Recently, in a now-deleted video, inexplicable YouTube star Logan Paul went to Japan’s infamous Suicide Forest and took a video of someone who recently committed suicide there, making jokes along the way. It didn’t go too well for him, either.

The thing is, there are plenty of really popular YouTubers nowadays who get famous for lord-knows-why, but in their hubris, they always end up shooting themselves in the foot one way or another, resulting in them losing more money than some of us can ever hope to earn in an entire lifetime of doing a “real” job, unlike these lazy, entitled millennials who don’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps to… wait, what? He makes $21,500 (Approximately 1,075,000 PhP) a day?!? I don’t wanna live on this planet anymore!

While most of us will never understand his appeal, millions of people watch his ilk and are influenced by it, one way or another. When one of his kind makes a video that crosses the line, here’s how the drama surrounding that looks like.

The YouTuber thinks he can do no wrong

With millions of followers in their pockets, the most elite of YouTubers will always have fans willing to defend every single thing they do, no matter how bone-headed. It’s in this relentless storm of yes-men that our YouTuber begins to think that there is nothing, no nothing, that they can do that would ever blow up in their faces.

It doesn’t take long before they end up testing the limits of that assumption.

The YouTuber begins to be more self-serving than anything else

“Yes! This is quality content!”

Now that your Logan Pauls have become brands in themselves, everything they do is now in aid of pushing their brand, instead of, y’know, in the aid of quality content. If they think the viewers will enjoy it and talk about it, or at least guarantee a reaction from their audiences, be it a diss track via rap despite being whiter than Bing Crosby’s Christmas, or an anti-Semitic rant.

They end up trivializing something that is a big deal to a lot of people

“Your life is a precious gift from your parents,” is just one of the many heartbreaking pleas you will see on the signs in the forest.

Logan Paul’s most recent kerfuffle involves him running around like a maniac in Japan, pulling off his “pranks” that are barely tolerable in America, let alone in a much more repressed country like Japan. He then topped it off by heading into the Suicide Forest, where so many people have taken their lives, there are signs all over the place to that effect.

Never mind that the Japanese people culturally have very strong opinions about the forest itself, and about foreigners who act the way Paul does. Let’s focus on the fact that he made light of suicide, and you realize that to someone who has an audience composed primarily of 10-15 year-olds, then the kind of influence Logan Paul wields is hideously terrifying.

For every person who insists millennials are being “too soft” and “too nice,” the likes of Logan Paul would like to remind you that assholery knows no generation gaps.

A debate erupts over something normally non-debatable

“Is making fun of suicide and showing someone who recently completed suicide on video bad?”

“Is making fun of killing Jews wrong?”

“Should I do this horrible rap video even if the clerks at National Bookstore during the Christmas holidays can rap much better than I can ever hope to?”

These are questions that normally come off as dumb questions, because they’re no-brainers. Yet thanks to millions-strong followings for our popular YouTubers, we now have to painstakingly explain why all these things are horrible and should not even be considered as acceptable behavior anywhere. Meanwhile, saner heads eventually prevail, and…

Our celebrity experiences backlash they never saw before

It’s easy to dismiss “haters,” but when the people criticizing you have a valid point that goes beyond just how shitty your videos are, it becomes very difficult to just ignore them. It’s at that point where the YouTuber begins to consider maybe they did something wrong, but still don’t quite know exactly what that wrong was. At that point, in comes…

The half-hearted apology

“I hope you guys feel bad about making ME feel bad for making YOU feel bad!”

With an apology that is directed at saying sorry for how we feel, but not for what they did, the YouTuber makes it seem like they’re the victim for coming up with shitty content, and getting promptly castigated for it, and it’s our own damned fault for not understanding their “sense of humor.”

It’s the cluelessness on their face as they make an apology they don’t even understand that just sells it.

The inevitable punishment

Disney dropped Pewdiepie.

YouTube is also sanctioning Logan Paul.

The only way to hit them is in the wallet, really. And until that happens, they don’t really care what criticism is ever leveled in their direction. Unfortunately…

Nobody learns anything

Pewdiepie’s video is still on YouTube.

The fact of the matter is, dropping these people, distancing yourselves from them only works if everyone else is sensible enough to do the same thing. But that’s not the world we live in, and people are willing to pay people money if they’re “influential” enough, no matter how reprehensible they may be as human beings.

So ultimately, they just gain more attention, their following doubles, they make even more money, and they go on as if they never learned anything – until the next time they make a video that crosses the line again.

Repeat ad nauseam.

What do you think of these offenders? Share with us your thoughts below!