Dear Logan Paul,

I hope this letter finds you well.

I do. I sincerely hope you are not feeling trapped, anxious, or isolated. I hope you are not feeling full of rage, guilt, or numb hopelessness. I hope you are not feeling like you are a burden to others or have no reason to live.

I hope you are not feeling these or any of the other symptoms of suicide.

I hope you have never wanted to die.

Because many people have — myself included.

I hope you never join the almost 800,000 people around the world who succumb to suicide in a given year.

Unfortunately, in the time it takes you to read the next few paragraphs of my letter, another person will have taken their life, with as many as twenty attempting to follow suit.

I’m sorry if those statistics make you uncomfortable.

But suicide is an uncomfortable thing.

It’s uncomfortable to think about how it’s been less than two years since I genuinely did not want to be alive anymore.

It’s uncomfortable when you have to think about the events that took place to push you to the mindset that makes death seem like a more viable and preferable option when compared to living.

It’s uncomfortable when you realize you have felt this way multiple times throughout your life, and even more so when you have to actively work to recognize and process those thoughts and their sources.

It’s also uncomfortable to watch a video where someone calls witnessing the body of someone who has felt this way and succeeded in committing suicide as “a first”.

It’s uncomfortable to know someone took a trip to a location called the “Suicide Forest” as content for their “crazy daily vlogs” and was horrified to find out there may be a reality behind the nickname.

But not, of course, horrified enough to not continue filming, getting close enough to realize the corpse had turned purple.

Horrified enough to blur the face of the victim, yes.

But not, of course, horrified enough to not edit, upload, and share the video you made for your 15 million subscribers.

Maybe I’m struggling writing this because I have too many questions and I can’t keep them all straight.

Maybe I’m struggling writing this because I have no questions for you at all.

Maybe I’m struggling writing this because I’m just furious.

I’m furious that you saw content and I saw a body.

I’m furious you peppered in what I found to be largely self-serving and far from sincere commentary on mental health, suicide, and depression.

I’m furious planned, filmed, and posted your video, then had the nerve to write an apology that failed to address anything but your own well-being.

I’m furious you realized your apology was insufficient and filmed a second apology. Only then, in what I am sure was a scripted and heavily proofread setting, did you find it appropriate to apologize to that man, his family, and his community.

I’m furious, because never in my life did I think I’d be starting 2018 by writing an open letter to a Youtube celebrity about suicide; but here we are.

It’s undeniable that what you did was morally wrong, but what you did is said and done, so why sit here discussing it?

I’d rather talk about the cycle of inaction you participated in instead.

In order to do so, I am going to assume some things based on your general lack of empathy — if I’m overstepping, I apologize.

You have never felt suicidal. You’ve never really worked through any trauma you might have experienced in your lifetime. You’ve never been granted permission to emote for fear of being shamed for expressing your feelings. I assume you adhere to the rules you have been handed by American society about what it means to “be a man.” That you see emotion as weakness and prefer to keep your worst thoughts and feelings to yourself. That you feel the need to remain stoic or give good face to the public eye instead of sharing how you truly feel.

These things do not make you an inherently bad person, but the fact you do not have the awareness or compassion to see the consequences of your actions does not hold you unaccountable. I can’t blame you for being uneducated — to a certain extent. We live in a society and world that enjoys pushing down uncomfortable topics and letting them fester until they bleed. Why would you need to know what it is like to be a woman, a neurodivergent individual, or Japanese when you are a white, cisgender, neurotypical man? Your privilege within American society and your startling aptitude to embody the toxic masculinity has, after all, gotten you this far.

I still have to ask, because your apologies don’t satisfy my frustration: did it feel wrong when you began filming that video? Was there some sort of gut feeling, a voice in the back of your head, that said: “this simply isn’t right”? If there was, why didn’t you listen to it, and stop what you were doing?

Because there are children who watched your video and, deep down, felt some sort of instinctual “wrongness” about what you did. These young people, however, will not have the avenues to discuss what they are feeling because we don’t discuss suicide, mental health, empathy, or technology nearly enough in this country. These young people will be pressured and quieted by the same societal standards that placed you in this position.

You, Logan, are not the root of this issue. Humanity has stigmatized the topic of mental health since the beginning of time. Mental illness is perceived as something to be inherently afraid of and rarely discussed openly. Suicide is nothing but ploys for attention, a presentation of utmost weakness, an act that turns a life into nothing but something to stare at and whisper about.

It still does not change the fact, however, that you do have a role in the way society continues to treat these matters.

Silence begets silence, especially about uncomfortable topics like suicide, depression, and mental illness. These young people will watch your video but have nowhere to go to try and process what they witnessed because society tells them it is inappropriate. They will have no one to talk to about how or why they felt “wrong.” So, they will quietly resign their questions, and push away that gut instinct. They will accept what they witnessed as “normal,” or, at the very least, not appalling. And they will remain silent about this and other events regarding suicide because everyone around them is similarly quiet.

This is because silence begets acceptance. Wide-scale acceptance, in turn, begets normalization. If it is normal to be silent, no one will risk ostracization to speak up.

As an individual, Logan, you did not decide what society silences, accepts, and normalizes.You did not make the society your viewers were born into, the written and unwritten rules they are pushed to abide by every day.

I am going to assume, however, that you probably have never feared some of the things they have feared, like speaking up for yourself or someone else who is struggling. Your privilege has granted you a blissful sense of ignorance— you have never had to see things from other people’s points of view.

You don’t know whether or not one of your young viewers have been born with or exposed to some of the risk factors for suicide. If they have a family member who attempted or committed suicide. If they themselves have felt suicidal at some point in time. You have no control over the way they felt when this massive piece of their life experience was turned into a ploy for viewership. The fear, confusion, and even betrayal they felt when a celebrity they looked up to turned suicide into a bad joke.

You merely have control over what you do. And as a part of your job, you control what content, to even the smallest extent, that these young minds consume. You are an “influencer,” after all.

And due to your lack of awareness, you decided to invalidate and exploit a cause of death so large it has been labeled a global epidemic; one that Japan specifically struggles with. To showcase a body like nothing more than an oddity found in the woods behind a school.

That, I realize, is what infuriates me the most. That you have the power and the platform to reach out and create positive change, and you instead perpetuated a system that continuously fails people who do not look or function like you do.

If you want to prove you understand what you did was wrong and begin to remedy it, start with this: educate yourself on what life is like for people who are different from you and let that education improve the way you view and treat others. Take this as an opportunity to use your privilege to make the world we live in a little kinder. If that’s too difficult for you, just be quiet.

Stop exploiting the suffering of others for your own gain.

And last but not least, Happy New Year.

I’m still around to say it, but that man you filmed will never get to say it again.

If you are thinking about hurting yourself, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, help is available. Call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.