YouTube removed Logan Paul’s controversial video

December 31 is one of my favorite days of the year. It signifies the end of a time and the birth of a new time. This year I was fortunate enough to spend New Year’s Eve and Day with some of my very good friends from Paducah, Kentucky. Like most people, we watched the ball drop, toasted to the new year, and then tucked ourselves away into bed around four in the morning. We also woke up New Year’s Day and found an enraged local Twitter.

While people were ringing in the new year, YouTuber Logan Paul posted a video that featured the infamous forest Aokigahara, also known as Suicide Forest, located in Japan surrounding Mt. Fuji. Instead of bringing good tidings and good vibes, Paul filmed his experiences in this forest and in this duration found a dead body. Cause of death? Suicide. Paul continued to film and disrespected the deceased person. In the production process Paul did not edit this portion of film out of his video. His audience, with the demographic mostly underage, was notified of this video being posted on his channel and six million of them watched his video before YouTube removed it January 1.

The video created controversy over the content Paul showed in his video. Of course the content showed in the video was distasteful and disrespectful, but even more than that the attention that Paul received for the video caused his subscriber count to rise.

Why is this an issue? So many people found a problem with Paul’s influence growing because so far, he has done a terrible job being a good influence. According to CNN, if Paul was to return to Japan he would be immediately arrested for ‘disturbing the peace’. Nobody wants their kid watching someone like that. However, while there was a lot of backlash for the suicide video, many of Logan supporters, “Logang”, backed Paul up for the video saying they are familiar with this narrative.

Obviously, we do not think YouTube should have content preview rights, because that mentality goes against the freedom of speech, but sometimes the best way to deal with stupidity and disrespect is to not give it attention at all. Give attention to the positivs in life, spread awareness for those who deal with suicide on a daily basis, spread awareness for others to detect depression in people around them. Let people know that there’s hope. Instead of sitting around looking at our screens and waiting for celebrities frame social issues, we should get up and make a difference in our own communities.