A Critique Of Shane Dawson.

hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the right opinion the home of a trap with too much free time and boy don't we have a topic that everyone was anticipating me to cover well looky here now you get your wish i had a few topics to pick out of the hat but i found such a fascinating one today that i couldn't possibly ignore it and it's obviously in part about the titular character mr shane dawson here shane dawson like a lot of people we talk about on this channel is a youtuber i'm sure many of you are already aware of this but if you somehow just discovered this platform and you've had the pleasure of this beautiful accent introducing you that's what he is a youtuber but he's not just any old youtuber he's not a geek off the streets he's one of the first youtubers to gain prominence on the platform this was mainly through his channel shane dawson tv the tv there clearly making it sound nice and professional he uploaded these comedy sketch star videos on iconic classic being fred is dead in which shane dawson appropriately kills fred so he can establish himself as the most popular youtuber on the platform which you know i'm not complaining about anyhow that was a simpler time but as a creator it is necessary that you evolve with the times so as charming as these sketches and short films were it appears that they were brought to an end on that channel at the close of 2016. what took its place though well his third channel shane yes he had three channels busy bloke now shane was originally set up as a vlog channel in the day it was almost like a backup for him letting his followers know what's up and what's going down with little jokes and memes nonetheless still with some pretty saucy click bait there was no throwaway thumbnail to shane it seems anyhow in case you haven't noticed with the increasing accessibility to high quality equipment vlogging has emerged in the past few years as a huge genre along with this other genres of crept into the public eye are mystery genres list genres and commentary therefore shane did what any person with a level head would do in those situations and made this shane channel dedicated to morphing all of those genres together which is pretty damn genius although as a creator shane was definitely aware of the consequences of mixing a range of genres that are too diverse from each other and something that his associate bobby burns would soon find out and so he tended to mesh them in a very similar style that would bring back the audience for each video allowing organic views to turn into suggested views and this would grow out some great content that had mass appeal to the multitudes of audiences dedicated and casual i assume he chose this channel probably because it had the best potential fan base and as said if you try to mix these views with already established content in a rather distinctly incompatible style the algorithms loathe it so i believe this was a smart move on top of this he would make some more personal videos that would branch out his character and the relationship that he had with the audience in a way he was building an empire the shane brown not just being an interesting expansion of content for him but also branching out on the elements of his character dissecting his childhood relationships and asking a lot of questions with no clear answers it's emotionally riveting stuff it really is i feel therefore it was an appropriate succession to continue into these documentary style videos that deal with many of the components that shane had dealt with in the past just in a more bombastic fashion and under the guise of an individual problem or person which is then branched out to implicitly deal with other questions that's typically what any video that's not just a basic reaction video will do but obviously there are tiers to this and dawson clearly wanted to do top tier now i recently covered the t-spilling saga of which one of the people i covered was jeffrey starr jeffrey starr has been in the public eye for a while in fact he's a very prominent individual clearly however given the sort of brewing tea in that community it made sense that shane would be interested in covering such controversial figures however in my video i note that this whole beauty community kind of dominated the summer and pushed other figures like the pools into the background even though they were arguably behaving much worse than any of the beauty commentators in question so when shane announced his next set of videos were going to be on jake paul people were a tad surprised here is this topic that in a way is kind of dead and buried and if shane was going to pull out his shovel he was going to have to dig deep to find some interesting content now there was a natural air of hype surrounding this following the success of both his previous series and this gave it a natural boost but the first episode was rather low key for him and the second one came out and although no one could deny it was fantastic production value there were some critics who felt that what he was discussing was fairly unnecessary why is that well for a multitude of reasons but we'll try and break them down the first one being that jake paul is a dead topic everyone has an opinion love him hate him and although shane can bring the melodrama which he did without a doubt weren't going to be filled in with any new narratives the one that shane has taken on is whether jake paul is a sociopath which is an interesting narrative but one he kind of abandoned by the final episode jake paul definitely displays certain traits of a sociopath and dawson cleverly leaves each part very open-ended on that question at the end of the day we shouldn't be going around diagnosing someone formally and that is implicitly assumed that nothing is being factually defined here however even with that noted many people question the point and the implications at the end of the day what jake paul does whether jake paul himself is a sociopath or not is kind of besides the point he behaves terribly i don't make videos that are out to defend people in fact i think i criticize more regularly than most gents and that gets under some people's skins and then they get annoyed and tell me to make original content if using a topic that exists is somehow unoriginal but that's just me being [ __ ] what i found quite interesting this time around was