Dear Logan Paul,

I don’t think you get it. That, more than anything, is my problem. Despite your apology, you seem to be missing the point. Making a mistake is not the issue at hand here. Filming and making a mockery out of someone who took their own life is. If you had even some sense of morality, you would be self aware enough to know that filming a dead body in the Suicide Forest of Japan is not acceptable. You filmed someone who took their own life. The moment you saw that body, you should have put your camera down and ceased the giggling. Laughing in discomfort in the face of trauma is normal; laughing in awe as you consider what your view count will be when you post the video is not. What you did was more than just a blunder; it was an offense, a trespassing of something far beyond your shallow understanding.

When I was in eighth grade, I lost a friend to suicide, and for days, I was left crying hysterically, trying to comprehend the cruelty of the world. Thankfully, I never had to see the body. But imagine being forced to. Imagine walking through a forest and seeing your loved one hanging from a tree. You wouldn’t pull out your camera then, would you?

You claim that this was unexpected – that you found the body on a whim when you were evaluating how haunted the forest was and decided to turn it into a video about suicide. But the fact of the matter is that you went to Aokigahara, the Japanese Suicide Forest, and you knew perfectly well that there was the possibility of stumbling upon a dead body. You knew that in the case that you happened to find someone hanging from a tree, your view count would shoot up. You went to this specific forest with the intent to find a dead body. Don’t try to play that off by saying you were there to check how haunted it was.

It’s easy to be ignorant to the implications of suicide when none of your family has ever been faced with its repercussions and forced to deal with the slap of reality that accompanies it. You had to see a body. You never saw the body. There was no history behind the person that you saw—no memories, no stories. It was just a body to you. This man that you chose to film was nothing more than bait for your fans, a catalyst for you to mention “suicide” in your title and hope to get a couple more views. And to that, I say: how dare you. How dare you degrade a human being who suffered that much to the level to which you did. How dare you.

There comes a point where ignorance descends into delusion, where you begin to lose sight of what it means to be human. Somewhere, deep—very deep—down inside of you, there is an empathetic individual. I suggest you find that someone quickly. The world is rooting for your failure, and at this point, I am too. It’s hard not to when you say things like “this marks a moment in YouTube history” as a preface to a video of a man who hung himself. You are a despicable person, an individual who fails to understand that the world is not a disconnected reality. You ignited rage and revulsion in people all around the world, but more importantly, you caused grief to the family of the man that you found.

I hope this situation forced you to reflect on yourself as an individual. But I also hope that you don’t come back to YouTube. Your presence is not needed. Quite honestly, your brand disgusts me, your fans disgust me and you disgust me. I hope your four seconds of fame were worth it.

Sincerely,

Sameep Mangat

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on February 5, 2018.