From Fame To Shame - Shane Dawson's Story (Shane Yaw)

shenya is the person responsible for the channel shane dawson a responsibility that at his channel's inception was far from his comprehension his channel initially acting as a depositor for school projects became the catalyst for a new generation of online personalities when he began making videos only for youtube his dedication to his craft saw transition to skits that relied on exaggeration and absurdist humor that at the time was somewhat prevalent within this unsupervised youtube environment this ushered him to stardom and paved the way to a new form of celebrity that had a close connection to their fan base being at the pinnacle of the website for 11 years allowed him to not only star movies but direct them as well being involved in podcasts conspiracies and most recent a make a palette that is very very profitable but this newfound attention goes both ways when shane possibly not taking into consideration the cemented nature of the internet was held accountable for a list of distasteful videos and comments scattered throughout his older content a vicious cycle of backlash that through his many content styles hits him harder every time he's involved in a scandal as his older controversies are always brought back this growing list hits him harder every cycle made worse with the unpredictability of it all some want him permanently gone but others want forgiveness to gain a better understanding of these perspectives and shane dawson as a whole we will go through the rise and fall of shane dawson unlike many current youtube content creators chanyeol's passion for making videos preceded youtube itself in 1996 living in long beach california an eight-year-old shane formed a vague desire to make and direct movies presumably making home videos and skits with whatever resources were available to him this vision of movie creation became a bit more clear when in high school one of his teachers encouraged him to explore this at the time hobby and convince shane to make a short video for a school project and after its success he made a few more one of the few surviving videos of this era was known as hitler high school portraying shane and friends reestablishing society after an apocalyptic event this video and his video similar to these were comedic nature deriving their comedy and absurdity and shock value as shane claims his teachers were such fans of his skits they discuss them with other teachers and even take the videos home to show family members along with a bit of notoriety among his peers this gave shane a bit of reassurance as all throughout and even prior to high school shane viewed himself as an insecure outcast shane himself pinning his undesirableness on his weight where at his peak he weighed an estimated 400 pounds this in large part due to his diet that heavily consisted of cheese and peanut butter this weight can only be estimated because any scale he owned only weighed up to 300 pounds and maxed out any time he weighed himself lucky for him during his senior year of high school he had access to the internet and while on the search for video depositories discovered youtube a site known by very few around the world and even less known in his high school so on september 21st 2005 shane created his first youtube channel simply titled shane and upload his various skits that he filmed in high school simultaneously he attempted to address his weight loss fortunately for him his family members were employed at a weight loss and weight management company known as jenny craig but unfortunately he lacked the effort and interest to follow their regimen though later he did develop an interest in weight loss due to several occasions where his weight hindered him in one occasion during a senior trip he was not allowed on a roller coaster due to a size and another event where two gowns had to be sewn together to create a singular one to fit him for his high school graduation and after graduating high school and not being able to afford college these events inspired him to not only change his diet to primarily chicken and vegetables but also take up running in order to aggressively approach his weight loss due to these efforts and over the course of 6 months he lost 150 to 200 pounds this weight loss also allowed him to get a job as a receptionist at jenny craig when those at jenny craig saw what they thought was a success story through their program not knowing that they had practically nothing to do with shane's weight loss as he was going by his own plan but it didn't take long for him due to his success story and friendly personality to be promoted to manager working alongside his mother and brother that had other jobs within the company not seeing a future at jenny craig shane sought stardom and addition for small starter roles like those of television commercials but found it difficult to find any that would accept him as his look and personality were thought to not appeal to a wider generic audience his agent also convinced him to change his stage name from shenyang to something more appealing taking inspiration from the show dawson's creek shane began going by the stage name shane dawson while still not landing any acting roles shane examined his old youtube channel and found that he had a small following inspired by this he made his second channel shane dawson tv on march 10 2018 which initially beyond a link to his myspace page and a short description about the future for his channel included very little his first few videos were done in the form of video vlogs where as few creators did at the time talked about their day and chose a very personal approach to their audience what's cracking youtubers in case you don't know me my name is shane nice to meet you all that's stuff seriously between work and trying to be an actor and all that stuff i just need something else so here's the plan i'm gonna have this site sd tv which is all over the background right now so um basically it's just a video blog thing i mean every week or a couple days depending on how bloggy i'm feeling um there'll be a new video just random stuff i mean this is just an introduction it's gonna get more exciting i promise within just six days and three video uploads shane had already gained 34 subscribers with his videos individually gaining over a hundred views each though that growth was impressive even for today's youtube environment shane still looked for something that would get him rapid growth he eventually decided that going back to making skits like he once did in high school had decent potential for growth due to him lacking friends and or volunteers to participate in these skits he set out on creating various characters based on exaggerated forms of his clients though he had a wide variety of characters some appeared far more frequently than others due to the success of the character by far if not the most popular was shinene as this character made several video appearances and took on over the top urban mannerisms some tell me you were afraid of a couple damn roaches these [ __ ] like my roommates i even gave names to all of them how many are there shane himself in these videos played the straight man when interacting with these characters as for schedule new videos came out bi-weekly and included parodies of viral videos sometimes just popular figures these videos gained quite a bit of traction but where the positive reactions were more visible the negative reactions were more tangible when in an earlier vlog he filmed himself at work but this time the topic of the video was not him it was his work and defaced the company in various ways one way was when a book written by jenny creek's spoke person valerie bertinelli was given to the jenny creek staff in order to sell it to their clients shane being asked to sell this book found several passages in the book that were wildly inappropriate so he decided to highlight the madness by having his co-workers read passages within the book that were hyper focused on sex and drugs so from the jenny craig staff here is valerie bertinelli losing it for my son wolfie she asked me how experienced i was i said that except for my 9th grade boyfriend when i was shoving my head in his crotch actually he already dumped me before i got to try that i laughed i was still a virgin raised in a rock and rolled milou