that many approached shane's series with a highly critical eye i think this was in part due to its size and the ambitions i think there are a lot of levels that we can analyze this on but this time i'm going to discuss why i believe that the choice of jake paul was the correct decision however the subsequent handling was a mixed bag while also attempting to be sympathetic towards the criticisms i think however to understand the weight of the jake paul series you have to understand shane first so that's what i want to do today there are a lot of discussions about the original series so an attempt to give my video more of an original spin i'll be looking at shane dawson as much as we look at jake paul however to understand this we have to take a closer look at shane's content and shane himself so without further ado i suggest we have a little chat we've already discussed briefly how shane dawson's content really is the gold mine in many different ways and in 2018 that has really cemented him as a force to be reckoned with but there's a lot more to break down within the content that explores how it's brought us to this moment so i'm going to split this part into three separate points purpose tone and production so the first question is a very broad one what is the purpose of his content what does shane set out to do when he makes a video other than to make some sweet dollar after all if the answer was just that this video would be over a lot sooner because he does a fairly tight job of that i'd say the most important word that comes to mind is exploration and this is reflected within all forms of content he explores conspiracy theories he explores haunted mansions he explores himself the last one is exceptionally important after all the channel is shane a lot of channels tend to explore these topics some merely structured as list channels with some anonymous hosts like brightside you know the channel with that guy who sounds like he smokes some crack before recording 19 simple psychological tricks that actually work to be fair a lot of them sound like that i assume it's a more focused tested measure and it works the clickbait is disgustingly good on the other hand you have a mix with someone like matthew santoro who definitely integrates his personality into his content but still leaves it secondary shane is a different kind of worm because his personality is often integrated into his content as a facet that runs alongside the topic of his video and there's this mystery perpetuated around his life whether it's one of his friends who was sent to prison whether it's the relationship between him and his parents shane dawson is an inherently interesting person who has built up a persona and as mentioned in my animators video were arguably in youtube's most introspective era people wanted creators who weren't gonna put on a facade and for someone like shane this was the perfect time to go and explore himself i think another important point is that these explorations of self were not just limited to shame as i've said before the art of an endearing on-screen character in this day and age is that you can take something that is specific to yourself and make other people feel that and this is where the tone comes into play because it is an equally important element of content creation that you can project a message or a theme through a tonally consistent presentation shane covers topics with a lot of sympathy and always seeks to discover someone else's perspective for example for a long time he had a lot of animosity towards his father someone who had caused him a lot of emotional turmoil in a way he had communicated a lot of his emotions through that old content the new shane took the established portrait that he had painted of his father and peeled it away in arguably one of his most sympathetic videos it was an attempt to understand the pain he often asks a lot of open general questions which i think really allows people to put themselves in his shoes and it definitely reaches others who may have a similar experience i had a problem connecting with you i felt like you didn't know how to talk to me or maybe you would get annoyed with me or maybe i was too much or i remember i used to like put towels on my head and pretend like it was a wig and just like a lot of crazy things and i felt like maybe i don't know i just felt like maybe you didn't get it the title of the video is confronting my dad and i think confronting is probably the most appropriate word not just the double meaning which makes a pretty damn great clickbait but also because that double meaning means he could have taken that confrontation in a hostile environment but actually sees it as attempting to resolve an incredibly difficult situation now we talk a lot about his production which is obviously very dramatic and will reach that bridge in a moment but in my opinion the tone is equally aided by a lot of energy within the interactions held between the people within these videos one video that stood out to me was shane's video i'm done which really might seem to many just to be a pointless video of shane going around trying to do things but being thwarted at pretty much every turn it really could have just been a throwaway set of deep cuts yet the interaction between shane those around him and particularly the cameraman carries this unique energy that can honestly make anything interesting let's go back to the couch so i can explain why i'm such a [ __ ] mess right now [Laughter] equally as we'll see in the jake paul series the chemistry that dawson and the cameraman have is definitely helped by the production value that often makes situations rather tense and then cutting the tension with a joke or a burst of laughter that can often evoke laughter from the audience too as when we're nervous we tend to be more prone to such mechanisms that would actually be wrong we literally can't do that [Laughter] and this is important because we come to these documentaries and we typically see them as this picture of other people tanamon show jeffrey starr and they're equally as much about shane as they are about the people in the documentaries and that simple fact makes these stories all the more compelling because shane has this presence like very few other people and even if as a fan you're not necessarily interested in the subject of his video the fact that you have someone like shane on