PewDiePie Mocks Logan Paul’s Controversial Suicide Forest Video

You’ve probably heard all about it by now. YouTube phenom Logan Paul stirred up some serious controversy after posting a video walking through Aokigahara, also known as “Suicide Forest.” In the video he and his crew come across a hanging body, which they included in the video. It was seen over six million times before Paul took the video down, but by then the damage was done. The backlash was intense, and is ongoing. Another controversial YouTube star, more familiar to us in the gaming space, decided to weigh in on the issue, mocking Paul’s judgment:

The implication here is that Paul knew exactly what he was doing, and was exploiting the situation for clicks and attention. On one hand, a video showing a real dead body was never going to get monetized, so he obviously didn’t plan on raking in the cash from that exposure, but there’s no question that this stunt was going to bring in massive amounts of views. Whether or not that was the motive, none of us are in a position to say.

Paul insists that he was only trying to raise awareness. “I didn’t do it for views,” the statement reads. “I get views. I did it because I thought I could make a positive ripple on the internet, not cause a monsoon of negativity. That’s never the intention. I intended to raise awareness for suicide and suicide prevention and while I thought ‘if this video saves just ONE life, it’ll be worth it,’ I was misguided by shock and awe, as portrayed in the video.”

As far as we know, Paul has not responded to PewDiePie‘s remark. PewDiePie has seen his fair share of backlash for misguided YouTube stunts, which has prompted multiple public apologies, so it’s strange to see him latching on to a controversy like this.