There Is a Difference Between Being Famous And Infamous

Matthew Thomas, Editor-in-Chief

You have probably already heard about the video in which a popular YouTuber named Logan Paul, brothers with the infamous Jake Paul, recorded a deceased hung body in a forest coined “The Suicide Forest,” located in Aokigahara, Japan, because of the mass amounts of individuals who take their own life there. The original video has since been taken down, but it can still be found after a little searching.

The Youtube personality has been under scrutiny for weeks now by the masses as well as other popular social media faces. Unfortunately for Logan, he has horribly tainted his name and tarnished his reputation after his questionable actions. From now on, he will be remembered as the guy that recorded a dead body and laughed at it. That is the first thing that will come to peoples mind’s when his name is brought up. Not his funny vines, or multiple “diss tracks” but this one isolated incident.

This situation really needs to be looked at and learned from. Let’s forget about what he did for a minute, and analyze this from a different lens. As of writing this, Logan Paul has 15,623,624 subscribers on his YouTube channel, “Logan Paul Vlogs,” and a little over 16 million followers on Instagram, “LoganPaul.” That’s well over 30 million people in total, that’s greater than the population of Texas. When you are granted that many followers, that many people that look up to you and look forward to watching your content, you are obviously going to be critically viewed by the social media world, and rightfully so.

If some John Dough did something like this, it would be news for a week than forgotten shortly after. But since a celebrity did this, it is huge juicy news. Logan is 22 years old, definitely old enough to know right from wrong, but if he had just taken a second to think about the millions of views this was going to get, than perhaps it would have never been posted. He thought of the idea, videotaped all of it, reviewed his footage, edited it, and uploaded it. He had a plethora of chances to think twice about his footage, but it didn’t make a difference. Maybe he did think twice about it, but thought that everyone else would think it was a funny interesting video just like he did.

We can speak in hindsight until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t make a difference for Logan now. This just goes to show that one decision can massively affect your life, forever. I predict that Logan will continue YouTube and still receive millions of views, just like most popular people he has loyal fans that will stick by his side no matter what, but he will simply be hated by the community for a very long time. Quite ironically, Logan gained nearly 100 thousand subscribers after the video blew up under the spotlight, but that’s not always a good thing. People could just be waiting for more controversial videos to be posted.

Take this incident as a lesson. Be careful about anything and everything that you post on any form of social media, which is an idea that has been beaten into our heads for years. Don’t be the next Logan Paul, think about your actions before you commit them. A very wise man named Vincent Thomas once told me, “If you have to think about it for more than three seconds, don’t do it.” And that is a great rule-of-thumb to live by.