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On December 31, YouTube celebrity Logan Paul received a massive amount of backlash and criticism during his trip to Japan due to his video showing a dead body in Japan’s most popular suicide site, Aokigahara forest. Aokigahara is located at the north side on the base of Mt.Fuji, east of Tokyo and Yokohama. Suicide rates in Japan are high by global standards, and some victims of this trend choose to end their lives in established sites like Aokigahara, also known as the “Sea of Trees,” even traveling long distances away from their home province to die there. In 2003, 105 dead bodies were found in Aokigahara, and the numbers have been rising ever since (source / source).
Paul visited the forest with a few companions, laughing and joking about the situation. Even though they ended up calling the police, the decision that they made to film the dead body hanging from a tree was perceived to be very childish by Paul’s many critics. The video moved to the tenth place of YouTube trending, with 6.3 million views in the span of 24 hours before being taken down by Paul himself due to the massive amount of backlash received in the comments.
The video was clearly against YouTube’s policy due to the editor only censoring the dead body’s head, but YouTube did not take the video down before the backlash was registered. Could this be because Paul was making them a tremendous amount of money? This is a crucial feature of the controversy: when other YouTubers re-uploaded the video after Paul deleted it, theirs were taken down right away. After the situation, YouTube put Logan Paul’s YouTube Red series on hold, and cut his YouTube revenue by half as a punishment for the video. Even though Paul received hate from a majority of the YouTube community, he still gained more than 1 million subscribers, and his fan base—which many feel consists of ignorant and arrogant children—continues to sing his praises.
In my opinion, young people are interested in watching people who are intentionally arrogant and insensitive because they don’t usually see people act like that in real life. Kids look up to Logan Paul, and think acting like him might make them cooler. I think that Logan Paul’s videos should be age restricted because they teach minors to be ignorant and reckless, like how he portrays himself in his videos. Since his fanbase is vocal and aggressive, he seems more popular than he really is, and his young and impressionable supporters help spread a toxic wave of cultural ignorance and disrespect.
What do you think about controversial and provocative videos like Logan Paul’s? Share your comments with us below.
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