she had learned to roll a joint when she was still in grade school and by 12 had used both plot and dave had fired himself up with plenty of jack daniels [Music] another controversial point in shane's video was suggesting jenny craig's clients gained their weight back okay so i'm in my office right now take a look there's my little starboard all these people gain their way back don't tell anybody and finally the final controversial piece of shane's video at his work was the overall unprofessionalism that he encouraged in his workplace keep in mind that all these activities were just in one video and of course because of his increasing popularity this vlog was shown to the higher ups of janey craig resulting in him his brother his mother and six other employees fired leaving his entire immediate family out of a job shane signing this period as one of the most stressful in his life and went on unemployment for financial support he did eventually find a job as a security guard at an aquarium this change shifted his focus to youtube as he started uploading more regularly starting by uploading bi-weekly but later adopted a fixed schedule where he took three days to think of a sketch one day to write it one day to gather all the necessary equipment for it one day to film and finally the last day to edit and upload it due to his regular uploads by the end of 2008 shane had amassed 21 000 subscribers and 317 000 total views but most importantly shane dawson had acquired a partnership specifically youtube's experimental youtube partner program something he initially struggled to enter what this program did is it allowed youtube to automatically select and play advertisements on shane's videos and allow shane to earn a fair amount of money from youtube mostly because back in 2009 the partner program being as exclusive as it was meant that his videos were packed with advertisements meaning that he earned around 10 dollars per thousand views which is almost unheard of in the current youtube climate come february 2009 his channel doubled in size this due to his content which was comfortable as to say that shane was not visibly uncomfortable on camera and could make anyone watching him feel like a genuine friend now because of this growth what started as a small payment to make rent became a full-time job for shane as he began gaining notoriety through sketches and mastered parody videos and what some would consider and current times as click bait both showcased in one of his largest videos of 2009 fred is dead a parody of the pitch-altered youtube sensation fred hey guys it's me frank i'm all tied up and i don't know where i am when she says mommy time she's in the bathroom for three hours with the door locked and the radio on but i think the radio is broken because all i hear is videos like these brought a substantial amount of views to his channel doubling in size what seemed to be every two months shane taking advantage of this new stardom did interviews collaborations sold merchandise and moved from long beach california to la his growth on youtube so insane by september of 2009 he was the fifth most subscribed channel on youtube with his largest videos garnering millions of views naturally he'd inspire other channels to make their own sketch videos that closely followed his format of absurdist humor with shane establishing a brand of humor that pushes boundaries mostly targeted towards the alternative scene but his demographic slowly changed to mostly consist of teenage girls and as the site gained more traction so did shane ending 2009 with over 1 million subscribers this year being phenomenal for shane's growth as no channel had practically grown as fast as his in fact by february 2010 he was ranked 25 on forbes magazine's largest web celebrities something that helped his growth was his two other channels his second channel that he made on april 3rd 2009 where he posted outtakes and other content that he felt was unsuitable for his main channel and his lesser known channel shane that was created in 2005 that he converted to a channel where he mostly avoided sketches and posted videos where he discussed his opinions and various other things going on in his life and allowed a more personal connection to his viewers though on his main channel shane dawson tv viewers usually only received a video every saturday on his other two channels uploads were nearly every day mostly due to the fact that they had much less production value even with these not being his main channel each of their videos usually gained a million to half a million views each he also did various collaborations one such collaboration was with the fine bros a channel of similar size and co-produced a series known as hey it's melee a muppet asks show where millie the muppet is canonically eight years old but often makes sexual innuendos another raunchy things which was the comedic center of the joke though he did many other collaborations this one stands out mostly due to its later resurfacing his brand in 2010 so infectious and left the youtube scene as his merchandise was sold at trending clothing stores such as hot topic his channel also having other real world impacts when media companies like usa today interviewed him showcasing his success to an even wider audience his achievements also earned him an award for the best vlogger at the second annual streaming awards in 2010 this year being yet another year of tremendous growth again doubling in subscribers on his main channel which was also and not taking into consideration his other channels the third most subscribed channel on youtube easily surpassing all of his collaborators with his main channel's videos videos which averaged between 1 million to 5 million views weeks after their upload in the last months of 2010 came the potential of sd high a television show in a high school setting that was meant to contain shane's characters this received backing from adam sandler's production company happy madison productions and also sony the potential of this television show was something you talked about all throughout 2011 but as there were no further mentions of this show and no episodes to be found it's a safe bet that this show was never made but still due to his size many other ideas and deals were getting thrown around like a movie deal that he planned to take a more serious and less comedic tone in as he still planned to become a serious director and was using youtube as a stepping stone to achieve that in the meantime his channel's sketches shifted towards pop culture and parodied various celebrity actions and music videos some of his videos having extremely high production value even for current youtube standards as he sunk much of the money he earned back into his videos to improve their quality while his core videos continued pushing the bar in terms of humor mostly relying on slapstick taboos sexual innuendos and other non-mainstream forms of comedy these styles prominent and very few other channels similar to size and content and though his channel was still growing rapidly gaining another million subscribers in 2011 he was slowly starting to fall lower on the list of the most subscribed channels following two slots to number five by the end of 2011 but it was clear looking throughout this year that youtube was not his only priority as he attempted to sell other tv shows and movies but was unsuccessful in these endeavors though he did find little success in other places as shane began creating and selling his music first on march 31 2012 was super love a pop song as demonstrated in the music video is about an outcast played by shane attempting to win over a female friend by finding her abusive boyfriend this song like most was sold for a dollar on itunes two other songs with varying messages and inspired by different genres were also released in 2012. his music video is gaining similar viewership as his other videos fans were supportive of his songs also released on october 12 2012 was smiley a small budget horror slasher film that included a slew of white celebrities which included shane dawson who played a small role within the film this film was shown in select amc theaters in the united states but this was not a successful movie nor did it provide much help for shane's much-wanted film career as the film was heavily panned by critics getting an 18 rating on