By now many of you have probably heard about the corpse that “YouTube personality” Logan Paul (and crew) found, filmed and subsequently mocked in Japan. It was a terrible moment for social media and anyone who uses it because of how plainly it exposed the vapid and narcissistic depths to which it can sink and how far some people will go to attract viewers.
What you may be less familiar with is that during his time in Japan Logan Paul continued his antics with a video of playing “real-life Pokémon GO” on the streets of Tokyo. I won’t link directly to the video (if you watch it please do so on a mirror to deprive him of the views), but he harasses hapless Japanese passerbys in various ways. Walking into a sushi bar he throws the plush Pokéball at an unamused chef, runs into traffic dressed as Pokémon characters and even tries to get a rise out of a police officer.
Turns out, Logan Paul's trip to Japan was problematic for many reasons 😡 pic.twitter.com/yhj2BYgk4G
— YouTuber News by PopBuzz (@YouTuberNews) January 5, 2018
This has now gained traction in various Japanese outlets and while the general understanding seems to be that he is a crazy YouTuber, it was not a good impression of Westerners—and certainly not for those of us who actually like the Pokémon franchise. If you want to visit Japan in the future (and I recommend it, great country!) it is particularly important that Japanese people see us as generally respectful and willing to learn. Therefore I think we all have a small duty to pushback online against this sort of repugnant behavior.
We should recognize as a fandom that this sort of behavior is not acceptable and anyone masquerading around in Pokémon costumes and harassing people is not something the Pokémon community condones. And that stand whether or not it’s Logan Paul. If you want to take action there’s a petition to get him removed from YouTube as well.
Here’s to making 2018 a better year.