screen almost taking you personally through it dissolves that potential boredom that you might feel so i think a lot of people tend to give too much credit to the production because although it's excellent and once again we'll delve into the details of that in a moment you still need something to hold it down there have been some movies with fantastic production value but the characters are just so [ __ ] that no flashy visual is gonna work so here equally shane's persona is important what about that persona well as mentioned i could really switch persona out for personality because he wants people to see this as him the sort of guy next door who is almost overwhelmed by the way that things have played out and put him in this position and i'm not skeptical that this may be the case and because of this it creates a connection to the viewer to see someone react in a way that they would in these situations i find shane's content to be attempting to balance formula with individuality if you lean too much into the former you'll come across as inauthentic and end up with that bright side style content which although successful right now will be forgotten if you lean too much towards individuality you'll end up with shapeless videos so his persona is an excellent mediator and with production well we have to discuss that too because it has been the attraction of a claim and stigma in the past few weeks we've had countless videos on youtuber manipulation in the last year the sort of stuff that prince ea does you play the emotional music and it gets to people and suddenly they believe you're a messiah but in the last year people have become increasingly aware of that and although inspirational speakers are by no means off the platform i'd say the audience is more soccer mum suffering a middle life crisis people on the commentary side have a more critical eye and that means that he has to have a dramatic tone that suits but doesn't feel like it's trying to manipulate the framing now we as people have weird standards we don't mind certain emotions being manipulated but we do get annoyed if others are the one we probably like to keep most protected is that of pity everyone knows that a sad emotional youtuber turning on the camera to stare at you take a deep breath and then let the emotional piano music play so with shane away although we do get a lot of dramatic moments arguably the best of his content is when he lets all that production value go and carries the moment with his personality and that's what in a way makes him more endearing than a lot of creators on the other hand we have some ideas of the unknown mystery we love them to be blown out of proportion because it fascinates and stimulates us and that's what shane does he knows what people are most skeptical of being dramatized and feigned and grips those moments with his personality and then takes what people enjoy and makes the most significant thing happening in their lives we don't like our perception of people manipulated but when dealing with concepts like conspiracy theories we kind of crave it dawson does a good job of making each video a visceral experience while at the same time never appearing like he's set on taking advantage of it finding that balance of person and production which brings us to his latest venture of content so going back to jake paul with all this in mind people did give dawson some stick for his second episode particularly in how he dramatized the nature of being a sociopath you see this was an interesting concept as the notion of sociopathy is kind of scary it's kind of dramatic it's kind of mysterious it's kind of out there sociopaths may appear to be a bit threatening shane did what he normally did with these concepts and played it off in this huge way even down to the minor details like synchronizing winks with intense percussion however in doing that he also annoyed a few people who felt humanity within the subjects at the end the day whether we like it or not sociopaths are people and kind of framing it to be this awful world ending nature well some people felt that this was insensitive i think in this instance it is a case of separating the sociopathy from the sociopath and maybe shane treated it with a bit too much overlap which robbed people the wrong way but i also think that i understood where he was coming from and at the end of the day he had to include some people because it is an inherently human problem the problem is that some people see sociopaths as people suffering from conditions beyond their control and attempt to brand the condition in such a way kind of puts jake paul's questionable actions under a shallow explanation as not every sociopath behaves like jake paul the whole episode's point was kind of lost because at the end of the day even though sociopathy is a serious thing that can cause a threat to those around you it doesn't really change the fact that people are individuals and so what if jake paul's a sociopath or not some actions still shouldn't have been committed regardless of the actor's mental states i think many people don't want an explanation they want to action but on the other hand i kind of like the tone even though it was more theoretical than anything else i think within the context of shane's channel and shane's journey it was the right thing to do why is that well his first documentary series was about tarnicon this famous little disaster and at the center of tanacon was the titular character tanomon show tana is a very curious and polarizing character on the platform many have claimed that she is disingenuous and after the whole idubbbz situation you can kind of see why and so when shane came in from this angle we all knew that he was going to give it his treatment of providing it from a sympathetic perspective but even with that said what we got was a series with a very emotional ending and a very riveting last episode with an emotional tana mancho and many people were won over by this however many people also said well honestly i think shane was a bit too soft on tana because at the end of the day regardless of the remorse that she might feel it still happened and she shouldn't just be able to cry her way into a position of sanctity but this is how shane's always been finding the other person's perspective and hearing them out however this is what leads us to the necessity of the jake paul series firstly jake