To people who feel suicidal or have suicidal thoughts: suicide is not the answer. Life sucks. Life isn't easy. But it will get better. Whether you are struggling for 1 month, 2 years, or 30 years, at one point your life will become better. The important thing is that you work on making it better. You can call your country's suicide prevention lifeline, make an appointment with a psychologist, or talk to someone you trust. Ending your life won't solve anything.
New year, new Youtube drama. Are you ever tired of it? I know I am, but I am never tired of talking about it and this time we are going to discuss some Logan Paul drama. I will not only talk about Logan Paul but also about everyone who is profiting from this entire fiasco right now and it's pissing me off :)
To give you a background of the situation: Logan Paul, a 22 year-old Youtuber, uploaded a vlog (a blog in video format) on Youtube about him going to the suicide forest in Japan. He wanted to report hauntings and other spooky stuff or something. Once there, him and his crew found a dead body hanging from a tree. You can watch the video here:
Once the video was posted people went crazy over it; calling it disrespectful towards the victim (which it was) because the victim was shown hanging in the video.
Now, I am not writing this article to only attack Logan Paul, because people on the internet are doing that enough already. Does he deserve much of the backlash? I would say so. I don't understand why he showed the victim hanging. Doesn't matter if he taped the suicide victim or not (albeit it being disrespectful), he could've edited that part out. Apparently the hanging victim was also shown in the thumbnail, which is very disturbing. All he did was sensationalizing suicide which is as fucked up as it can be.
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| not the actual thumbnail but an edited one by Matt Jarbo (they only added the circle, arrow, and wtf) |
When I was doing my research I found an article by The Verge where they quote Madelyn Gould, a professor of Epidemiology in Psychiatry at Columbia University:
"The danger is that such detailed, sensationalized coverage of suicide can prompt copycat behavior — a phenomenon called suicide contagion. “Suicide contagion is real, which is why I’m concerned about it,”"
And they quoted a part of a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
"People don’t kill themselves because of just one thing, like a divorce or watching a video. But exposure to suicide can increase the risk of suicidal behavior for vulnerable people, like those with mental illness or substance use disorders. Suicidal behavior, mental illness, and substance use disorders are all treatable, but those who experience them may feel hopeless. So being exposed to suicide, whether directly (a friend or family member’s suicide, for example), or indirectly (like through media coverage) can influence the likelihood of attempts. Young adults are especially susceptible,"
This is kind of scary knowing that his audience is very young. Just going to his apology video (see below) you can see that a lot of people in the comments seem really, really young and most of them are defending his actions too. Parents really need to watch more what their kids are doing and watching on the internet.
But yeah, if you want my opinion about the whole thing: I think Logan Paul lives in a hyped up world where, in his mind, everything is entertainment value or has to be turned into entertainment in one way or another. As he said in his video "Guys I've said this in one of my first vlogs: I've chosen to entertain you guys every single day". The suicide forest video wasn't entertainment. Suicide is not entertainment. It is one thing if they put it in a movie where it is fiction, but it is a whole other thing to be showing and discussing it with so much detail in a vlog... which is basically a video diary for the world to see set in REALITY. The fact that he didn't get that is quite scary.
A thing that honestly got me really mad and irritated throughout the whole video was that stupid brunet guy without the hat who constantly wanted to be on camera and the girl. They were smirking the entire video. There is a thing called nervous laughter, which Logan displayed himself at some point. But what those two were doing were just straight up smirks. At one point the girl is on her phone looking down and just happily smiling as if she didn't just see a dead body. What is wrong with these people? Logan, dude, find some new friends man. These people have no soul.
A thing that honestly got me really mad and irritated throughout the whole video was that stupid brunet guy without the hat who constantly wanted to be on camera and the girl. They were smirking the entire video. There is a thing called nervous laughter, which Logan displayed himself at some point. But what those two were doing were just straight up smirks. At one point the girl is on her phone looking down and just happily smiling as if she didn't just see a dead body. What is wrong with these people? Logan, dude, find some new friends man. These people have no soul.
Furthermore, I've read a lot of articles about the whole thing and also read a lot of tweets and a lot of people made it seem like Logan was straight up cracking jokes the entire time which didn't happen in the video. Many people made it seem worse than it was. I mean, it was already horrible, but you don't have to make it more horrible than it is. It was obvious that Logan was very uncomfortable and he didn't seem to know how to react when they found the body. I just wish he took his time after filming his vlog to rethink the whole thing and cut out the footage of showing the dead body. But again, I don't think it would've mattered because he doesn't understand facts from fiction.
I would also like to state that I have no idea where Youtube was this entire time. It is clearly against their community guidelines to upload such content. The video is down now, but only because Logan deleted it himself. In the meantime, many content creators get account strikes, demonitized, or their videos are deleted for small misdemeanors or for no reason at all. Youtube needs to stop favoring certain content creators over others, especially when it comes to heavy subjects like this.
Oh, and before I get into other stuff I wanted to get into Logan's "apology" on Twitter. I wanted to "dissect" the entire thing but someone on Twitter beat me to it:
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| ©Faifur |
Aaand then we get to all the content creators on Youtube immediately jumping ship with their opinions. Look, I really don't mind that they want to come into the entire narrative, say what is on their mind, and tell people (especially young kids) that, what Logan did, is kind of effed up. But what is pissing me off is that most of these content creators have to make 10+ minute videos about it. I tried to watch 3 of them and all of them started out good but then after 2-3 minutes they are just repeating themselves or throwing old stories into the mix. And let's not talk about the ads on the videos!
I feel like a lot of content creators just see this story as another cash cow and that is troubling. Because, as that psychologist lady said, repeating this story and throwing "suicide" in everyone's faces over and over again just makes it dangerous for struggling individuals. Furthermore, they are only giving Logan Paul more name fame... and I feel like they are making money from this entire thing. They are attacking Logan for "making money off a suicide victim" but aren't these content creators more or less doing the same? Making a "commentary video" isn't that difficult. You just say what is on your mind, record it, edit it for 1 hour max and you put it on Youtube. And no, don't tell me "oh my god glittery what are you saying that commentary YouTubers don't put effort in their videos?". Yeah, well, that is more or less what I am saying. Honestly, I think that they do care about their audience to some extent but come on... their content is really low tier and there are only a handful of channels that seem to put effort into their commentary content.
And let's not even talk about all the people who feel personally offended about this whole ordeal. Chill. No one attacked you personally. Same with the fans: stop. Logan is a public figure, backlash will/can happen over his content. Get over it. And the people crying or looking sad in their thumbnails while trying to profit off of this story are acting as effed up as Logan and his gang did in the vlog.
I really don't know where to end this post because there are just so many emotions going through me about this entire ordeal and all people involved. I am just sick and tired of people blowing things out of proportion and people talking about a subject they know nothing about (like suicide and depression). I guess I will just leave this post with some commentary from the now-deleted subreddit /r/incels:
And let's not even talk about all the people who feel personally offended about this whole ordeal. Chill. No one attacked you personally. Same with the fans: stop. Logan is a public figure, backlash will/can happen over his content. Get over it. And the people crying or looking sad in their thumbnails while trying to profit off of this story are acting as effed up as Logan and his gang did in the vlog.
I really don't know where to end this post because there are just so many emotions going through me about this entire ordeal and all people involved. I am just sick and tired of people blowing things out of proportion and people talking about a subject they know nothing about (like suicide and depression). I guess I will just leave this post with some commentary from the now-deleted subreddit /r/incels:
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| they might be psychos but they have a point |
