suicide. But none of that happened and he didn’t even provide suicide hotline or resources in this video.
Needless to say, I think Logan Paul is canceled along with his brother Jake. People are demanding his YouTube channel be taken down and are upset that YouTube didn’t initially block or take down the content.
Update
YouTube has released an official statement about the video and Logan has issued another apology.
In YouTube’s statement, they pay their respects to the person and their family and state, “YouTube prohibits violent or gory content posted in a shocking, sensational or disrespectful manner.If a video is graphic, it can only remain on the site when supported by appropriate educational or documentary information and in some cases it will be age-gated.”
In Logan’s second apology, which was a video, he was more apologetic. Logan is clearly emotional and apologizes to his fans, viewers, people with mental illness and the victim and his family. He also asks his fans to not try and defend his actions because they were indefensless.
The apology seems sincere, but it took almost two full days for a sincere apology to arise.
