Lending new weight to the term “ugly American,” popular vlogger Logan Paul recently posted video of an apparent suicide victim in Japan’s Aokigahara forest to his YouTube channel. It was part of a travelogue series he seems to be doing while in Japan, where he’s also played Pokémon Go and pretended to be kicked out of the country, all clear signs of an authentic, immersive experience.
But Paul managed to one-up himself while on his trip, going from stupid staged fights to showing off a dead body—you know, to inform the kids. As The Washington Post reports, Paul uploaded a video to his “Logan Paul Vlogs” channel over the weekend, in which he and his companions went to Aokigahara, which is, sadly, an all-too-common site for suicide. The video’s since been taken down, but it apparently showed footage of a suicide victim. Paul introduced the video by calling it “the most real vlog I have ever posted on this channel” and “a moment in YouTube history.” He now claims he wanted to raise awareness about mental health and suicide rate (which is exceptionally high in Japan), something he seems to have thought could only be accomplished by showing an actual corpse.