As many of you have probably already heard, Logan Paul recently took a trip to Aokigahara, otherwise known as the Suicide Forest in Japan. Paul has faced a lot of criticism for his vlog of the event where he shared a video of a body of someone who had possibly hung themselves just a few hours prior to Paul and his friends come across it. While Paul's apology states "I intended to raise awareness for suicide and suicide prevention..." I and many others find this a little hard to believe.
Paul starts the video of him standing on a street corner stating how it is graphic, showing that he did take thought into what his viewers, of mainly young teens, will be seeing. Next thing you know, you're joining him as they drive Mount Fuji where the forest is located. On the way, Paul has a recap of 2017. He also states how "We are going to make 2018 great."
As Paul and his friends get out of the car, he already somewhat starts joking about the thought of going and seeing the Suicide Forest. While he says he wants to slow it down for New Year's since he his life is 'always going', and to dedicate the New Year to find himself. Before entering the forest, you can tell that Paul and his friends are very hype and are in good spirits as they make jokes about the forest and how 'you can't say dead' around the forest.
While walking through the forest, things start to take a turn for the worst. He shows a body hanging from a tree where he states in the video how the body's hands are still purple like this could've happened this morning. Please Paul, how is this in any way or form helping suicide awareness and/or how it is respectful at all? Granted you did think enough to blur the body's face out. Also, Paul's reaction to finding the body was completely different than how I think any normal person would react to seeing a body and it seemed very overplayed with how close he was to the body to film it.
Also within the video, Paul takes the time to turn it into a PSA and states how he was planning to talk about how suicide and depression isn't a joke when they had set up camp for the night. While this may be accurate, there would be plenty of other ways to talk about the importance of mental health. He also states "this just turned way too scarily real." Paul, you were about to spend a night in a forest that 100's of people take their own lives every year. What do you mean it was just then real? And showing your viewers of the age range that you have was obviously not the best choice. But you took the time to upload the video to your computer, edit it, and upload it to YouTube and you didn't realize that maybe it was wrong until 12 hours after it is uploaded?
After the PSA, a few of the people with Paul state how they aren't feeling that well, and for obvious reasons. Paul answers with the witty comment of "What you've never stand next to a dead guy?" which is quickly followed by a laugh. If how you felt about mental health was true within a few minutes ago of the video, why all of a sudden has it become a joke?
The group then all stands in front of the camera which the girl states "we were going to pretend that we saw things in here." I don't know about you, but that leads me to believe that Paul's half-hearted PSA was not ever actually going to happen but it worked with what he had just seen.
Once returned back to the entrance of the path, Paul sees kids running around where he yells to the camera "What if the kids would've seen it?" While this is a concern, it's also somewhat of a blame to the victim. I'm sure the human who felt that suicide was their last choice wasn't hoping that kids would stumble upon them, but more that no one would.
Paul ends his video with him in a stairway and telling the viewers how they are not alone. Fully ending it with the suicide hotline number for 3 different countries.
After 12 hours, Paul finally takes down the video. While many of his fans had already seen it, many are glad that it is off, but still, see the damage it has done. Paul decides to post an apology video, but he also monetized it, knowing it will get many views and he will be earning a large amount for it. Because of this fact, I refuse to watch the apology. Below is Paul's apology that he has posted on Twitter.
