Response to Logan Paul Controversy

Since the nature of this blog is about topics in public relations and social media, I have decided to write about the recent controversy in the media involving Logan Paul. If you have any knowledge of the YouTube community, you have most definitely heard of the daily vlogger, Logan Paul. He vlogs his daily life doing everything from his travels around the world to his everyday life in LA. Logan is known for stirring up trouble wherever he goes and usually does things the way he wants them to be done, despite the rules. Logan and his younger brother Jake, have been involved in YouTube drama multiple times in the past, but Logan has brewed up a controversy bigger than ever before. In late December, he took a trip to Japan with some of his friends to get some content for his channel. While in Japan, Logan and his friends were up to their usual antics doing things such as yelling in the streets, ignoring police officers and disrespecting the culture as a whole. But that was nothing compared to the video he posted on December 31, 2017.

Logan and his friends took a day trip to a forest called Aokigahara, also known as “suicide forest”, at the base of Mount Fuji. Aokigahara is known as “suicide forest” because it is now one of the most popular sights in Japan for people to commit suicide; there are even signs on the trails with numbers to suicide hotlines. In recent times, the official count for the number of suicides committed in the forest for each year has been kept private to deter more people from committing suicide in the forest. Aokigahara has always been a sacred and private place for Japanese people, but Logan Paul decided to exploit that privacy for his personal benefit. While filming in the forest, Logan and his friends came across a dead body hanging from one of the trees. While attempting to figure out exactly what has happened to the person, Logan and his friends are shown laughing awkwardly with disbelief.

The cameraman proceeds to zoom in on the body and in the original video, the only part of the man that is blurred out is the face. As they start to realize the gravity of the situation, they proceed to get closer, about five feet away from the man, to show his purple hands and hanging body. Logan and his friends then begin to talk about severity of suicide and depression and tell people to reach out for help. Logan shortly removed the video less than 24 hours later, with the video receiving more than six million views before its removal. A few days later, Logan posted an apology video that was less than two minutes long and tweeted the next day “Taking time to reflect. No vlog for now. See you soon”.

Since then, Paul has apologized multiple times and his punishment was revealed a little less than two weeks after the video was originally posted. YouTube decided to terminate his involvement in the YouTube Red series Foursome along with removing him from the Google Preferred program, where advertisers can pay to have their ads shown during videos of a select group of YouTube’s top video creators.

Although Logan received punishment from YouTube and a large amount of backlash on social media, his subscriber count has gone up since the controversy began. Before the video was posted, Logan had just over 15 million subscribers and now, he has over 16 million subscribers, and still growing everyday. This entire scenario shows just how much power social media has, whether the situation is good or bad. Despite all the criticism and punishment Paul received, he has benefited from it in the long run. No matter what type of PR a person is getting, it is always going to end up being good PR because it makes that person relevant and people want to follow along with their lives after the fact. That is where the crooked part of social media comes in: despite the way that Logan handled the situation, he is continuing to benefit from it. Not only did he offend the people of Japan and their sacred culture when posting the video, but he offended people around the world with the way he handled his apology. Not only was his apology weak and insincere, but YouTube failed to do anything about the situation until almost two weeks after the video was posted. Because Logan has become such a popular creator on the platform, YouTube seemed almost afraid to comment on the situation in fear of losing such an influential person for them. And even after issuing it, the punishment they proceeded to give out did not even come close to matching the severity of his actions. Many people are demanding the removal of his account from YouTube, but Logan himself believes he deserves a second chance. 

Although I do not believe he deserves another chance on the platform, based on how much this has helped his career in an odd way, I think he will get the chance he wants. Social media is always changing and there are always going to be new controversies that come to light, so I believe this will pass over quickly. This new age of social media is such a powerful source that has a huge chance at being great for society, but when people abuse that power, it puts social media in a negative light. The reluctance of parts of society to see social media as positive for the future is because of people like Logan who misuse if for their own personal gain. To improve people’s views on social media, situations like these need to be handled with faster action and harsher consequences. People need to learn what social media should be used for because without those boundaries, it will never earn the respect it deserves.