In December 2017, Logan Paul broke the internet for all the wrong reasons. He uploaded a vlog from Japan’s Aokigahara forest, colloquially known as the “suicide forest,” a place notorious for its tragic history of suicides. He titled it “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest” and touted it as “the most real vlog I have ever posted on this channel.” Unfortunately, the video included uncensored footage of an apparent suicide victim, sparking outrage far and wide. YouTube removed Paul from its Google Preferred program as a result, and he eventually pulled the video himself. He also issued an apology video, saying that he had a “severe and continuous lapse in my judgment.”
This controversy certainly didn’t endear him to The Rock, whose personal connections to mental health issues made the incident particularly appalling. “DJ was one of the people I hurt because of his mother’s experience … I hurt him,” he said on his podcast “Impaulsive” opposite John Cena. Apparently, the fallout was brutal: The Rock demanded Paul erase all traces of their collaborations and stopped communicating with him entirely. “He basically wanted nothing to do with me, and rightfully so. I let down my hero.” But even Paul admitted he’d have done exactly the same if he was in The Rock’s shoes. “A guy in his position doesn’t want to be affiliated with a person who has done something as reprehensible as that,” he said.