paul is hated he has been the recipient of countless amounts of criticism by commentators he is insensitive obnoxious and frankly rather unlikable and personality society has been called out for multiple wrongdoings and major mishaps while frequently showing little regard or remorse or motivation to reconcile these problems or criticisms after all it might just be the formula that made him famous why would he change it his outlook on this situation is ambitious to say the least but as with anything you have to raise the stakes or else the audience becomes disinterested secondly shane dawson has gone around met a lot of people many of these people who have done very questionable things yet have come off in the moment as kind thoughtful outgoing positive people and the jake paul series represents not just analysis of jake paul but a double take at all the previous people that he has covered and he even mentions and shows some of them there so like them you might even be like friends with them because you don't know you're being manipulated [Music] okay if somebody got hurt during the prank or during you got it doing something for them they wouldn't care they don't feel bad like tanacon for instance with you you felt it's almost like jeffrey that people love to hate him jeffree star think everything that shane dawson has constructed is now being questioned by himself what if the empire is a lie after all sociopaths come in many shapes and sizes and if one of these people that shane has covered wasn't actually genuine in how they feel why would we want to transmit such a message to the audience what if all of tana's tears were an act to maintain a subscriber base if she frames it as an honest mistake but actually she doesn't really care about the consequences then should she really be supported if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it did it ever make a sound yes but you wouldn't know that so when we have that final arc in episode 8 this very sympathetic installment where jake is arguably at his most vulnerable emotional it tugs on the heartstrings the question still looms of whether this all was a very finely tuned act whether this was shane's intention with the whole sociopath narrative is another question and the fact that it's barely mentioned in the last couple episodes moves the discussion to the background if you keep it in mind it does still work and that's the thing being a sociopath is slightly disjunct from the actions without a doubt obviously it's a causal factor but being a sociopath doesn't predispose you to do something nor does it mean that you won't do something but it's definitely a lot more closely tied to the motives and honestly i'd say dependent on the actions sometimes motives are more important people even if it's not practical the problem with people who are fake is not what has happened it's what could happen we like to know the people around us we like to know their intentions at the end of the day when someone's an unknown capacity when they may be behaving in a fake manner what are they gonna do i want to be able to trust people around me don't you you can never have a clear answer on who's what a sociopath is not necessarily going to admit they are one and mostly you will have to judge from actions the shame series definitely throws these concepts that we thought we knew up in the air and i guess it gives us a more in-depth look at working out how to define these individuals what we've seen is that people are starting to like jake paul throughout these episodes but equally no matter how likable he is we don't know if it's all an excellent act or not because that's one of the traits of the best sociopaths he's on camera of course he's gonna behave in a specific way if he's a sociopath our own belief is all we have to judge and that's the thing looking it from just a sociopath basics perspective is pointless does the fact that he's a sociopath change what he's done and the damage he's inflicted no but it could definitely influence how his future mentality is when approaching these situations if he doesn't feel remorse for these things and has no drive to do better then it's hard to support and no we'll never be able to tell but you have to be able to pass judgment on a person these things aren't provable a sociopath is a formal term but we all judge people and we don't want people who are going to be fraught and lie in our lives because at the end of the day whether that's in our control or not it still has a negative effect on those around them and we've got enough negativity to deal with already we can't deny that however with all that said this doesn't mean that he nor the series above criticism what can make the series is most appealing is equally what can make the series its weakest which ultimately comes down to shane's lack of knowledge on jake paul specifically in one way this is a positive as the first few episodes take us through the journey without the assumption that the viewer will be as knowledgeable of jake's antics this maximizes the appeal of the content that he crafts if you know nothing about jake then the series will bring you up to a relatively reasonable pace but equally the pace is only reasonable and really if you want to break jake paul down you have to up a few gears and that's one of shane's weaknesses he seems so driven on building a connection to understand the target of his series that he tended to avoid asking the really hard questions and in a way i understand he says multiple times during the series that he doesn't want to upset jake paul and those around him but the truth the matter is that sometimes we need to crack a few eggs to make an omelet and that doesn't mean being unnecessarily aggressive but it does mean being assertive and addressing the actual points but there are many examples where jake gets off lightly and there are many videos that cover this but i'll pick out an example that demonstrates this the most one of the important points that shane addresses in his episode with nick crompton is that if jake paul is caught being dishonest shane will just leave um is that really what you're gonna do what what you just said if he says that it's not you're just gonna walk out yeah if he lies to me about anything i'm just gonna now this sounds like shane is taking a hard stance but the question is how can you tell when jake is lying and the truth is you can't