Like many young stars in the last decade, Logan Paul found fame through
YouTube. Along with his brother, Jake Paul, the 22-year-old makes vlogs and videos of himself - usually "pranking" other people.
Anyone who is familiar with the YouTuber would probably agree that his material only appeals to certain tastes, and, as a result, he has faced a certain amount of backlash in the past for being insensitive or immature. In his latest video, however, Logan pushed the boundaries a lot further than he ever had done before, and ended up upsetting even some of his most loyal fans.
The video, which was titled,
"We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest..." showed Logan and a group of friends trekking through the infamous Aokigahara Forest, and subsequently mocking a suicide victim they found hanging from a tree.
During the 15-minute clip, which was posted on Sunday, Logan asks his guide, "Did we just find a dead person in the suicide forest hanging?"
The video then cuts to a shot of the body, while Logan shouts at it from behind the camera.
"Yo, are you alive? Are you f**king with us?" he yells.
Not only is this extremely offensive, it's also potentially traumatizing for Logan's fanbase, who are mostly children and younger people.
Aaron Paul (no relation), the actor best known for his role as Jesse in Breaking Bad, hit out at the YouTuber, saying: "I can't believe that so many young people look up to you."
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Others were also upset at YouTube for allowing the content to reach number one on their trending list without being flagged or taken down.
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Logan has since offered an apology on Twitter, claiming that "This is a first for me... I'm still a human being. I can be wrong."
However, he also claimed that he made the video to make a "positive ripple on the internet", which seems incredibly insensitive to his followers - and other people who saw the video - who have to deal with depression and suicidal thoughts, or have known people that died by suicide.
He also claims that he didn't do it for the money but, as he is said to make $150,000 per Facebook post and $80,000 for sponsored content on Instagram, many will see that as a dubious statement.
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Unsurprisingly, many people aren't buying it.
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If Logan's video truly was an attempt to raise awareness about suicide, as he claims it was, then he went about it in a severely misguided way. Making a mockery of the dead and exploiting their bodies for shock reactions simply isn't ok, and he should have realized that before posting the video to his 3.4 million followers.
The last known number of suicides completed in the forest was 54 in 2010, but over 200 people had attempted to end their lives on the site that year. Since then, local officials have stopped releasing the numbers of deaths in order to decrease Aokigahara's association with suicide. However, it still remains a huge part of Japanese folklore.
The clip has since been removed from YouTube, and Logan has not said anything more since issuing the Twitter apology.
