At only 22 years old, social media influencer Logan Paul has shown the world how powerful his voice truly is. With over 16 million followers on Youtube and a combined 20 million on Instagram, it is clear that Paul has a strong influence. Paul is most known for his vlogs, which consists of him recording what happens during his day. He has been vlogging for over a year and has over three billion views on Youtube.
On Dec 31, while traveling through Japan, Paul uploaded a gruesome video with the title “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest.” The forest is a notorious spot in Aokigahara, at the base of Japan’s Mount Fuji, where many people decide to take their own life. Paul’s video, which has since been pulled down from Youtube, displayed the blurred image of a man who had hanged himself. The video starts with Paul briefly talking about the severity of the video and the importance of self-care. Minutes into the vlog, Paul sees the body. He seems shocked but continues to vlog the dead body. Paul then starts to make jokes and laughs about the body. “What, you’ve never stood next to a dead guy?” Paul said. He then laughs and talks about how the encounter is a “first for him,” then switches the topic as he exits the forest. Paul’s video reached over 6.3 million views before it was taken down.
One day after Paul’s video was taken down, Paul went to Twitter to publicly apologize for the video.
“This is a first for me. I’ve never faced criticism like this before. Because I’ve never made a mistake like this before. I’m surrounded by good people and believe I make good decisions. But I am still a human being. I can be wrong… I am often reminded of how big of a reach I truly have and with great power comes great responsibility… for the first time in my life I am regretful to say I handled that power incorrectly. It won’t happen again,” Paul said on Twitter.
But the tweet did not win over the internet. Fans could not get the image of Paul laughing and poking jokes around a dead body out of their minds. Since the release of the video, Paul has gone off of all social media apps. No vlogs, Instagram posts, snapchats or tweets have been posted since Paul’s apology.
With the next generation possibly watching these videos, the question of when a video should be taken down remains. Videos on Youtube can be removed for curse words, inappropriate behavior and/or not following Youtube’s guidelines. After the shocking video, viewers and parents started to wonder about the ruling behind each video. With no specific guidelines, who is to say whether a video gets taken down?
“If you think content is inappropriate, use the flagging feature to submit it for review by our YouTube staff. Our staff carefully reviews flagged content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to determine whether there’s a violation of our Community Guidelines …. Videos [that are eligible to be taken down] contain nudity or sexual content, violent or graphic content, harmful or dangerous content, hateful content, threats, spam, misleading metadata or scams,” Youtube guidelines state.
The taking down of videos is a necessary evil in the Youtube community. Many Youtube users don’t agree with Youtube’s ability to take down their videos and believe it oppresses creativity. The possibility of a bias review of each video depending on the creator can occur since videos are reviewed by an actual person instead of a machine. Although some believe it restricts creators’ freedom to produce what they want, these precautionary measures prevent videos like Paul’s from reaching the next generation. Videos that glorify suicide are not meant for the eyes of anyone, let alone the eyes of children. Paul’s video did bring up an important and necessary conversation, but he did so in a demeaning and frustrating way by painting suicide as a joke. Without a system in place, a degrading video like this would be able to make jokes about a sensitive topic with no consequences.