rotten tomatoes some calling it a rip off a scream and candyman this theatrical flop came the same month of his first albeit minor scandal when in a video making fun of fangirls specifically targeted towards fangirls of one direction a girl is depicted just finishing carving harry styles into her arm with a very obvious plastic knife some viewers took this as him making fun of self-harm and though there was little backlash he decided to address this four days later where he also delves into other aspects of his past and claims his irregular perspectives on things is his coping mechanism okay so in one of my last videos a halloween video there was a joke where the girl was carving harry styles into her arm and and everybody went up crazy because they're like oh you're making fun of cutting um and i'm not so i deal with things with comedy um i as some of you guys might know and some of you don't i dealt with depression a lot um these last four years i well before i started youtube i lost obviously you guys already know a couple hundred pounds and then i was dealing with that and losing that much weight that fast [ __ ] with your head enormously and i was a mess and i was depressed and i was i was um borderline suicidal because i had 15 pounds of extra skin on my body and it was just hanging and i was covering it up and i was wearing man girdles and i was that's when i started making youtube videos but youtube to me has been a way to get away from my problems but it also is keeping me from dealing with my problems so like every time i'm depressed instead of dealing with it i make a video so when people were getting mad at me saying oh god shane you don't care about us you don't care about depression you don't care about cutting it's like well no i do obviously i deal with it firsthand but the way i deal with it is by making jokes about it i make jokes about eating disorders i make jokes about white people black people fat people skinny people depressed people not depressed people i make jokes about everybody because that's kind of you know if you can't laugh at yourself then what the [ __ ] is the point of living that's the way i look at it but i am sorry if i heard some of your guys's feelings because in all honesty when i made it i didn't even think about it i was like nobody's gonna get mad at this it's funny so when people got mad i was like from this video mostly due to him admitting he had depression increased his relatability towards his viewers they were also having difficult time and shane received overwhelming support due to it something that he was receiving less of though was views at the start of 2013 his videos while still relatively receiving a large amount of views were dropping where he would once get around 3 million views per video he was now getting around a million his views halved on his two other channels shane and shane dawson tv2 shane dawson tb2 was later abandoned most likely because of the similarity of content of shane dawson tv and shane with this new void of free time he found space for other projects like working on pitching shows that were never produced and starting a podcast known as shane and friends this podcast as he stated allowed viewers to view an unfiltered version of shane because most of his videos are recorded and edited he could selectively pick what he wanted to say in whatever video he was making but in this podcast as you'd see in any traditional podcast would consist of the raw recording without any edits besides breaks this podcast first only consisting of audio later came with video once a professional set was built allowing viewers to see a more raw and true version of shane while this podcast did help him grow it did considerably more damage to his image later on than it was worth for his growth but at the time and in 2014 he had a bigger secret project that he was working on and to compensate for the time working on this project shane pre-recorded several videos that he would upload while working on this venture finally uncovering what he was working on on april 4th 2014 when he announced he created a somewhat professional movie with an 800 000 budget that after all the editing promotions and other necessities was projected to release later in the year along with this movie came a 10 episode television show that premiered on stars called the chair a documentary style series produced by filmmaker chris moore known for hits such as goodwill hunting and american pie also co-produced by zachary quinto known mainly for his role as spock in recent star trek movies the idea behind the show was to take two fledgling moving directors to direct two separate movies that have the same source material with an identical budget whoever made the best movie would win a prize of 250 thousand dollars shane's competition was anna martinucci where shane got his credibility and fame through the internet anna martimucci got hers through more traditional routes as an actress and independent filmmaker their difference in name recognition would play to what some consider an unfair advantage in the competition as after everything had wrapped up and the films were released stars used surveymonkey to count the votes shane dawson's film not cool got a 63 out of 100 while anna marmuches got a 58 out of 100 making shane the winner of the 250 thousand dollar prize and i'm very very nervous as i read this email that i just got sent from chris moore final results the weighted average on a scale of zero to 100 using the agreed-upon methodology not cool is clearly the winner [Music] it should be noted that a good portion of votes were disqualified 39 to be exact because the voter failed to prove that they had seen both movies this was made ever more suspicious when seven days before the film's release shane not only promoted a clip of the movie on his channel but also asked fans to purchase it on itunes and announced that he was going to attend the majority of showings meaning that he heavily used his stardom to his advantage also a grievance with some viewers was that shane's movie not cool had a similar style to his videos as throughout was a nonsensical comedy where shane had the opportunity to break out of that routine and make something more serious he chose not to and practically adapted his traditional humor into movie form the new york times saying that not cool is quote an attempt at raunchy comedy that is so poorly executed and unfunny that no one involved with it should ever be allowed to work in the movies again unquote chris moore and zachary quinto sharing a similar sentiment zachary quinto calling it quote ultimately a vapid waste of time unquote both the movie not cool and the series the chair did not perform well and failed to gain a large audience or good ratings this entire situation tarnishing shane's name in hollywood on a different note winning a prize of 250 000 dollars relative to most is a lot of money but relative to the sale of the multi-channel network maker studios was very little which sold earlier this year for 500 million dollars shane being a part of it would have made 80 million dollars from the sale if he didn't leave after a heated argument in its earlier stages while also foregoing his equity this potential cut much higher than his own net worth also in 2014 during the production of the chair was his first major scandal when sam pepper a large content creator filmed a prank video of him pinching women's butts many outraged viewers called for repercussions for his recorded sexual harassment this caused the video to be removed him to be dropped from his network and also be banned from vidcon with many large content creators speaking out about this some asked why others guilty of scandalous activity weren't getting a similar treatment which was eventually directed at shane dawson for his use of blackface jokes about miners and other controversial scandalous things he said on camera starting on twitter with people calling him out on this one of if not the most prominent was francesca ramsey that took note of that while he did take most of his videos that included blackface down there were still a few on his channel and some others archived that demonstrated these scandalous activities shane eventually giving in and responding directly to francesca ramsey in a long series of tweets that act as larger note quote honestly what is your deal i