and therefore the audience have to be the jurist to an extent on such a presentation and shane as the documentarian cannot say with certainty when jake is lying or not with that said shane can decide the questions to ask and asking the right questions is a position that comes with significant power especially in an environment where you could be dictating someone's image on such a platform one of the narratives that came to the forefront following nick crompton's episode was that an extremely high majority of the team 10 tom foolery was fake i feel like pretty much everyone that's a little bit older knows that it's all fair this as a defense was relatively resolute against the claims being made by former members such as the martinez twins who cited such pranks as reference to jake's abuse of power like jiggy start to prank us every single day yeah we're in a room so he starts prank us every single day like we felt so bad like however on the other hand this did not undermine the criticism that had been presented against him with regards to the involvement of children in the team 10 house and jake's treatment of them which could be summarized as rather dubious and by the way even babies get the classic savage jake paul treatment when at the team 10 house are you gonna eat this whole thing most likely not titus it's jake paul yo what did you guys do what are you yelling [Music] oh get your hands off the car don't touch it don't you touch it what's wrong with you bro it's a lamborghini the problem is that you can't provide a disclaimer to toddlers they haven't developed a mental stage where they can distinguish between simulated entertainment and reality some of the clips shown are incredibly uncomfortable and show children in legitimate distress and really do remind me of a more notorious youtube couple although i won't say that he's that bad it is still something that should be brought up i thought they were going to do this when they decided to discuss nerd city's video which amplified these concerns significantly yet despite clearly watching the video shane merely brought up the criticism of merchandising to younger children which is another legitimate point but doesn't encompass the numerous problems that that video brought up so people basically think that you're manipulating young people kids watching to spend their money on you to buy your merch on top of that during that discussion it was quickly diverted to how the messages he spreads towards impressional children on topic such as education can damage their mentality which although once again is another point worth considering it means that we never received a proper answer on the problem of coercive merchandising because they don't have exactly the same implications that's the thing in many instances shane dawson delivered the most softball form of criticism to jake and i believe this was done in the notion of not causing disruption but i think there were times when the conviction of finding the truth trump bans because people would deserve an honest portrayal and by choosing the easiest criticisms it allowed jake to sidestep a lot of it and come out unscarred which is a shame because really it seemed like jake was willing to own up to a lot of his misconduct and with the right wording it may have given him more possibility to reflect on his behavior for me it makes the series feel like a missed opportunity in some ways there's no doubting that there are some strong insights but equally because shane is the one asking the questions his naivety on the topics undermine the true reality of what is going on or what has gone on in the team 10 house the lack of knowledge also surfaced when dealing with the situation regarding faze banks publicized by jake yet with very little visible evidence in the sixth episode jake seemed to dismiss all these claims and then make comments about those such as max beaumont and their behavior basically setting everyone else up as liars like he came home and was like yeah like he assaulted her and then like as all of it like went crazy online he got super scared and said like [ __ ] you to us and like lied about the whole situation and on a phone this was mildly amended by the eighth episode but it was still hard to obtain any closure as he kind of just turned it into the ignorance narrative and with all these arguments being pushed towards him i feel like shane then reinforced the narrative by making comments about lack of accountability and even if this was partially true it would have been better to let jake explain it himself rather than having explanations presented by other people and then him going yes i agree yeah i think that's another situation where it's like you have this platform right millions of people are watching you and i've seen this with a lot of youtubers they have all these people watching it's a lot of power and it's like oh i [ __ ] hate this person i think they're a bad person they've pissed me off i can [ __ ] ruin them and i do admit the overarching narrative of accountability for actions and being aware for consequences is present and that can't be taken away credit where it's due minus here's the thing i don't think you're manipulated i don't think you know i don't think you're trying naivety however can only explain so much and i feel if some more hard-hitting criticisms have been pushed we would have seen elaborate explanations that tell us about this character other than just well jake paul's an impulsive fool how honest you are about your goals depends on who you think is listening when you think your fans are listening you say my goal is to make your day if you're talking to businesses you say your goal is to build an audience and then monetize it and since that's what you do it's silly to deny it i don't think jake paul's an awful person i do think there is a legitimately sympathetic take on it but as someone who is extremely skeptical these little omissions mean that it's hard to take his responses as reasonable explanation and although the mystery is a part of it mystery should come from desire not doubt and this really comes down to shane and his framing as said this series could have equally been about shane as it is about jake and i think it just says that shane could have really taken that extra step but his lack of knowledge and lack of confidence in that knowledge subsequently caused a lack of conviction in