This is going to be very different from anything I’ve written under BAYOG. I could’ve just made a personal account to post personal thoughts but we need to talk about this. So most of you may have already heard about this, if not I will just catch you up to speed. Logan Paul, a popular Viner turned YouTube vlogger, went to Japan for some time to get some fresh content out. You know, vlogger shit. He decided to go Aokigaha also known as the suicide forest and found a body. Not only did he find a body but he fucking put it in his thumbnail, filmed it, and interacted with it. What the fuck.
This bothered me on so many levels. I don’t want to just shit on Logan Paul as a person. I don’t like what he did. At all. But I want to express my thoughts/frustrations in a way that I can be happy with. I’m not just slandering his name but instead make sure he and anyone reading this know, why he is getting all of this hate.
I firstly want to say, this was extremely avoidable. Someone he was with mentioned that they weren’t far from their car, they could’ve gotten help, avoided recording and got views with an ounce of respect just by talking to the camera. Just watching this video it is very apparent that Logan was milking this moment as much as he can. As a YouTube vlogger who is privileged with enough money to do crazy things in such a wonderful country, how hard is to do some research about it? If you did just an ounce of research you’d know immediately how much of an issue suicide in Japan is. This leads people to believe it was intentional and that’s just awful.
Reina Scully made a great video explaining her thoughts on this issue. She points not only at who Logan Paul is as a person but how he treated the people of Japan as if they were not at the same level as himself. I do understand that he has this wacky persona but Logan needs to recognize that audience that he has is impressionable. He mentions later in the video, “See all of those kids? Imagine if they saw him?” Dude…You just showed millions of kids this. I always thought Logan was a lot brighter than Jake Paul and would make better decisions but this can cause a younger audience to find something like this as acceptable.
Some may argue that he took the original video down and has made an apology video but, is he actually sorry? No. I can’t believe someone can think it is OK to record a body hanging and interacting with it. Then he posts the video demonetized to act as though he wasn’t trying to make money or views off this. Well, how are you going to say that when your apology video was monetized?
As much as Logan Paul royally fucked up, YouTube really needs to step up. With everything they’ve done in the last few years, this is the time to gain our trust back. Logan has broken the terms of service for YouTube and they haven’t said a word. With such a massive amount of subscribers being such a young demographic, you’re allowing someone with a massive influence to do something like this again.
I’m sorry for this very ranty post but this was on my mind for a bit and I really just needed to talk about it. I promise I’ll only talk about anime now. I love Japan so much and the last thing we need is some popular vlogger to make all of us look even worse than any first impressions they have with foreigners. Thank you so much for taking the time to read this article and I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this matter. Just let me know in the comments below.