just don't get it you have been attacking me for like three years i get that you disagree with my content and i 100 understand that but the constant tweets are just so negative and hateful and i have never ever favorited a tweet of someone telling you to kill yourself that's horrible and i called you a youtube [ __ ] because you are attention seeking not because you are a [ __ ] last one i'm sorry for offending you and i've apologized to the community numerous times you need to let the hate go girl unquote with these and a few more tweets shane decided it was best to address it on his second channel shane in a form of an apology video claiming that while he heard about blackface he did not understand the history behind it or what it meant and was sorry also apologizing directly to francesca ramsey and a few others basically what happened was some screencaps were going around and some blog posts about me doing blackface now for those of you who don't know what blackface is blackface is something they used to do a long time ago white people would you know make their face black and they'd paint their lips white they'd make fun of black people and it was really cruel and horrible and i'm gonna be honest i didn't really know what it was up until literally a month ago um i knew the term i didn't quite know any of the historical you know background and any of that and i care about you guys so much that i should care about what i'm teaching you and if what i'm teaching you is that it's okay to paint yourself black because well it's just funny to play a character if i'm teaching you that it's wrong and i am sorry because i care for you too much to teach you things like that so i wrote down some names on twitter of people who were really offended and sad by seeing me doing blackface um so i wrote them down i wanted to apologize to fedora hippie and then also of course uh francesca uh who i talked about earlier in the video i'm sorry you know genuinely this isn't fake i'm not i'm just i'm sorry overall this situation was mostly forgotten due to him deleting most of the videos him getting in front of the controversy before other large channels picked up on it and generally that many people did not see the videos shane was talking about francesca ramsey uploading a video the following day talking about this situation but hardly getting any traction possibly due to her avoidance of disclosing the person she was talking about which was shane and not showing the existing evidence that many have not seen i do think apologies are incredibly important i don't want to discount anyone's effort to change and better themselves but it's important to realize that that's just closing one chapter and starting a new one so let's focus on the new chapter and thanks for saying that you will make that commitment with me i hope that i'm not projecting on you because i think that that's what you're saying right again this effectively allowing the situation to be mostly forgotten or unseen by the majority of the internet but something that the internet did become more aware of was that shane was suffering from body dysmorphia explained in a rather serious video on his main channel called my eating disorder on october 1st 2014 well i feel like i might have touched on this before but i have a pretty severe uh case of body dysmorphia so yes i look in the mirror and i see uh a huge person uh i see me in a fat suit basically and it's been like that ever since i lost uh weight when i was 18. and i'm i'm i'm tired i'm so tired i'm so tired of caring and i'm so tired of of of i'm just tired so the reason i'm making this video is um because i know that some of you guys out there might be feeling the same way about yourself and your body and not just that but other things maybe you have a big nose maybe you hate your hair maybe you hate something about yourself and you keep trying to change it you keep trying to you obsess over it you look at yourself in the mirror and you're you're wishing you could be something else and you're you're trying trying to try i have all these things but now i'm depressed about my body and it's a [ __ ] up cycle you know and it's just it just proves to me that no matter what there's always going to be something you know and how do you deal with that well i don't know yet and i'm trying to figure it out and if you guys are feeling the same way you know just be easier on yourself and beat yourself up so much this video and its contents were dissected and reported throughout many small news sites a common occurrence for a channel of his size his channel by the start of 2015 had 6.3 million subscribers and at times hosted smaller creators on the rise 2015 was mostly a positive year for shane first with his release of his first memoir i hate my selfie a collection of essays by shane dawson where he recounts 18 of his most embarrassing inspiring life stories this was just another example of how he was diversifying his revenue streams come july of 2015 shane estimated that youtube was only 25 of his total income while he was getting a significant amount of money from youtube he definitely was not even close to its highest earner as many of his videos were flagged as inappropriate and did not receive advertisements the ones that did it only got two dollars per thousand views far from the ten dollars he was getting back in 2009 even with all these other operations he committed himself to doing nine videos a week his secret was that most videos except for skits and higher production videos were filmed back to back in a single day he'd simply change shirts and start talking about a new subject his second more personal channel shane getting the majority of uploads easily one of his most viral videos was him coming out as bisexual in an emotional 14 minute video where he also mentions that he broke up with his now ex-girlfriend lisa schwartz a girl that he had been seeing for the past four years and i don't want to hate myself anymore i don't want to be sad all the time and um so i started telling people this week i told all my friends i told my mom and my brother and my mom was so supportive as shane later stated he never anticipated such large and welcoming support from his fan again winning over the hearts of many for being down to earth with his feelings and helping others with similar struggles by sharing his story this video and video series like his tasting series where he tried obscure foods changed the course of the way he approached youtube though he created his first channel shane in 2005 in 2008 shane dawson tv always had his focus and saw it more important to produce skits for his audience that was up until 2016 where his uploads slowed on his main channel and more energy was directed towards his original channel shane that showcased more of his personality and his reactions to certain topics not only dealing with food but also with few conspiracy videos mostly revolving around pop culture with shane quickly catching up to shane dawson tv also in 2016 was the release of his second book it gets worse a collection of essays to celebrate its launch he created a short film that followed the theme of a horror slasher with bits of comedy littered in this short film constantly referenced his change of content from sketches to a now more personal focus on his brand leaving behind much of the raunchy humor and plays with a friendly direct and yet comfortable approach with his audience in march of 2016 shane being single was using various dating apps for their intended purposes within one of these apps specifically bumble he found rylan adams an employee of clever news something shane had appeared on a month prior for a sort of interview on bumble with shane vaguely recognizing ryland the two matched and hit it off meeting up and going on several dates until later in the year on october 24th shane on his instagram made it public that they were officially dating also in 2016 full screen media which just launched its streaming service where teens and young adults contracted shannon friends and gave them the money to assemble a studio where those subscribed to the full screen app could visually consume the shane and friends podcast while all these great things were going on in shane's life and he was invigorating his channel many did not know or see one of his core struggles which was self-image but in reality