some harsher criticisms of mr paul here you have to ask the hard questions sometimes i'm sure from this some people felt sold short on the series myself included there was more criticism than just my own criticism as said i do believe there can be motivations attributed towards the jay paul series however if you're a new viewer to it or someone who has different priorities and what they think should be the intention it's very possible that the theme that dawson crafted isn't one that's going to work for you you could come out of the second episode thinking what the hell was the point of that i mean it's visually exciting and well presented and great and all that entertaining content what the [ __ ] does it matter whether jake paul's a sociopath or not and dawson in spite of what i believe were fair justifications and offenses although as said i believe the idea of sociopathy was a component of a great narrative revealed later on at the time he kind of had no reply i think there were people who watched the video at the time and just saw this guy asking whether jake paul was a sociopath the whole notion of sociopath encompassing this episode and i completely understand that it's clear that he didn't define each feature well enough it's also clear that he may have robbed some people the wrong way although i don't see any problem with dramatizing a transcendent condition that stands independently he may have failed to draw the line clearly enough and i do agree there now do i think it was worth becoming angry about it like some people did of course not it seemed more like a tonal mishandling rather than actual malice or purposeful insensitivity one thing you have to accept when making these videos for exceptionally large audiences is that you're going to receive substantial criticism from one side or the other many of this may just be jake paul is irrationally complaining that you're making a video on someone they like but there will be some legitimate criticisms which is why you have to walk a very thin line because on one hand if you move too far in one direction you'll risk using a condition as a way to attack a person's character thus weaponizing the condition and if you move too far in the other way you risk validating their heinous actions at the end of the day someone like jake paul may have sociopathic tendencies but there has to be some level of awareness if he wants to take on the responsibilities of a public figure because his actions have consequences however understanding this means that there is a spectrum that this can be on and if you lean a bit one way or the other it might still be acceptable because every single element when you create content has a minor effect on which way something might be interpreted even if it comes down to just feelings that are revoked by people you have to understand that a true neutral is pretty much impossible even though we try our goddamn best with the levels that dawson is using not just in his narratives but also in his production and his interaction and everything we've discussed today it means that it is exceptionally tough and the only way to begin to find that neutral point of view is to completely alienate yourself from the situation and that is something that dawson cannot afford to do equally this means whichever way you lean there are gonna be people who are quite pedantic who are gonna pick up on that obviously the less you lean the harder it will be for someone to interpret it that way but it is inevitability especially with shane's expansive audience and further to this he's under pressure from those around him with how he frames jake paul as said earlier shane has a habit of being very friendly and sympathetic towards the subjects of his videos however whereas on one hand you have people like tana who although definitely have their enemies still have a reasonable reputation many people believe that the manipulation that jacob was conducting as documented by videos like nerd cities giving him almost a quote redemption arc is a step too far it gives him a sympathetic explanation of this established reputation to them it's not a case of explanation it is a case of cancellation these actions still have impacts like fousey even though he may have issues does it mean it can continue then you have a set of people who just feel uncomfortable with you talking on the topic or having opinions on topics because you're seen as this huge influencer and these fans who watch your videos are too easily coerced by your opinions and then they adopt it themselves and some people would rather individuals watch just jake paul rather than watch someone having opinions on it and this extends all over it now obviously i have various opinions on these individual criticisms some are well grounded others not as much i don't think it's useful to the purpose of the video to provide my individual opinions on each individual critique the problem is that shane has attempted to stay neutral that every time he's veered one way or the other there have been piranhas on either side waiting to have a good gnash at his posterior and even then the interpretive overlap will mean that there will be people who see him as being too harsh on one thing and not harsh enough on another now in those instances you can't agree with every single piece of criticism without ending up contradicting yourself to an extent having an opinion on these things will typically ensue some disagreements with how someone's interpreted it if we all agreed on the interpretation chances are the criticism would be pretty uniform if you want to decide how to respond you need to consider multiple things how your response is going to make you look how your response is going to make the original criticism look i have to be careful because for every [ __ ] you comment from some 12 year old jake pauler you'd have someone else come in with an eloquently worded but nonetheless questionable statement now i said i wouldn't respond but to make an example i find this one rather silly at the end of the day he shouldn't have to exclude the parents in the discussion of where they influenced jake paul he wasn't outly accusing anything nor was he saying that it invalidated the idea that jake paul may be a bad person but to have opinions on these matters is a natural yet at the same time many people thought these made complete sense because it was based on the assumption