As someone who makes YouTube videos, I try to keep myself up to date on the latest YouTubers. However, I make beauty videos, so I really only pay attention to those that make the same content that I do. One of the biggest things that turn me off about the platform, however, is how people vlog every little thing that happens to them. The bigger the person is, the more they try to outdo themselves with egregious content.
“Because, like I said, he’s a freaking self-obsessed piece of garbage.”
The first time I ever heard Logan Paul’s name was a few months back when my ten-year-old cousin asked me if I knew who he was. I said “no” and she showed me a picture of him. My initial opinion was, “Wow, he looks like a douchebag frat boy who walks around in chubbies, Sperrys, and I really want to punch him in the face.” A couple days after, a YouTuber that I do follow, made a video called “The Rudest YouTubers I Ever Met.” Long story short, the Youtuber was sexually assaulted by one of Logan Paul’s friends and Paul berated the Youtuber for coming forward with her accusations and defended his friend which is a huge red flag in my book. And on January 2, 2018, I realized that my gut opinion of him has always been 100% correct.
To catch you guys up on everything, for some reason Logan thought it would be a great idea to head over to Aokigahara, a forest just north of Mount Fuji. The forest has been nicknamed the Suicide Forest and has been a popular destination for suicide and suicidal attempts since the 1950’s. Since the forest is so large, it’s rare that one would encounter another person while inside so police have posted signs of hope and positive messages in the attempts to deter people from committing suicide. If someone does change their mind, there are strings of ribbon that help lead the person out of the forest. In school, I remember learning about honor suicides called seppuku, in which a warrior kills themselves by stabbing themselves in their stomach as it was more honorable than being captured and killed by the enemy. Because of these honor suicides, suicide was somewhat tolerated in Japan. As suicide rates began to rise, so did national concern; however, as it is in other ethnic communities, there still is a stigma in mental health. So suicide is considered to be more of a social issue than that of someone’s psych issues.
Aokigahara has become a tourist hub for Westerners and not only did Logan decide to go to this forest for some macabre reason, he decided to film his time in the forest for his YouTube channel.
I didn’t watch the video because I wasn’t about to give his content and channel more attention than it already has. So the clips that I did see were on my Facebook feed, from news sites that were covering the story, and rightfully, they outraged friends. Logan and the two people that he was with stumbled upon the body of a man who had hung himself. Given that the man’s hands were purple, it is assumed that he had committed suicide earlier that day, but Logan and his friends decided to laugh and make jokes about the dead body. Now, maybe they are the types who laugh in uncomfortable situations, but that’s beside the point. In that same video, Logan apologized to his “Logang”, as his fans who are between the ages of 10-15 are called and claimed that he wanted to do a fun video inside a possibly haunted forest. He went on to say that suicide is no joke and blah, blah, blah. Now here is where I’m going to get a little angry.
Logan is a self-centered, ego-maniac who is completely obsessed with his own fame. But, let’s be honest, he has millions of followers. However, there are millions upon millions of people who have no idea who he is, what rock he crawled from under, and why he’s relevant in the first place. Make no mistake, just because Logan made a sorry excuse of an apology video, which I forced myself to watch, he’s only sorry because of how much negative backlash he got. He knew this video would get a lot of views, and he was completely aware of the negative backlash and the attention this video would get. He profited off someone’s suicide. If that wasn’t his intention, he would not have titled the video “We Found a Dead Body in the Japanese Suicide Forest.” He said that the video wasn’t clickbait and that it was the first time in YouTube history that anything like this had ever happened to someone on the website. If it wasn’t his intention to make a buttload of money, he would not have posted the video in the first place. Logan sat down, re-watched his abhorrent video, edited it and posted it for the world to see. In another clip that I saw on my Twitter feed, Logan was talking about what he was thinking about when he realized that the body was in fact real. Yes, he stumbled across a poor soul, someone who had a family, someone who had God knows what going on in his head so that the only solution he saw was to take his own life. Not only that but since the body was not that old, his family was most likely left in the dark about his whereabouts. And Logan thought it would a good idea to talk about what was going on in his mind. Because, like I said, he’s a freaking self-obsessed piece of garbage. In his Twitter “apology” he said that he put the video up to “raise awareness for suicide and suicide prevention.” Does he really think people bought that BS? Not to mention, he quoted Uncle Ben from Spiderman in that same apology. Did he even call the authorities after finding the body?
Am I surprised that Logan posted a video like this? Absolutely not! Take one look at his hundreds of uploads, and the titles alone are cringe-worthy. This was not a mistake. Logan Paul profited off someone’s suicide and he knew exactly what he was doing.
“There are still going to be children -- because that’s who his core audience is, who will support him no matter what and parents need to talk to their children about what they watch on the internet.”
Another thing that has many people up-in-arms is YouTube’s half-assed response. YouTube is known for flagging content and demonetizing videos for having words like “shit” in the title, but Logan Paul is a big name on YouTube, and they did nothing. Even with the dead body as the thumbnail for the video, hell, the video was trending on the website. It should have been YouTube that took the video down, not Paul himself. The sad thing is this isn’t going to end Paul’s career. Before it was taken down, the video had around 600,000 likes. That’s how blindly loyal, desensitized and shallow his subscribers are. There are still going to be children -- because that’s who his core audience is, who will support him no matter what and parents need to talk to their children about what they watch on the internet.
Logan Paul is a privileged little boy, who has probably never been held accountable for his actions. I don’t want to hear anybody defending him because I’ll shut that down real quick. Logan Paul is cancelled, his equally problematic younger brother Jake is cancelled, and the whole pranking video that spawned them is cancelled.
If you or anyone you know is suffering with suicidal thoughts call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
Websites: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: https://afsp.org/
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
