Dear Jake Paul,
I never really understood why people were so obsessed with you. I mean you started off with posting short funny videos, which could be funny every so often. But then you started to make longer videos and suddenly became a YouTube sensation. I think that it is great you have so many followers and such, however as you decided to say “with great power comes great responsibility”, next time credit that person who said that quote.
I will never forget the anger and disgust I experienced when I watched your video about going to the Aokigahara Forest, also known as the “suicide forest” in Japan. At first, I was uncomfortable with your humor and how you were making fun of something that in fact just is not funny at all. However, when you showed the body of someone who had just died by suicide, I had to stop the video and regain control of myself again. I cannot explain the feelings I had during your video.
I don’t know what bothers me the most about your situation; the fact that you were laughing the entire time you were there, you posted a man’s body, or you acted like nothing was wrong after the you were called out for your decisions. Right now, it is the body you posted. I cannot believe that you chose to put the body of someone who died by suicide on YouTube. Your camera was not live-streaming and so you could have either not posted or edited out. That man was mentally ill and was so hopeless that he thought suicide was the best and only option. Yes, you blurred out his face but that does not make your choice okay at all. You violated that man’s privacy by posting that video. You violated his family’s privacy by posting a video of him. Not only that, you invalidated his feelings by drinking and making fun of the situation. I understand that suicide is uncomfortable and sometimes people have bad reactions to it. However, I do not understand why you would post that.
Your apology did not seem real at all. I honestly do not even know if you meant it. You said in your apology (which was a tweet not a video) that you wanted to raise awareness and that you understood how serious suicide is. But your actions tell a different story. You wore a silly hat, drank at the scene, and laughed at and made fun of the forest in general along with the young man who died. What made you think it would be okay to post? What made you think that people would be okay with the video? I am genuinely curious why you would make such an appalling decision because I want to understand. I won’t be able to accept your answers until I understand the whole situation.
Just because you tweeted an apology and deleted the video does not mean people are just going to move on. It took me less than five minutes to find the video on YouTube and I was surprised how long it took for you to make that apology. I think that your actions have deemed you incapable of handing the spotlight. Like you said “great power comes great responsibility” and I hope that you believe that now.
Jake, I will never be okay with what you did and I think that a lot of people will be the same way. I think that you need to truly work on understanding the situation and how you can fix it. This is your mess…you can clean it up. I don’t know how you can fix this Jake, but this needs to get fixed when you have the opportunity.
Sincerely,
A concerned viewer