If you are someone who regularly watches YouTube videos, then you have probably heard of a young man named Logan Paul. Logan is a 22-year-old YouTube vlogger who gained most of his popularity of the now-deceased app “Vine.” He has over 19 million subscribers on his main vlog channel, but his fame doesn’t stop there. Logan has expanded his career to include acting, even starring in his own YouTube Red original movie, The Thinning.

Logan Paul has been under fire for the past few days because of his most recent travel vlog involving the infamous Japanese Suicide Forest named “Aokigahara” (Sea of Trees). The forest lies at the base of Mount Fuji and is a common site for people to commit suicide, hence the nickname. Hundreds of people walk into the forest each year with the intention to take their own lives. The number grew so high that Japanese officials have stopped publicizing the numbers in attempts to disassociate the forest with suicides. (source)

Logan Paul’s video, titled “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest…,” was disgusting and disrespectful to anyone who has been affected by suicide. The video’s thumbnail even featured a photo of the deceased person’s body hanging from a tree, blurring only the face and some of the torso.

He starts the video off by stating that he’s “pretty sure this has never, hopefully, happened to anyone on YouTube,” awarding himself a spot in “YouTube history.” Later, Logan mentions himself that over 100 people kill themselves every year in the forest, solidifying the fact that he knows that this is an active suicide spot that he could potentially find a dead body in at any given time.

They wander into the forest and eventually stumble upon the dead body, they get close up to the body and never stop filming. Logan tries to say that suicide is never the answer but continues to cut back to the man’s body, showing close ups of the face and torso, though he does blur the man’s face. The video ends with Logan expressing his feelings about suicide and leaving numbers for help hotlines.

After receiving a wave of backlash from people all over the Internet, Logan deleted the video and issued an apology on his twitter. For myself and many others, this apology felt disingenuous. He only mentions himself, giving no apology to the victim or his family, and attempts to make himself the victim.

He states, “I didn’t do this for views, I get views,” reminding himself and everyone reading that he is a star. Not only this, but I believe this is the first apology I’ve seen that ends with a hashtag, “#Logang4Life.” (source) He later released a more sincere apology on his YouTube channel in which he asks his fans not to defend his behavior, which “does not deserve to be defended.”

I believe that Logan deserves every bit of the criticism he is receiving. Many YouTube creators have visited the Suicide Forest and done so in a respectful way. There is a difference between creating a video in order to inform and spread awareness and creating a video that is disrespectful and makes fun of someone who took their own life.

Logan Paul is young, and I hope that he will learn from this mistake. I don’t believe that he is a bad person, but I believe that he has done a lot to deserve criticism. This isn’t the first time Logan has been under fire, but hopefully this situation will be his last time.