This week brought with it one of the most sickening and outright ridiculous YouTube dramas I've ever witnessed: namely the publishing of a video by YouTube "star" Logan Paul depicting a suicide victim in a Japanese forest.
One of the two Paul brothers, Logan and his brother Jake make some of the most popular (if arguably immature and self-idolising) content on the website. Logan has a substantial following of children. He is primarily a channel for children, in fact. And he posted an entire video on YouTube about a suicide hotspot in Japan, complete with barely censored footage of a hanging corpse.
With the stupid escalation of YouTube "pranks" and the compulsive need of vloggers to field more "extreme" content, I guess it was only a matter of time before a red line like this got crossed. But to see it crossed like this is still distasteful in the extreme.
In the blog post below I am now going to detail a numbered bullet list of exactly what about the video was so damn inappropriate and why I think Logan is completely insincere in his behaviour and, frankly, comes across as borderline sociopathic. At the very least his fame has made him delusional when it comes to selecting appropriate content and expressing his own emotions.
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1. Logan's intent behind this video is incredibly shady.
If you make daily vlogs and you KNOW an area is a renowned suicide hotspot, why on Earth would you go to that hotspot to make content for a children's channel?
There's a 30% chance on any given day that someone will have killed themselves in this area of forest. That means at least a 30% chance you will find a corpse while walking there, higher than that when multiple people die on one day or if a body is not found for a day.
Logan has a whole team behind him and will have thought this through before he went there. It would seem his actual intent was to find a dead body the whole time - either this or he is so naive he is utterly brain dead. Extremely unethical video planning, with this dubious intent supported by his deliberate inclusion of the dead body in his thumbnail.
2. The video is completely inappropriate in terms of tone.
We have Logan running around wooping and cheering, laughing, shouting nonsense phrases and pulling stupid faces. His friends stand around grinning and snickering. His female companion is particularly obnoxious: her face flits between total boredom and excitement that they've found a corpse. At times she can barely contain her boundless mirth and laughter at someone's tragic death and struggles to cover her mouth as she has a huge smile on her face.
This is all bad enough in Logan's normal vlog, where this sort of stuff comes across as irritating if you've been on this planet longer than 12 years. In a video in which he is literally stood a meter away from someone who took their own life out of despair, it's absolutely insane.
As if all this wasn't enough, he spends the whole video wearing a bright green Toy Story Alien hat. He never takes this off at any point, or even thinks to take it off. Again, what the hell was his intent when he chose to wear that?
3. Combined with sketchy editing practices, the reaction and behaviour of everyone in the video seem staged, fake, and completely vile as a result.
Logan's "discovery" of the body seems incongruous with what is otherwise going on in the video before that point. It's clearly not chronological. First they enter the forest. Then we cut suddenly to some time later, with Logan running up to the camera shouting and gurning idiotically while saying that he's found a dead body.
The way it's all filmed and Logan's odd behaviour strongly makes it seem like they actually found the dead body before filming, and then re-filmed Logan's "reaction". He doesn't seem scared, repulsed, or saddened. He seems excited and is acting like he's doing his fake happy vlog persona at maximum power.
There's even a fake "WOW" face and voice, you can see his eyes flicking back and forward to the camera as if he's on a TV show. It genuinely comes across as bad acting rather than shock or emotion, even when viewed as dispassionately as possible.
As they all approach the body, Logan's companions all line up perfectly in camera-shot all pulling the same fake over the top "WOW" faces. Logan keeps the gaudy, stupid hat on. The whole thing feels like they found the body thirty minutes ago and have then come back to approach it in synchronised timing while faking their reactions. It's just sickening.
To make it even worse, they make several comments about how it was "fate" that this man died SO THAT THEY COULD FILM HIM. What the actual heck, people. Can you be more insensitive?
And then to top it all off Logan's aforementioned female companion looks at the camera with a huge grin and begins shouting "WE FOUND...A DEAD BODY!" as if she's just won the lottery. Moments after the shot where she was laughing her head off at the edge of the screen. To which Logan responds with "YEEEEEEEP! HAHAHAHAHA!"
It's not like the recognisable effects of some sort of shock, it's just as if they have no conscience and see all of this as "funny", "wacky" content for the vlog. It's just utterly beyond belief.
4. Logan's first apology comes across as a narcissistic love letter to himself.
Logan Paul's first idea for an apology was a rambling text post in which he praises himself for creating a daily vlog for a year and how hard he works. He then refers to this as the first and only mistake he's ever made!
He makes no mention of the suicide victim that he filmed whatsover and that basically ends with the incredibly vacuous "I love everyone, I love people, #LOGANG" and a peace emoji.
It's incredibly self-serving and arrogant and makes him come across, yet again, as a total conscience-free fame-seeking dickhead.
5. It's literally impossible to tell if his followup apology video is sincere.
Logan then released a video apology in which he is much more down to Earth and apologies seemingly more sincerely.
Perhaps the only unequivocally correct point he makes in the video is that his fans should stop defending his actions. Otherwise, while some small modicum of respect is deserved for making a proper apology, from a man who makes a career from acting it feels hollow and meaningless.
6. This will seemingly not impact Paul's career because his fanbase is largely mindless.
The Pauls have a disturbingly brainwashed fanbase. The suicide forest video had hundreds of thousands of likes from immature kids even before it was pulled (and pulled voluntarily by Paul himself...not YouTube...), and Paul fans continue to defend him without pause even after he has asked them not to do so.
7. YouTube has showcased disgusting favouritism with their handling of the video
Finally, YouTube themselves have shown some very ugly behaviour regarding this video. While re-uploads of the video were pulled immediately by YouTube for "inappropriate content", they did nothing to pull the original video and even willingly promoted it to their "trending" page.
This is nothing short of outrageous when other YouTubers have faced career-ending YouTube and sponsor pulls for for lesser violations of common decency (such as PewDiePie's silly but ultimately far less disturbing "Nazi" joke).
The reason for this is simple: the Pauls make a lot of money for YouTube, and it seems they're not above sheltering them and giving them ridiculous special privileges when they would dump on other YouTubers - unacceptable.
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And with that I think I'm done with highlighting exactly how messed up this is.
Many have hailed this as a hopeful "teachable moment", as if the Pauls may grab hold of this controversy and do something with it, pull a lesson from it and not be such massive dicks in the future...but sadly, as they have proved time and time again that they are crass blockheads, I can't see that happening.