that shane dawson was outwardly accusing someone so he needs to respond in a diplomatic fashion and identify that false premise and that's where it becomes problematic shane dawson wants to please people that is a basic analysis i would give of how he behaves now in my opinion given the many sensitive topics he's covered and hype provided this was always going to be his most controversial series however i think he went into it with a slightly wishful mindset and the belief that his sympathetic offered an impartial framing would offset some of the criticism and the criticism isn't exactly harsh proportionately for a series but there was no way he was going to compromise it due to people's differing views of mental health and how it should be dealt with you can never eradicate that however shane dawson is a sensitive person and you could tell that he was really trying to keep up with every single individual criticism of his series and that's something that when you're shane dawson's size you just can't do you can't just pick out every single criticism and respond to it because it's going to be on such an extensive spectrum you just end up burning yourself out and i'm someone who loves to respond to criticism debate things about myself and justify myself because i want people to know exactly what i mean and what my intentions are a discussion with a perception of you that you feel has been misconstrued and your points have fallen to the wayside however dealing with all these negative perceptions of you and your content is one of the most draining things ever one of the main pieces of advice that enlarge youtube will give you is don't read the comments i used to read and reply to every single comment because it's good to do if you can however as you grow to a considerable size you'll realize that dealing with mass amounts of negativity even when it's well expressed and having to deal with so many conflicting criticisms some that will completely contradict themselves takes a toll on your position now i became used to this as i make opinionated content i piss people off that's who i am i do my best to be polite but you can't please everyone and equally i can express myself poorly on the occasion and if you slip up they are on you now i still look at a few comments particularly on upload and often see what's being said in the top but i know to try not to respond to every single comment shane dawson is doing the equivalent of that on his twitter he's being added by slaves of people who have their opinions and although it's definitely worth paying attention to the criticism responding to every individual tweet where you're going to end up repeating yourself to a lot of these comments isn't good for you at the end of the day you have to get a feel of where the main criticism may lie trying to avoid catering to too many outliers and then address them at the start of a video or something and although he did do the latter eventually he definitely had trouble being dragged back into the fray which eventually became so stressful he ended up taking a break you spent a lot of time and work creating something that is exceptionally precious to you and you see someone challenging exactly what you thought or stood for and you want to defend that work while simultaneously quieting them down confronting them out of the open is often the most direct way to deal with criticism however equally it can bring about more attention to it and although criticism shouldn't just be hidden away responding in such a fashion can do more harm than good to you even if it's fully debunked but that's the thing about shane you can always tell that he wants the validation and the positive energy from his audience and that always comes down to an image whereas on one side you have someone like jake paul who has set up such an antagonistic character who is well hated and just plays into it you have shane who wants to be this arbiter this guy who can provide an impartial sympathetic look at people so this hits him hard and this hits even worse because of who shane is this person who is really ready to seek the approval of those viewers and he knows that a slip up could undermine egg squeaky clean image so he goes all out to protect it responding to countless people but this mentality and this philosophy can say a lot about shane himself and that's where we'll go now shane has shown he's someone who's had a lot of difficulty in his life whether it was bullying domestic abuse or weight i think these are all things that drive many people towards the internet and when shane dawson set up his channel he probably saw it as an outlet in a way it is a place for many outcasts and slowly through interactions you start working out how to really channel whatever creative energy you have into something much better and much more productive shane is someone who has had the chance to explore many creative elements of himself but i really feel this is an ultimatum for him and that really what this content represents is an opportunity an opportunity to search for closure of his issues and it's one of the things when you have to deal with these problems it is extremely difficult to find that closure and in a way you can tell by the attention to detail that shane pays especially with his production that he is a perfectionist i think that equally reflects in himself as simple as it sounds he wants to work out what is wrong with people and how to make it right himself included it's just where someone else you can talk to them and you can give them advice on issues shane is the sort of person who's answered a lot of these questions but knows there are a lot of deeper things within himself that he's not sure how to fully resolve in a way many of us give the best advice but we seldom take it and by looking back at his content past and present that's what we see the one thing that doesn't change is shane shane is a person who audiences can resonate with he's someone who understands that life is [ __ ] sometimes and when you experience turmoil there is seldom a one-way solution that will make your life just all rosy because life isn't like that and i think that these videos represent an expression of that search a series of existential questions looking for explanations of why someone would behave in the way they do and equally asking how much control we have over our own instincts and behavior with jake