it's worse than it looks in his book it gets worse those who've read it found many segments where shane discusses his bulimia and purging the definition of purging is purification or cleansing but in relation to bulimia it means vomiting after a meal usually a large one in order to indulge in food but avoid gaining weight as with people like shane who lost an abnormal amount of weight in such fast time bulimia and the fear of returning to their original weight is very real even with shane's understanding of the inefficiency of such a dangerous habit shane for about five years and so on purged at least three times a week and while he mentioned some of these struggles in prior interviews and videos it was making a serious return so much so that he skipped out on doing youtube rewind because of his self-image issues something that he also struggled with was doing collaborations because he did not have control of his appearance his fans supported him through his struggles and cited their own fight with self-image the larger problem was one of his largest series on his now main channel shane was tasting various foods in many videos shane is seen spitting out foods he did not enjoy and only taken a bite out of the ones that he did enjoy some viewers related this to his bulimia and worried about the consequences these videos had on his mental health but most of his audience unaware of his struggles saw it as a comedic gesture finally after uploading 83 food tasting videos shane abruptly stopped in 2017 later citing that it triggered his eating disorder and bulimia and he wanted to stop having so much food around now having more free time he focused on his other videos that ranged from collaborations to product testing to now more popular conspiracy videos that as time progressed we're improving quality and research but for the time being he was also experimenting with many other series one of the most notable was his confrontation series where he confronts people from his past and some of his present and finds out what went wrong easily the most personality building and emotional one was the confrontation with his dad i guess what i want to also know is like the divorce so for me i took mom's side because she was my mom and you know but she said in my video that she did some bad stuff too you mentioned something about her telling you something or and she said it's okay to talk about well what you have to understand is your mother was my whole life and as a matter of fact i think i probably concentrated on your mother more than i concentrate on you kids because i loved her so much and i remember sitting one night and telling her that i just wanted to be with her 24 hours a day seven days a week and did she feel that way she didn't say anything at first and then she finally said no and i thought well she doesn't understand the question so i rephrased it i said well let me put it this way i know we can't do this because it's life but the way i feel in my heart is i just want to be with you 24 7. don't you feel that way and she said no i don't and i need to find myself and inside of me just crumbled at that point i mean the i just thought what have i been living alive for 17 years then because i thought that she held me in the same esteem as i held her and we grew up together i mean we were kids we were young we got married way too young to get married and i thought we were friends you know and i guess it was things she wasn't telling me so i don't know what i could have done differently you know leaving wasn't a good thing probably wow um you know what i'm actually gonna see if rylan can hold the camera because i i feel like i'm having trouble focusing as many veteran viewers of shane could point out there used to be a plethora of clips where shane talks about his upbringing and often cites his alcoholic father leaving his family when shane was 9 years old which worsened their financial state and made him more of an outcast but after rekindling their relationship and shane getting a different perspective to what happened he removed all the videos where he talked about his father in a nail manner following this trend of positive confrontational videos he reacted to a video by the then rising content creator known as bobby burns and after sifting through bobby's content he found he had an affinity towards him and decided that he was going to attempt to contact bobby burns and fly him to la to meet him this mini-series was known as confronting my hater it saw bobby burns flown to l.a to meet shane shane like he's done with many other channels gave bobby a video slot where he could upload his own videos to be promoted by the end of the series shane also gifted bobby a car but due to him getting labeled as a hater his rapid growth and his changing content made it so that he soon lost it all some later blamed shane for putting him in such a large seemingly negative spotlight others leaving it to a series of unfortunate events but before all these ill-fated things happened shane found inspiration in helping others grow their channels though he had been promoting smaller channels for a while his later series will work to both help him and declining channels grow but not before his own decline at the start of 2018 due to atnt's purchase of full screen their app that hosted shane dawson's podcast was discontinued and his podcast along with it though this was just the start of issues that would arise from his podcast on january 10 2018 pop last a channel with 677 thousand subscribers and a mysterious history of ownership posted a five minute long video where it takes segments of a podcast episode that were recorded four years ago in 2014. this child was probably six years old and um i was taking a picture of something and the kid turns to me and goes oh are you instagramming and first of all how does a five-year-old six-year-old know what instagram is which is terrifying second of all i was embarrassed because yes i was and it was a picture of my salad and the six-year-old girl goes um oh how many followers do you have i have a hundred and twenty-five thousand no her dick was almost as big as mine really and i said okay little big dick why do you have so many followers and she goes oh i'm a cheerleader and i'm like oh really and she shows me her instagrams which are like first of all i don't know if i'm allowed to say this but like she's like sexy she's like sexy you're disgusting i know listen we've talked about pedestrians shane like like do not say this and like i don't even want to talk about it like you will get arrested like he kind of can listen to justification justification for pedophilia and it's so disturbing and like i just pretend that he doesn't okay no let me explain let me explain here's my justification for pedophilia i can't here's my thing people have foot fetishes people have fetishes about you know everything fine everybody do your thing so why is it when somebody looks at a google's like naked baby on google and jerks off to it they can get arrested i don't understand because here's the worst part of it i actually went to google and i'm like okay i want to see i know but i just wanted to see like okay let me just pretend let me pretend like i'm a pedophile for a sec [Music] so i typed in naked baby first of all they were sexy okay back to the instagram um so if i look at this little girl's pictures and she had makeup on she had her tongue out she was doing like the peace sign she was doing a backflip is she like honey boo boo was she fat no she was like the skinny little sexy six-year-old this video also contained few clips of his recent videos one where he invited a 13 year old youtube content creator to his house to promote her channel and another where shane hires a child actor and pretends to be his father this video spread throughout all the crevices of the internet and gained much attention on twitter the same day it was posted prompting shane dawson to make a response the same day claim that the video was incredible due to its heavy use of ominous music it's editing out of certain points and claimed that shane's current and ex partners have baby faces or for example they're saying oh shane talked about googling naked babies which by the way i never did like i was making a joke and telling a story and lying and being like well i googled naked of course i didn't google [ __ ] naked babies i'm busy i don't have time to google [ __ ] naked babies and that's gross and weird but i made the joke and then of course i said first of all i said i wasn't looking for child porn they cut that out then i said after that i don't know why anybody would be turned on by babies and they cut that out these are the two segments edited out a pop last video i was embarrassed because yes i was and it was a picture of my salad okay so then the supplication i thought it looked amazing and the six-year-old girl goes um oh how many followers do you have i mean first of all it was almost like one of those contests where it's like how big is your dick and this kid slapped his huge her huge dick on the table having sex with children or touching children or anything of that nature is terrible she should not do it but but here's my thing shane's response saw overwhelming support from viewers and content creators alike defending him from these accusations overall while few did rally against him the majority of people ignored these accusations but out of this situation a conspiracy was born when a day after poplar's video was uploaded another video was uploaded on the channel titled receipts where a staticy ai generated voice listed off random numbers and there was a single stale image of a six thousand five hundred dollar transaction from jeffrey oscar levin better known as logan paul's content manager as logan paul also at the start of 2018 was involved in a scandal where he filmed a corpse while venturing through japan's suicide forest the idea behind this conspiracy was that in order to get the heat off logan paul his content manager paid pop blast to make a sensational video on shane dawson the same day the receipts video was uploaded another video titled final message was also uploaded and the two previous videos on shane dawson were removed when these numbers are uncoded it says i'm returning the money i'm sorry as a reminder this is just a conspiracy pop blast was terminated for multiple or severe violations against spam deceptive practices and misleading content after this short scandal blew over shane dawson along with his usual conspiracy videos and unthink vlog style videos began making mini series starting with ghost hunting experiencing high cost activities and locations and most notably his sort of resurrection documentary style videos and other content creators that have seen either or both a decline in support or in views this marked an important transition in shane's content style where previously through his many phases he usually prioritized quantity over quality meaning he focused on releasing videos rapidly rather than working on bigger projects now he was transitioning to long form content and instead of his videos being 8 to 17 minutes long and shot from a single frame they were now between 30 to 50 minute long highly edited multi-part series with each individual video gaining tens of millions of views showing a successful recovery from his decline three years ago though not everything was perfect while some of his first video series had a lot of support like those including graveyard girls declining channel the failure that was tanacon and the lavish lifestyle of jeffree star but others like the mind of jake paul were shane in the second part of this eight part series brought on licensed therapist katie morton for professional advice but when shannon and katie's conversation veered into what might constitute a sociopath her exaggerations general attitude and mis-sightings of statistics made her seem unprofessional this mixed in with shane's editing that included but was not limited to highly unrelated footage ominous music and overblown reactions made what was meant to be a somewhat serious documentary a sensationalized hard to believe segment though these problems were mostly secluded to this episode and the rest of the documentary performed well showing a more empathetic and understanding side of jake paul the final episode of the series kicking off a two-month hiatus on shane's channel his change in content style giving shane some of the most traction he had seen possibly ever gaining around 9 million subscribers in 2018 to a total of 19.5 million by the start of 2019 by this point shane only uploaded a couple times a year and with his videos extremely anticipated gained nearly 10 million views within the first 24 hours of their uploads the first video of 2019 was a conspiracy video formatted chronologically focusing on three different parts and constantly switching between them as the stories progressed easily the one that got the most attention was the conspiracy that chuck e cheese was recycling their pizza as to say if a customer did not finish their food and their food was not taken home it would be used to form a new pizza to save the chain restaurant money but shane found that though the pizzas looked misshapen his findings were inconclusive mystery still unsolved regardless the internet's curiosity was not satiated creating an overabundance of people investigating the pizza this negative pr forcing a statement from chuck e cheese saying quote no conspiracies here our pizzas are made to order and we prepare our dough fresh and restaurant which means that they're not always perfectly uniform in shape but always delicious unquote this statement and the fact that the cheapest pizzas usually cost just under a dollar to make mostly disproved any claims but the conspiracy still remains till this day because shane's videos were getting so much attention they were also getting a wider audience instead of having an audience of 10 million fluctuating viewers he now had 40 million and because so many people were new to shane many were now being exposed to some of his past scandals like the one that happened the year prior which came back on march 17 2019 but he dismissed it with a link to his video addressing it previously little did he know on the same day another clip from a 2015 episode of his podcast that had not resurfaced before started to spread through twitter and youtube in a similar way to pop last video last year this is that video the things i've done to my poor animals they will never love me and terrible things i used to oh no i don't know if you want to go there saying what'd you do one time i laid my cat down on her back you don't get arrested for this i don't i don't know think about it hmm i don't think so okay i didn't penetrate i laid the cat down on her back and then i moved her little chicken legs like you know spread open or whatever and i was like if i just like hump but like on her tummy like that's not weird like whatever and then i hope that i hunted him and kept going kept going that came all over the camera no you didn't was like my first sexual experience it was also like 19 so it's like wait a minute wait a second did you just say you came on guys i think you have to put money shane in a very lengthy twitter rant addressed this directly saying he never did anything of that nature to his cat and stated that many of the things he said on that podcast were not true and were said for the purpose to shock people and paint himself as an eccentric podcast host in order to get more viewership and attention and that is apologized many times for the things he has done in his past finding that it was better to be himself and to feel confident with his personality or the new way he entertains speaking of he slowly started to merge into a new community known as the beauty community that was already well established and it had many creators collaborating with one another some of which shane already collaborated with best known out of all of his collaborators was jeffrey starr who shane began another investigative documentary series with towards the end of 2019 that had a much different ending than his other series to give context on this new jeffree star series his old series had a segment where he pitched a makeup palette to jeffree star who has a very large and profitable makeup empire and easily a much larger net worth than shane dawson in this new series this pitch was already cemented and in the later episodes it becomes less of investigating jeffree star's day by day activities to showing and promoting the release of the conspiracy palette collaboration between the two and other smaller products earning shane a good amount of money and