The Social-Media Star and the Suicide
Here is the news: Logan Paul, a social-media star with more than 16 million Instagram followers, recently visited Aokigahara, a dense forest known as the “Sea of Trees” on the northwestern side of Mount Fuji.
Aokigahara is beautiful, but also infamous; for at least a half-century, it has been a popular destination for people to attempt suicide. Soon after entering the forest, Paul encountered a man’s dead body, apparently killed by suicide, and he made it the centerpiece of a nervous video, apparently intended to be humorous, that he posted to YouTube on December 31.
“Yo, are you alive?” Paul shouts at the body, early in the video. “Are you fucking with us?”
The 15-minute video was taken down Tuesday. Since its posting, the familiar cycle of Horrific Internet Content has played out: scathing criticism from all sides; the deletion of the video from YouTube, an apology from Paul (defensive, in
