Logan Paul Says He’s “A Good Guy"
Logan Paul just gave his first television interview following the intense backlash he has faced for posting a YouTube video showing what appeared to be a body in a Japanese forest known as a suicide destination.
Paul, who deleted the video and issued multiple apologies early in January, told Good Morning America that posting the video was “a horrible lapse in judgment”, and promised to “learn from it and be a better person”. “It’s not like i’m a bad guy,” he said. “I’m a good guy who made a bad decision.”
Paul made his return to YouTube last week with a seven-minute documentary about suicide prevention, and pledged to donate $1 million to suicide prevention charities.
"It's been tough, because ironically I'm being told to commit suicide myself," Paul told GMA. "Millions of people literally telling me they hate me, to go die in a fire. The most horrible, horrific things... This has been the hardest time in my life. “I’ve never been hated by the whole world. It’s been something to definitely overcome. I will think twice about what I post from now on.”
The backlash began in early January, after Paul posted a video of himself seemingly discovering a dead body in the Aokigahara forest in the Chūbu region of Honshu in Japan, which is known to be a common suicide site. The video was taken down following a slew of complaints from viewers and celebrities, and YouTube subsequently announced that all of Paul’s projects were on hold.
“The idea was to just do another fun vlog, go camp for a night and make another entertaining piece of content in a forest.” Paul said. “And things obviously changed very quickly. [The body] was 100 yards away from the parking lot. It doesn’t make any sense and I believe it happened for a reason and I think that reason was that I could take this experience [and] learn from it, spread the message the right way about suicide prevention and suicide prevention awareness.”