What do you think Logan Paul's video, guys?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Jojobobo, Jan 18, 2018.

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  1. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    So for those of you who don't know a notorious YouTube star Logan Paul New Year's Eve filmed the corpse of a guy who had committed suicide in Aokigahara, or the "Suicide Forest", of Japan. In the same video, he goes for extreme levity wearing a Gucci jacket and Toy Story memorabilia, takes a couple of shots of Sake, and of course greets fans because of his word famous renown. He didn't monetize the video (not that the claim isn't a false economy, and he wouldn't make the money up elsewhere), as he was of course trying to raise awareness, and it also reached a top 10 spot of YouTube videos that day - with the tagline and thumbnail of the video implying they saw a dead guy.

    What the video showed is the is the blurred out image of the actual hanging wound, but it did show the cold purple hands of the unfortunate man. If you want to watch it, I doubt it would scar you - there's the Jojobobo recommendation right there. His target audience are mostly teens, with presumably a fair few of the international fans seeing this video during or before their morning breakfast before it was taken down.

    The internet's greatest saviour, and man who called a random guy a "nigger" in a live gaming stream, PewDiePie had this decisive reprimand - though while accurate I think was to throw the shade off of him.

    What's your take on this rich human tapestry of absolute cynicism and monetization? It seems like this forum was born on the back of some cynicism in a way, but now I see stuff like this I can barely stomach it. I would say no trolling, but personally as a bastion of worldliness, even temper and my sheer impermeability to trolling in the first place, I have no worries.

    EDIT: And if you needed it, a British commentator targeting dodgy YouTube channels (unbiased, obviously), lending his voice. And I don't know what I'm saying here, Logan Paul was obviously a bad man and we can all label him as such, but directly or indirectly monetizing suicide starts to feel a little wrong - doesn't it?
     
    Last edited: Jan 18, 2018
  2. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

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  3. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    I don't know, I think that guy's assessment is pretty generous - I don't think Logan Paul had any genuine interest in spreading suicide awareness. I think he at least comes across as shocked for a few minutes, but then it seemed like the greasy gears in his head started to engage and he worked out that pushing the video under the guise of awareness was a possible way to sell it while coming across as socially responsible.

    At least Logan Paul did appear to seemed shocked for a little time before he started taking shots and meeting with fans, etc. Some of the people he was with looked positively ghoulish - the woman glances from the corpse back to camera with a huge smile plastered on her face.

    I guess I watched the video as I was morbidly curious, but not to see a guy who had committed suicide. I'd heard the general premise, that some douchey YouTuber finds a corpse from a suicide and is overly inappropriate about it, so I was morbidly curious about how bad someone like that could get in the presence of something deserving of a little reverence. I also wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, seeing something like that is a shock to the system and levity for some people is a reasonably normal response.

    However, he far surpassed the worst I could of imagined of someone acting like a complete and utter twat. I can't imagine anyone who had killed themselves would want some nob in an Toy Story alien squeeze-toy hat ogling them and finding everything fucking hilarious, bro-ing it up every other line and then taking shots in the carpark. Their choice of music cues is also ridiculous, as that would have been edited in post, going for upbeat numbers going in and out of the video but then a sad piano piece when they find the dead guy. If they truly were reverent of what they saw at all, then don't have upbeat music in your video.

    It's probably one of the most soulless and jaded things I've ever seen, and what's disturbing is that 15 million teens and kids are looking up to this person as a sort of role model, and a lot of them will have caught it before it was taken down. If you're talking about brainwashing hearts and minds of youth, what exactly are videos like this teaching kids? That if they stumble upon a dead body, they should just go ahead and take a piss on it? Fuck me. I hope he gets sued by lots of parents for emotionally damages to their children, there's definitely grounds for it.

    If anyone was interested to watch the original video, without any images of the dead guy because some people care about YouTube's terms and conditions, you can see an edited version here.