pulling them closer to the multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry shane originally never being inducted to the beauty guru community made shane claussen three days after the end of his most recent jeffree star series releasing an additional episode on this channel that was essentially a compilation of deleted scenes from a series and also had a segment showing off the dangers of the new attention the new series provided one on multiple occasions strangers showed up to his house unsolicited the one shown on the recording jumping his front gate and banging on all the windows and doors trying to gain entry house tell them we'll open up the key two dogs oh my god when the police arrived they searched this person's backpack and found undisclosed drugs this video was released on january 21st 2020 almost exactly a month after the release of this video shane uploaded a video using current footage of himself some viewers noticing shane had gained some weight and left her comments about it shane then took to twitter saying quote hey shane why don't you post more why don't you upload more well this you would think after 13 years on youtube comments wouldn't get to me but damn they still feel like the very first time haha unquote and linked a screen capture of one of his comments this tweet appearing on several online news channels along with a lot of support coming from multiple directions this seeming like another peak of his online career with him actively losing weight having overwhelming support from his viewers and making unfathomable amounts of money from his collaboration and now restocked his jeffree star makeup products but it didn't take long for him to reach the inverse of this peak and for his popularity to fall faster than he had ever seen and that's partially because of cameron lester's video recounting certain uncomfortable situations he had working with jeffree star last year and while the focus of the video was mostly on jeffree star shane did have a small part to play i was in his hotel and we were just chilling we were talking to rich lux again and a few other people and i was talking to jeffrey and i remember shane dawson called and he was going off about james charles and something and telling like just like cursing james out and i was just like kind of took taken back because i've never seen shane dawson like that and he was just going in on james and i was like oh is there like some there's something like brewing there's something going on with james and shane and jeffrey so i was just uncomfortable and i just was like i'm gonna stay over here i don't even know what to do i was really small at this point i'm still pretty small and i was just like i'm not saying anything what he's talking about is what the beauty community refers to as dramageddon which at this point has seen many different phases and due to the lengthiness and the complexity of this drama involving a list of unending channels involvements i'm going to summarize it and simplify it to the best of my ability so in this story there are three major players james charles the target tati westbrook the accuser and jeffree star the instigator to start off tati mentored the much younger james on general beauty guru stuff and was understood that this also had business implications meaning that tati could take james charles on to be sponsored by her vitamins but mid-2019 james promoted competing vitamins which made her feel betrayed so tati uploaded the now infamous by sister video claiming james used his fame to attempt to sleep with straight males in an aggressive and manipulative fashion jeffrey starr as he usually does involved himself in this drama making his own accusations overall heavily damaging the career of james charles so in response he uploaded no more lies clearing up some of the accusations and misconceptions his video changing the perspectives of many though drama getting never truly died down the players mostly jeffree star were instigating and discussing it in few situations with this situation and quickly explained we can now focus once more on shane dawson back to 2020 the release of cameron lester's video now implicates shane in the cancellation of james charles as if it was a targeted attack by all three of these large channels something many people constantly reference is a large age gap of these three channels going after someone much younger and with much less experience when cameron lester's video came out people began flooding shane with questions about his involvement in the cancellation on james charles leading to shane's announcement on twitter saying that he was departing from the beauty community there are many things readers took away from shane's statements first was the reason he was departing saying he wanted to get away from all the volatile drama and it was not good for his mental health he then goes on to say he did not direct the cancellation of james charles adding that while he knows jeffrey is extremely problematic and he understands he is similar to the people he is removing himself from he still considers him a friend this announcement written off as if shane was above all of this drama and was seemingly taking the high ground and detaching himself from it conveniently right after he made a fortune selling makeup with jeffree star and also restocking the makeup though he denies it had anything to do with money something that is repeatedly cited when others reference shane's post is this segment quote do i think james is the devil no do i think he was a young egocentric power-hungry guru who needed to be served a slice of humble pie the size of the [ __ ] empire state building yes unquote he then made a follow-up tweet referencing this segment saying that he had no malice intent towards james charles and that he simply needed to be humbled the following day possibly due to all the negative attention this tweet and his previous announcement were deleted by shane but this did very very little to stop the beauty community from digging up shane's old baggage and dug up some things that he already addressed and apologized for in the past but this time people dug just a little further and found more clips that though they do fall under his many apologies have not been individually addressed one of the biggest videos is a video where he asked his 12 year old cousin various inappropriate questions now are you on your period right now what i'm trying to get answers i'm going to give you anything how old are you i'm 12. this feels very you know what are you no you're not in your period you believed no no listen you have a boyfriend right yeah now what did i tell you when he says can i put it in you say no good high five girlfriend now when he now when he says what about just in your mouth you say no no you say i bite right 12 years old everybody videos like these were getting traction on twitter shane trying to get in front of this coming scandal on june 26 2020 uploaded taking accountability where he addresses many things and states that his previous apologies came from a place of fear and didn't know what he was saying because he was too young to understand and that many of the scandalous things he said in his past were derived from his own pain and experiences turned into jokes i'm 31 almost 32. those apologies suck i don't know who that person is anymore every apology video i've ever made has been from fear it's it's me sitting at home thinking the whole world hates me and crying and hyperventilating and then just turning on a webcam and just saying i'm sorry and then hoping people know i'm a good person and then it'll go away and that is stupid that is something that a child does not something that a 31 year old uh man does that's not that's not good this this video is coming from a place of just wanting to own up to my [ __ ] wanting to own up to everything i've done on the internet that has hurt people that has added to a problem that has not been handled well like i should have been punished for things so i'm going to start with all the racism that i put onto the internet as a adult not a child i was at least 20 when i started youtube and i made the decision to play stereotypes of black people or asian people or mexicans or pretty much every race i made that decision i said oh this is funny and i put it on the internet that person was filled with sadness