The public rebukes of Logan Paul continue to roll in, with Ova, a Japanese suicide prevention group, lambasting the YouTube sensation for his recent video that showed the dead body of a suicide victim.
“It is totally unacceptable to show someone who was driven to suicide as if it’s humorous content,” Jiro Ito, the head of Ova, told The Japan Times.
In the infamous video, now pulled from YouTube, Paul comes across a corpse hanging from a tree in Aokigahara forest — notorious for being a go-to spot for Japanese suicide victims. At one point, Paul yells, “Yo, are you alive?” at the body.
Ito said the clip ran afoul of how the World Health Organization recommends the media cover suicides, telling the newspaper Paul’s video “raises serious issues from the point of suicide prevention.”
The clip was immediately slammed across the internet. Paul posted an initial apology to Twitter on Monday evening, and followed it with a video mea culpa to his 15 million followers on Tuesday.
“I want to apologize to the internet, I want to apologize to anyone who’s seen the video, I want to apologize to anyone who has been affected or touched by mental illness or depression or suicide,” said Paul in the video. “But most importantly, I want to apologize to the victim, and his family.”
One crisis management expert told TheWrap Paul’s second apology would have been better if it had included a donation or shown support to a prominent anti-suicide program.