Thousands of people want Logan Paul off their screens.
A Change.org petition entitled “Delete Logan Paul’s YouTube Channel,” has garnered more than 190,000 signatures as of Friday afternoon following the YouTuber’s recent “dead body” video, which featured disturbing footage of an apparent suicide victim in Japan’s Aokigahara forest. Paul has since removed the vlog and issued a written and video apology in light of the immense backlash.
“A man who had family and friends chose to end his life, and you chose to share his death to your millions of followers without thinking about how his family/friends felt?” the petition reads. “It’s disgusting and shouldn’t be tolerated.”
The petition is hardly the only one protesting Paul’s YouTube channel, though it has received more signatures than others on Change.org. Multiple petitions call for YouTube to ban Paul from the platform, citing the vlogger’s disrespect of Japan and its culture and the trivial way suicide was discussed in the video.
YouTube previously told HuffPost in a statement that it had issued a Community Guidelines strike to Paul’s channel. When a user has a strike on the account, he or she may not have access to some YouTube features. The strike doesn’t last forever, however, and expires after three months.
“Our hearts go out to the family of the person featured in the video,” YouTube said in the statement. “YouTube prohibits violent or gory content posted in a shocking, sensational or disrespectful manner. If a video is graphic, it can only remain on the site when supported by appropriate educational or documentary information and in some cases it will be age-gated.”
The petitions echo the flood of criticism Paul’s received over the week. Even celebrities have chimed in to underscore how insensitive the vlogger’s behavior was, including fellow YouTuber Anna Akana, whose sister died by suicide.
Akana questioned Paul’s claim that he’d been trying to spread mental health awareness through the video.
A Japanese vlogger who goes by the name of Reina Scully also shared her thoughts on the video. Judging by his other vlogs in Japan, she said, Paul seems to think of Japanese people as “caricatures” rather than human beings.
“As a Japanese national citizen who grew up in the U.S. with a green card, there were a lot of times where I was treated as though I was really tiny and I was a child,” Scully said. “It’s definitely because I’m foreign. ... It’s definitely alarming in the worst of ways, and after watching some clips of Logan Paul’s other blogs in Japan ... there’s a sliver of what I used to experience of how people used to talk down to me because I was foreign.”
If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-273-8255 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also text HELLO to 741-741 for free, 24-hour support from the Crisis Text Line. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for a database of resources.
