Logan Paul Video Film Dead Body Suicide

Photo: Todd Williamson/WireImage.

Update 12th January 2018: Paul has been dropped by Google Preferred, which helps YouTube channels find brand advertisers. He has also been also dropped from the YouTube Red series Foursome, as well as from the upcoming original film The Thinning: New World Order.

This story was originally published on 2nd January 2018

While many of us spent the new year throwing confetti and sipping sparkling drinks, YouTuber Logan Paul made a different impression on 2018. Over the weekend, the 22-year-old uploaded a video titled “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest…” The video, which has since been deleted, showed the body of someone who appeared to have died by suicide, and while the face was blurred, people were extremely disturbed and upset that Paul would include something so sensitive in a video.

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"This is not clickbait," Paul says in the opening. This is the most real vlog I’ve ever posted to this channel. I think this definitely marks a moment in YouTube history because I’m pretty sure this has never hopefully happened to anyone on YouTube ever."

According to Vulture, Paul stumbled upon the alleged body while visiting Aokigahara, a part of Japan's Mt. Fuji known as the "suicide forest."

"Yo, are you alive?" he says in the video. "Are you fucking with us?" He films the body, only turning the camera back to himself to talk about suicide and mental health.

"Suicide is not a joke," he told his viewers. "Depression and mental illness are not a joke. We came here with an intent to focus on the 'haunted' aspect of the forest. This obviously just became very real, and obviously a lotta people are going through a lotta shit in their lives."

While reports that the video was not monetised, and that the description pointed people to the American Society for Suicide Prevention, many viewers accused the creator of exploiting a suicide victim for clicks.

i can’t believe there are still people who support logan paul after he took a video of someone’s dead body who had killed themselves and felt the need to put it on youtube.
— anne?? #BBN (@pettyyankeefan) January 2, 2018

What Logan Paul has done is so disrespectful his account should be suspended from YouTube. My little sister saw the whole video before he removed it and was disgusted? a real dead person who will never know that his dead body was made a joke on Logan Paul’s YouTube channel
— Urvi (@GxssipQuxxn) January 2, 2018

I watched @LoganPaul's Suicide Forest video before it was taken down. I think he went too far by circling the body and filming it up close and therefore it shows a complete lack of compassion for someone's life.
— LILLI (@lillianadee) January 2, 2018

The backlash was so strong that even celebrities have started to weigh in on the news.

Dear @LoganPaul,

How dare you! You disgust me. I can't believe that so many young people look up to you. So sad. Hopefully this latest video woke them up. You are pure trash. Plain and simple. Suicide is not a joke. Go rot in hell.

Ap
— Aaron Paul (@aaronpaul_8) January 2, 2018

Re: Logan Paul, something I always think about is when people make...ethical mistakes, as in, not-illegal, should we really be trying I ruin their lives and end their careers or accept the apology, personally make a choice to stop watching, and move on.
— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) January 2, 2018

In an apology note later posted on his Twitter, Paul apologised for the the video but pushed back at comments accusing him of using suicide to get clicks.

"I didn't do it for views. I get views," he wrote. "I did it because I thought I could make a positive ripple on the internet, not cause a ripple of negativity. That's never the intention."

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However, he said it's "easy to get caught up in the moment without fully weighing the possible ramifications," and promised nothing like this would happen again.

Dear Internet, pic.twitter.com/42OCDBhiWg
— Logan Paul (@LoganPaul) January 2, 2018

YouTube released an official statement to vlogger Philip DeFranco condemning the content featured in Paul's video and explained their policy on graphic videos.

I just received an official statement from a contact at @Youtube regarding the outrage and controversy around Logan Paul’s (now self-removed) “We found a dead body” top trending Youtube video.

I’ll save my personal comment for later. Just wanted to pass this along. pic.twitter.com/JNTQDMVvT4
— Philip DeFranco (@PhillyD) January 2, 2018

This isn't the first time Paul has made waves on the internet. He and other vloggers both in and surrounding a group called Team 10 make much of their content based on diss tracks and drama — either real or manufactured. It's hard to say with this particular brand of vlogger what's real and what's created specifically as a stunt.

Regardless, Paul's defecse of the slip-up points to the very cause of its existence: YouTube's shift towards daily vlogging and documenting every aspect of your life unfiltered leaves little room for self-reflection, and the pressure to post content as soon as it happens means things that should be kept private end up getting broadcast to millions of people before the creator has time to process the actual message they're sending. In 2018, it may be time to opt out of the 24 hour content cycle — but judging by Paul's latest tweet, that won't be happening any time soon: