Almost everyone on social media can recognize Logan Paul, a YouTube star who has amassed over 16 million subscribers last year. He is known for his insane antics and pranks around all parts of the world, and for a while, the Internet praised him for his obnoxious nature. For the majority of his career, Logan Paul was clean regarding any scandals or misconducts. Until 2018.
In January of 2018, Logan Paul traveled to Japan to film a video about his "adventures." While having a similar persona to that of a stereotypical American tourist (but worse), Logan distastefully went around Tokyo and disrespected the people and culture of Japan. Despite his insolence in the big city of Tokyo, perhaps his venture to the forests was his ticket to the eventual catastrophe.
Logan Paul and a couple of his friends visited Aokigahara, also known as "Suicide Forest" due to the high amount of suicides that occur within it. They began walking around the forest and joking, until Logan stopped and claimed that he saw a dead body hanging from a tree. While filming the suicide victim, Logan and his friends began to laugh and joke about finding a dead body and continued talking about how that was the "craziest thing they've ever seen."
Shortly after the video was posted, Logan received major backlash from social media. Not only did he get a massive amount of criticism from regular people and celebrities alike, he also lost millions of subscribers and followers on all of his social media platforms.
After taking time to "reflect," Logan came back with a video about suicide awareness and also donated one million dollars to prevent suicide (which, by the way, happened only after his ad revenue was cut). Had he learned his lesson? We thought so. Until a couple weeks later. Right after his suicide awareness video, Logan Paul posted a video of himself with his friends being obnoxious again — tasering dead rats.
It is very clear to me that Logan Paul did not truly feel remorse about the Tokyo trip, he just put on a show for everyone watching because he got caught. The year 2018 has been rough for Logan, and earlier this month, he finally announced his retirement from doing his daily vlogs.
Logan Paul does not have any respect for the world outside of his privileged, Beverley Hills bubble, and the world is finally starting to realize it. Logan has a massive amount of influence on Generation Z, and the lifestyle he is promoting is extremely unhealthy to developing minds. YouTube, YouTubers and we as people have a duty to have respect and empathy for people, animals and cultures worldwide. By taking out a small portion of the problem, we can help to stop anymore people like Logan Paul plague the Internet.
To help eliminate Logan Paul's influence, you can go to sign a petition with over 25,000 signatures to ban him from YouTube. Also, it would benefit everyone to avoid watching his videos and earning him money for posting them. When we stop Logan Paul, we stop his legacy from being a successful one.