    EDIT: Here's another British guy commenting on some kid's reaction videos to Logan Paul's video, one where like an 8 year old kid is coming to Logan Paul's defence, and another where an 11 year old kid has been traumatised and is crying by having to seriously contemplate the idea of suicide and people being so depressed as to want to commit suicide, and finally him mentioning another fan's comment of, "Ching Chang Chung. Shut the fuck up you suicide faggots. Let the japs kill themselves... LOGANG for LIFE". I'd say the kid crying isn't easy to watch, but that's the kind of impact these kind of videos have on the world.

    The commentator got some rather interesting tweets sent his way and did a video on it as a result, "stupid filthy nigger youtubers like comedyshorts gamer need to die along side [sic] the japanese people". Fortunately like a trooper, the guy actually takes it all in good humour.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2018
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  4. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    I've kind of managed to miss this. I was aware there was some furore over Logan Paul's disrespectful video, but I sort of don't want to participate even by watching it, since I don't think it's an Important Discussion That Society Needs To Have or anything. It's just a twat doing something, and a bunch of other twats going OMG THATS HILAR, and a bunch of different twats going I WISH PPL LIKE THIS DIDNT EXIST SO LETS TALK ABOUT IT AND MAKE THIS PARTICULAR EXAMPLE EVEN MORE FAMOUS.

    The real tragedy is that someone felt so hopeless that they took their own life, not that it was filmed afterwards. The dead guy in the video is already dead, so he's not really any worse off now. In some way, if this dissuades future people from committing suicide in public places because they're afraid of being put up on YouTube afterwards then that's actually a good outcome.

    Not that I would support this as a suicide prevention method, generally. Or as a method of anything, except perhaps as an example to future historians that lots of people in the 21st century were still terrible, yo.
     
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  5. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    Well I'm not going to argue that (a) I can be a bit of a twat, and (b) there is that weird paradox in that in some ways decrying the behaviour draws more attention to it and makes it worse - though the amount of undue attention I'm drawing to it on here is probably fairly minimal.

    I guess I wouldn't be too bothered if this guy was unknown (I'd still think he was a massive prick, but not much more), but the main issue here is that he has such a massive fanbase of 15 millions youths (something like the population of the entire Netherlands) that are seeing this.

    I just don't how people are even expected to raise a kid these days between widely circulated execution videos, social media designed to make them feel inadequate and even mainstream YouTube entertainers - who you'd think would be safe - are showing the aftermath of people's suicides. Maybe when/if I decide to have kids, I'll become Amish or something, I don't know.
     
  6. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, the whole "kids these days don't stand a chance" thing is a little tired. Bad influences have always been available, if a child was inclined to seek them out. By all accounts, kids these days are less likely to act out compared to their parents' generation.

    I mean, I still think you shouldn't have children, but that's more because they'd inherit half your genes.
     
  7. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    I can't really fault that point.

    As to your first point, I'm not sure. Bad influences have always been available, but the change today is kids can blindly blunder into them. Kids naturally need to normalise some trauma to an extent (as people die and bad things do happen, and it's not good for anyone to feel blindsided because they've been wrapped in too much cotton wool), but drifting into a suicide video seems to be a different kettle of fish.

    I do also think social media can have an unpleasant effect on kids personalities (more so than conventional bullying and peer pressure back in the back, because likes added a metric to social interaction), and you can't really as a parent so trivially stop them from having an account. Obviously don't by them a smart phone, don't buy them a tablet or laptop, but kids will find a way.

    I think the Logan Paul scandal has started some rumblings about treating YouTube as a broadcaster to regulate it (not that will happen right now, but after more repeat instances maybe so), or regulating it in some other way, but as a platform for free speech in a way that's not such a fantastic thing either.
     
  8. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    This may come as a surprise to you, but you're not the first person in human history to think that the younger generation can't handle some kind of new social development and that it will lead to the downfall of civilisation. We've had the printing press, novels, the telephone, the television, computer games, mobile telephones, the internet - each one was heralded as the beginning of the end, but it turned out to be quite the opposite.

