YouTube Star Logan Paul Films Dead Body [VIDEO]

Logan Paul, 22, is considerably successful as the host of a prolific YouTube channel that has accumulated over 15,000,000 subscribers. He’s been featured in film and television and he has his own band, called Maverick. Paul, however, recently became the center of controversy for an inappropriate video he posted on Sunday, and it raises questions regarding the nature of YouTube and its stars.

LOGAN PAUL FILMS DEAD BODY VIDEO

Paul, along with a couple of his cohorts, recently visited Aokigahara, a forest in Japan infamous for the number of suicides that occur there. Paul begins by informing his audience that he hasn’t monetized this particular video, but he implores them to “buckle the **** up,” boasting how they will never see a video like this again. As Paul and his party were exploring, they stumbled upon a lifeless body. Paul asked, “Yo, are you alive?”

Once it became apparent that the man was not, Paul apologizes to the Logang (his name for his fanbase), adding, “This was supposed to be a fun vlog.” Although Paul insisted he was aware of the seriousness of the situation, he appeared to struggle holding in laughter while making inappropriate comments about the victim and his own green hat. Paul also filmed a closeup of the victim’s discolored hand. Moreover, the video was categorized with a “comedy” tag.

Upon receiving widespread negative press and denouncements, Paul has since deleted his video (although copies of it uploaded by others still exist on the site). He subsequently offered two apologies, the first via Twitter and the second through YouTube. Regardless, this does nevertheless bring up the debate of how YouTube should handle users who violate its guidelines regardless of how prolific they are on the platform.

Paul’s video also challenges how thoroughly Google monitors content that’s allegedly child-friendly. Paul isn’t the only noteworthy YouTuber guilty of poor social judgement. Felix Kjellberg, known as PewDiePie to his audience, posted several anti-Semitic videos last year and said the n-word on stream.