Logan Paul's antics in Japan...

I'm sure if you spend some time on YouTube you have seen the drama that unfolded about a few weeks ago about Logan Paul and his recent trip to Japan... There has been a lot of videos and a lot of people are talking about this...

If you don't know who Logan Paul is- he is one of the top trending YouTubers on the platform right now. To be honest, I don't know what he does, except for make very loud and obnoxious vlogs. His YouTube channel has 15 million subscribers and his content in his videos seem to be to shock and to try to be the BIGGEST and the LOUDEST and to plug his merchandise whenever he can. His brother is similar, making vlogs and doing crazy stunts and harassing people in public for video content. I knew about both of them from Vine (RIP) but I have never watched their YouTube videos when they switched over. So here’s a good summary of the whole drama on Philip DeFranco's channel:

Basic Text Summary: Logan Paul went to Japan's "Suicide Forest" and went off trail and found someone who had committed suicide and decided to film it and put it in the vlog, dead body and all. It was top trending on YouTube and even got 6 million views before the backlash caused him to remove the video.

I decided that for this post I wouldn't focus on how disgusting it was that he did that. Or why we even thought it was ok to even include the image of the body in the thumbnail of the video. (Really?)
So many people on Twitter and YouTube have already heavily criticized him. It caused HUGE backlash and even Logan Paul put out an apology video. (Some people say it was sincere, some say it wasn't) and I’m not to sure to be honest.

Like Jenna and Julien said in their recent podcast- "a lot of stuff about this topic has already been talked about."
Here’s a link to their podcast:
It's a bit long, but I think the first 13 minutes are important.

Something that was mentioned in this podcast and on Reina Scully's YouTube channel was the fact that Logan didn't see Japanese people as "real people" and viewed Japan as a "cartoon culture" and therefore didn't see it as a big deal to film a dead person from that country. If you haven't seen it already, here’s a compilation of Logan Paul's antics in Japan...

After watching some footage it’s something that I wanted to write about. Honestly, I have never cringed so hard in my life. From living in Japan for nearly 6 months, it's extremely hard to watch an American be the exact thing that we’re stereotyped for abroad. Obnoxious, oblivious to the culture, disruptive and overall disrespectful to the culture. Pretty much the “Ugly American” stereotype all wrapped up into one person.

Japanese society is extremely polite, and requires a mutual understanding between everyone in order to live in such a small space with so many people. There is a cultural norm of respect and not inconveniencing others. Being loud on the train is a faux pas, and causing a scene ANYWHERE in public is extremely off putting and even considered rude. I remember after being there for a while, that I would become offended and glare at any tourists who were yelling to each other across the train car, or if people were being loud and drunk on the streets and falling into random people… in Japan, you just DON’T do that.

Another thing that really bothered me about Logan Paul’s vlogs in Japan was that he didn't seem to care that he was in a foreign country. He didn't seem at all excited to simply be in a country so different from the U.S, there was no appreciation for the culture, the history, and especially not the people. He’s all about the views, and if he runs around and does crazy things in L.A to get views, he's definitely going to do it in Japan. It's all the same to him. As long as he gets a lot of views… that seems to be all that matters.

I’m glad that YouTube did the right thing and punished the vlogger for his behavior. He has been taken off Google Preferred, YouTube’s premium ad program that gives brands access to popular channels as well as the cancellation of some of the YouTube Red content he was going to star in.