    Bad influences have always been available. Kids have always been able to stumble into them. There has always been that weird kid at school who would show you stuff your parents didn't want you to know about yet. Just because he's now spreading YouTube video links instead of cut-outs from pornographic magazines doesn't mean that THIS time, it REALLY IS THE END.

    Kids these days are taking less drugs, having less casual sex, bullying less, and committing fewer crimes. I mean, really, Jojobobo, now is the best time there has ever been to have children, unless you have particularly perverse ambitions for them.
     
  9. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    I see you're overall point, but I'm not too sure on whether all these particular stats would have gone down. Maybe it was because I grew up somewhere rural and boring, but to pass the time it seemed like kids were doing a good mix of all of the above. And I guess it's a different kind of problem anyway, making kids witness suicide is a different kettle of fish to media inciting kids to commit crimes and take drugs.

    Me? I would never!
     
  10. Zanza

    Zanza Well-Known Member

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    I would argue kids are subject to online bullying a lot more than in person these days. However I can't be bothered to argue so please just take my word for it.
     
  11. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    I agree that online bullying has increased significantly compared to any time before the internet existed.
     
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  12. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    No Zanza, what I'm going to need now is stats, figures, newspaper articles, preferably several papers from academic journals and multiple first person accounts from people affected by the issues before I take your word for it. This is Terra-Arcanum, by Christ!

    Joking aside, I see your point, probably the way people bully has shifted rather than people being bullied from two sources and it's probably my slight generational gap that means I can't see the forest for the trees (apart from people living in shitting rural holes like I did, where they probably are getting a double dose). Still, putting a pin in the bullying issue, allowing several million kids to view a guy who committed suicide is not cool.

    I don't know, what about the mid-1900s fisherman bully craze? I think where their fishing gear and hooks, they'd have bullied a lot of people by getting them online.

    Think before you type Smuel, I think it's obvious to everyone around here that I do.
     
  13. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    Well, the backlash has promoted Logan Paul to put out a "genuine" suicide awareness video. While I'm not too sure if his motives are all that noble, the only other possibility to him having a personal epiphany is that he's now had to become a mouthpiece to the world for an issue he really didn't give a shit about - which is probably more painful to someone extremely self-obsessed than the actual backlash he received in the first instance. It still feels like he got off lightly though.
     
  14. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Not as lightly as your mom got off last night.
     
  15. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    I know, caught speeding again. The officer that dealt with the offence truly was a kind man.
     
  16. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    For the update I know you've all been waiting for, apparently the British YouTuber mentioned above who was called a "stupid filthy nigger" by Logan Paul fans will be fighting Jake Paul, while his brother (another YouTuber called KSI) will be fighting Logan Paul - both in real amateur pay per view boxing bouts in the UK (article here).

    Honestly, if more YouTubers take a genuine "I will fite u in RL m8" mentality I think YouTube stands to get a whole lot more interesting.
     
  17. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

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  18. Jojobobo

    Jojobobo Well-Known Member

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    Yes, but the best kind - where the wrongdoer can potentially end up humiliated and unconscious in front of millions of his own fans (apparently a previous bout with KSI and another YouTuber attracted 1.6 million viewers, with Logan Paul as the opponent I'd imagine it'd be significantly more - so millions is no exaggeration).

    Feels like an sort of fitting trajectory - upload horribly objectionable content, have such a vile fanbase that result to racial slurs against critics of said content which creates a rivalry, have reputation mostly ruined, have to fight against relative of that rival when challenged (who is by all accounts a much better boxer) in order to retain any remaining shred of dignity. Feels like Generation Y mob justice, alongside being great entertainment.

    Though I'm sure this was agreed upon by agents and publicists on both sides, at least that results in two real boxing matches in the end.
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2018
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  19. Dark Elf

    Dark Elf Administrator Staff Member

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    Reminds me of Celebrity Deathmatch, back when MTV was still sorta good.
     
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  20. Smuel

    Smuel Well-Known Member

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    Didn't Uwe Boll use a similar tactic against his critics? As I heard it turned out pretty well for him.
     
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