This Popular YouTuber Is Under Fire for Videotaping a Body Inside Japan’s Infamous Suicide Forest
At the end of 2017, YouTube celebrity Logan Paul took a trip to Japan. On Dec. 31, he posted a video named “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest.” Unfortunately, the video wasn’t just a discussion of the Logan Paul suicide victim himself or what happened after he was found. Instead, Paul just filmed the actual body — prompting outrage around the world.
The Logan Paul suicide forest video
In the now-deleted video, Paul and his friends go to Aokigahara in Japan. Aokigahara is a forest at the base of Mt. Fuji. Aokigahara also has the unfortunate reputation of being the “suicide forest,” where an untold number of people go to kill themselves annually, partly because of the forest’s vast size and remoteness. Prior to being deleted, the video had at least 6.3 million views.
In the video, Paul and his friends wandered into a restricted area of the forest — Paul wearing a blue Gucci coat and Toy Story alien hat. The men go a short distance into the forest to find a recent suicide victim. Paul says “I really hate to say this, I think there’s someone hanging right there. I’m not even fucking kidding.”
The body is blurred out, however as Paul approaches the body, there are several close-up shots of the body. Only the victim’s face was blurred. Paul asks the victim “Yo are you alive? Are you fucking with us?” They then point out the victim’s “purple hands” and full pockets.
Paul also circles the body with the camera, zooming in on the victim, screaming sentiments like “What the fuck is going on?” and “It doesn’t make sense, bro!” When one of his compatriots says he “doesn’t feel good,” Paul mocks him, laughingly asking “What, you never stand next to a dead guy?”
Backlash to the Logan Paul suicide forest video was swift
Paul initially promoted the video with a few awkward tweets, claiming he’s posting “the craziest and most real video I’ve ever uploaded.” Once the video came out, people on Twitter were understandably outraged.
It is the purview of the privileged young to believe everything is for them, to be commented on by them. The young person who died was not for Paul- not their body, not their image, not their story.
— Caitlin Doughty (@TheGoodDeath) January 2, 2018
Earlier today, Paul apologized — but only after plugging his next vlog, “Real Life Pokémon Go in JAPAN”:
Dear Internet, pic.twitter.com/42OCDBhiWg
— Logan Paul (@LoganPaul) January 2, 2018
So sorry. pic.twitter.com/JkYXzYsrLX
— Logan Paul (@LoganPaul) January 2, 2018
In the apology video, Paul says the reactions on the tape were “raw and unfiltered.” He says he should have put the camera down and apologizes:
to the internet, to anyone who’s seen the video… to anyone who’s been affected or touched by mental illness or depression or suicide, but most importantly, I want to apologize to the victim and his family. For my fans who are defending my actions, please don’t. They don’t deserve to be defended.
This is not Paul’s first brush with controversy. Earlier this year, he was arrested for flying a drone near the Colosseum in Italy and accused of being misogynistic. His brother, YouTuber Jake Paul is known for a number of obnoxious stunts, including harassing his neighbors, making racist comments to fans and being outed as a bully.