paul we see shane looking into the more troubled minds not just to understand them but to understand himself we're discussing issues like parental influence personal accountability mental illness all these factors being very prevalent in shane's own life and he even says it even for me like why do i want to get so deep with people and talk to people and like try to help them and fix them why do i want to cry with them why like what is that and to him these not dissimilar factors send us down different paths maybe shane sees a bit of himself in everyone i don't know if shane's ever gonna find what he's looking for because it clearly feels like these videos represent a look inside himself for him to understand why he has these mental struggles and if he can how he can rewire it equally i'd say with the criticism in mind he's gonna have to ask some harder questions because even though he may not want to upset others if he wants to find the truth within himself he may have to put the questions out there i can't speak exactly for why he cares so much about the responses and the people and justifying himself but as someone who feels the same way a lot of it i'd say comes down to the anxiety of an incorrect interpretation of the message being spread and the wrong image with you as a creator being presented it's just important to remember that it's actually a very small portion of people who've watched your video who are actually criticizing it that's what i see with regards to jake paul a character study the search for an explanation it not just works as an excellent succession and reflection of his previous videos asking the hard questions about what isn't real it equally asks about his life what if the elements he asks and structures so finally isn't real and the empathy and the sympathy that he covers with it gives a universal appeal to audiences that will leave people questioning their friends and families for days we're witnessing the story of characters who we thought we knew but always questioning so what about the future the future of his content the future of shane dawson i think we'll likely see more of these documentaries that investigates human nature in the way that jay paul represents i think that even though it's kind of a dead topic the overarching nature that he addresses them with always has a timeless appeal and that is something that is simply undeniable maybe this new series won't be on the nose like jake paul is it may deal with it from a more third person perspective like the jeffree star series but it will still be posing these questions to the audiences i'm glad he's made the series as it may help some people understand themselves and therefore although maybe turning sociopathy into a bit of a dazzling jumped up dramatized talking point he kind of contradicted the normal humanism and represented a tough compromise between two very constraining elements that he's been trying to balance and inevitably that attracted some criticism with regards to shane from what i've watched he'll often put himself in the center of the documentaries even though they're on other people he's arguably just as much the focus as them and he'll often ask the questions placing himself in those situations and try to work out who he is even in his jake paul video which spent a lot of time asking about sociopathy he would equally ask about himself and his states and how he would be classed under these prerequisites i think that is like when i was a kid you know my mom was going through a lot and i felt like i had to be strong because she was like having trouble so it was always like oh shane's my rock he's my support system oh he's always strong so i look for other people in your life now too are you like a fixer yeah yeah because you were like a parentified child so you've been like an adult since you were whatever age yeah and i think now i'm just at the point where i'm like i like stay up all night and i'm just lost and i'm just like oh which is why i started falling down the halls of like sociopaths and this and that because i'm like what's wrong with me like why am i so lost if i can help all these people why can't i help myself why am i still depressed why am i all these things i look at my channel and i'm like oh the more i'm helping people the worse i'm getting my prediction is that these videos as great as they are will have to come to an end eventually and may come to an end with shane dawson having built up the character throughout the whole series finally confronting himself that would be the most poetic way to conclude this whole saga at least i don't think i'll ever be fully able to answer the questions he poses to himself and implies to us through this series because they're ones that no one can ever fully answer but i hope they find some closure and through that inspire others to find their own so yeah shane dawson net positive with a few flaws i think that's fair enough all right i want to give a massive shout out to the editors they've done a stellar job go and check them out if you can i'm gonna leave their links in the pinned comments they're brilliant people brilliantly talented people definitely go and check them out on the other hand i want to say that if you want to reach me if you want to talk about this topic leave a comment below but also you can reach me through twitter which is just as productive or facebook or discord links in the pin comment below anyhow because i'm really tired and a mess i might go and get some sleep now i appreciate you guys being here it really does make a difference and i hope that this uh this video makes a difference too so until then i'm the right opinion and i'll see you in the next one love you guys [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Right Opinion

Views: 1,289,368

Rating: 4.8978214 out of 5

Keywords: shane dawson, shane dawson jake paul, shane, the mind of jake paul, shane dawson the mind of jake paul, shane dawson tv, shane dawson hater, shane dawson series, shane dawson exposed, shane dawson snapchat, jake paul shane dawson, the dark side of jake paul, logan paul shane dawson, dawson, shane dawson logan paul, shane dawson docuseries, shane dawson controversy, shane dawson documentary, dark side of shane dawson, tro, tro shane dawson, tro jake paul, jeffree star

Id: btf5eudsdV4

Length: 44min 40sec (2680 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 17 2018