Entertainment is paramount in our lives. It's something that has become more and more prevalent in recent decades because of it's accessibility. Want to watch your favorite show? You can turn on the T.V. sure but why not watch it on your tablet? Or your computer? Or your phone even? Don't feel like doing that? Well log in to YouTube, and check out the infinite flow of videos just waiting and yearning for your eyes to view them.

Just like consuming entertainment has become such a big part of our lives, social media and the internet as a whole has made providing that entertainment just as important. We want people to see our lives and think "Wow, what an amazingly interesting person." And when those select few actually procure an audience that regularly watches their content, the desire to keep them watching and the thirst to find more eyes is agonizingly strong. That's how we got here. That's how we got Logan Paul

For those that don't know, Logan Paul is a YouTube celebrity who creates daily vlogs. He has a massive following on YouTube, totaling over 15 million subscribers. He uploaded a video on December 31st that showed him going into the infamous Aokigahara forest, which is nicknamed the “Suicide Forest.” Upon entering the forest, he appears to find a man who has hung himself. He proceeds to film the body and his reaction to finding it, only blurring his face. He later jokes about the body and includes a image of it in the thumbnail of the video. The video was met with massive and understandable outrage. And Paul has since apologized and taken a break from his vlog series.

Nothing I am going to say here is going to acquit Paul of what he's done. It was a tasteless, disgusting, disrespectful publicity stunt that should see him removed from YouTube altogether. But what really troubles me about this is what has happened after he posted it. Not the backlash, but the support. Until Paul took the video down, it had over 600,000 LIKES. Over the course of this scandal, Logan Paul has seen his subscriber count continue to GROW, gaining over 80,000 new subscribers on January 3rd alone.

So when people ask themselves "Why would someone think this would give them views and fame?" It's because it did exactly that, and is continuing to do so. Logan Paul is not going anywhere. Sure, he will take a few days or even weeks off but he will be back, once the memory of this has faded. And his fan base will be unwavering, ready to watch his every move and be entertained by his antics.

We as a society need to take a step back and really think about what we are cultivating as a culture. We support people like this with views, with buying their merchandise and funding their lavish lifestyle. We don't sterilize and cure the virus, we make it spread. The man in that video was not a prop, he was a son, a friend, a family member. He had a life that was in no way less significant than Logan Paul's or anyone else's. But he was used as a cheap trick to drive people to a website.

We should not be ok with that. We should never be ok with that, and we should fight back against this type of idiocracy at every point it surfaces. It's the only way we get better. Because we NEED to get better.