filled with anger about their own issues uh in the closet constantly uh on others just like i don't know just that that person is someone who i don't like seeing also within this video he addressed the video of him and his 12 year old cousin have i done sketches where kids were saying crazy things yes do i regret it yes even i saw a vlog clip of me and my cousin who was i don't know probably 12 or 13 at the time and we were you know i was doing the birds and the bees talk dumb gross [ __ ] and i remember a few years ago i reached out to her mom my aunt and i was like i'm so sorry oh my god i can't believe i did this like this is insane i can't believe i talked to you know my cousin like that and you know she was like oh my god we know we know it's okay it was funny like we all thought it was funny like that's just how our family is so i kind of took that as like okay well then i don't need to apologize for it but i do because i posted it on the internet for everyone i do want to say since i've apologized for those things in the past i have made a lot of changes in my life changes in just every every every facet of me has changed i'm not just saying it i'm not just saying oh i'm gonna stop doing that guys i did stop doing that i stopped doing that stuff years ago i don't use any racial slurs in my life i've never used a racial slur in anger ever in my life that is not me that has never been me i am not a hateful person i am somebody who took jokes too far and was really really really stupid and um inappropriate at first the reaction towards this video was mostly positive as seen by the like to dislike ratio just the day after it's uploaded but as more and more things started resurfacing the dislikes soon outnumbered the likes as only a day after it's uploaded a video shane filmed presumably eight years ago showed him mimikim pleasuring himself to an image of willow smith that at the time was 11 years old and then the unexpected happened jada pinkett smith the mother willis smith and janet smith her brother both tweeted at shane jade is saying to shane i'm done with excuses and jaden saying quote shane dawson i am disgusted by you you sexualizing an 11 year old girl who happened to be my sister is the furthest thing from funny and not okay in the slightest bit this man was also doing blackface on the regular as a youth we need to support creators who support us and our morals this is not okay unquote many onlookers were now introduced to the accumulating threats of damning videos of shane dawson being made all over the internet this situation was a true collection of shane doing scandalous things inadvertently promoted by large traditional celebrities so shane then privated all of his videos prior to 2014 that's nearly 1.2 billion views making his 2014 blackface apology the oldest visible video available on his channel and systematically wiped the internet of his old shannon friends podcast leaving very few acceptable ones to be re-uploaded and not taken down by shane dawson but that still did not stop his decline to make things worse tati westbrook on june 30th uploaded breaking my silence where she claims that jeffrey and shane both played large roles in motivating her to make the buy sister video against james charles last year creating an anxious emotional shame almost immediately hopping on livestream on watching her video and trying to dispute her claims but shane was quickly taken offline by ryland so sure oh of course is that another ad another ad i'm losing my mind i'm losing my mind this is so [ __ ] this is oh my god i i okay i'm live because i i can't even process it i need a drink of water i [ __ ] can't process this this is insane this is insane this is insane this woman is a [ __ ] oh my god oh my god i'm gonna wait till as many people get in here as possible because i'm losing my mind keep playing it keep playing here you know i was making a video so how is it that so many editorial outlets knew that something was coming before i because you message drama channels oh my god oh my god oh my god the night before i did film jeffrey sent me what he claimed was an audio file from an alleged victim and told me to listen to the pain of her voice the audio was clearly a small portion oh my god conversation it wasn't enough for me to contact the authorities it was enough to scare me well then why would you make a video on the matter claiming these allegations because she is a [ __ ] i can't i can't i don't want to say mean things about people this is insane this is insane this person literally oh my god oh my god okay sorry keep pressing play i need to get through this video so i can [ __ ] oh my god as a victim of abuse myself oh my god you are so manipulative think of facing public you're fate you're a fake crying you are fake crying you are fake crying that is not real oh my god oh my god get off the night before posting a video by sister oh my god i texted shane sharing my concerns for james charles that he was out of the country on the high floor of a hotel and i was afraid during the making of this video this was shane's last upload on any platform his total subscribers taking a steep decline losing nearly a million subscribers in july alone also losing his ability to earn money from youtube the reason more damning videos like this one taken about 11 years ago of shane dawson kissing a 12 year old girl with the context that she wanted him to be her first kiss during the recording of this video shane was about 21 years old also many other videos involving his younger audience resurfaced like this one of his tiny chat live stream broadcasted to visibly young girls where he talked about adult content there is truly an unbelievable amount of clips and certainly too many to show usually these clips are split up into three categories shane being controversial about race not only blackface but other comments and attitudes towards other races also about kids and the adult conversations and requests of mature dances he made like twerking and finally animals where he posts pictures of them and suggested poses and for lack of better description exchange saliva making this shane's worst scandal as strangely enough nothing recent was brought up but rather everything all at once introducing his new and large reviewer base to these past scandals and what feels like an endless stream of videos uncovered by many people digging into his history creating an absolutely massive equally sized stream of videos discussing shane's past and present while generally all content creators agree that shane dawson's actions are unwelcome there is a divide within the community that has gone beyond shame and that is cancer culture as many are calling for an end to shane dawson and his content as they say it's unforgivable that he left an everlasting stain on youtube and the minds that he negatively influenced while others claim that some videos are more than 10 years old and most of the videos on average are 8 years old and that does not represent shane now and while his actions were not condoned what should be focused on is his growth so in his place shane leaves the question the answer to that question predicts if and or when he returns is it acceptable for things in your past to represent who you are today where is the line or are there some things that are so disgusting they should never be forgiven and forever marked for what they've done fitting that even in silence he leaves another controversy about what the reaction should be even if shane comes back to his community he will be forever changed only time has the answer to if he will ever be able to mend his public image but in the worst case scenario for him it's the end of his long 14-year run on youtube the pinnacle of his channel and its downfall from favoritism unbelievably close adding yet another unexpected thing this year the downfall of shane dawson you

Channel: Joon The King

Views: 1,279,848

Rating: 4.9202847 out of 5

Keywords: Shane Dawson, Jeffree Star, Tati Westbrook, James Charles, Dramageddon, Narration, 2020, Rise and Fall, Documentary, Biography, Timeline, what happened to shane dawson, YouTube, Profile Piece, Where is, lofi hip hop, Joon The King, entertainment, analysis, education, drama, streaming, video essay, shane glossin

Id: p_2pQzD-Nk0

Length: 71min 35sec (4295 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020