YouTube star Logan Paul is facing backlash after he posted a video of himself and friends finding a hanging body in Japan’s Suicide Forrest. While Paul claimed that the video was supposed to be a “fun vlog” many think that Paul was making light of suicide, which is a serious issue.
The original 15-minute video, which was posted on Sunday, December 31, showed Paul and friends traveling through a forest at the base of Japan’s Mount Fuji known as the “Suicide Forest”. The “Suicide Forest” is infamous for the high number of self-inflicted deaths that happen there per year.
In the video, the group appears to discover a deceased body hanging from a tree. The most incendiary moment comes when Paul zooms in on the body while police are called. While the man’s face was blurred, the rest of his body was visible:
“Top one, this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m ain’t going to be sober for this s**t. I’m gonna drink this Japanese sake. Me smiling and laughing is not a portrayal of how I feel about the circumstances. Everyone deals with s**t differently. If you guys haven’t noticed,I cope with things by humor. While this is incredibly sad, I’ve said it a thousands times this is crazy,” Paul says in the video.
You can watch the full video uploaded by TMZ below, however, warning: the below video contains very graphic content that most find disturbing.
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Paul, 22, was born on April 1, 1995, in Westlake, Ohio. He began making videos for YouTube when he was 10-years-old, eventually launching his own channel called Zoosh. He achieved widespread fame following the launch of Vine.
Paul, who has over 15 million subscribers on YouTube, receives up to 20 million views on some of his vlogs. He has made a guest appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and had a role in the comedy series Weird Loners. Paul also appeared in the YouTube Red film The Thinning and Airplane Mode.
An apology was released on Twitter, however, many are accusing Paul of making the apology about himself:
https://twitter.com/LoganPaul/status/948026294066864128
At 11:45 AM on January 2, Paul posted a two-minute apology video on Twitter, saying he “made a severe and continuous lapse in my judgment” and that the reactions seen in the video were “raw and unfiltered”. Paul also told his fans “not to defend his actions”.
https://twitter.com/LoganPaul/status/948233761665171456
Celebrities such as Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) and Sophie Turner (Game Of Thrones) have strongly spoken out on Twitter against Paul and his video, with Aaron Paul (the actor who played Jesse Pinkman), telling Logan to “rot in hell”:
https://twitter.com/aaronpaul_8/status/948032944408444928
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