Remember Shane Dawson? His Life is Ruined Now... | Internet Anarchist

0:00At the peak of his career, Shane Dawson was everywhere, getting tens of millions of views on almost every upload, selling out millions of dollars in merchandise in minutes, and even starring in multiple feature length films. For a lot of people, Shane Dawson truly was the king of YouTube, but behind the massive audience and online fame, the reality of this huge empire was far too disturbing, which the internet didn't notice until it was too late. Because while almost everyone remembers the moment Shane Dawson's career collapsed, very few actually understand just how deep and disgusting the controversies really were. The truth is, the scandal that ended his career was only the surface of a very dark iceberg. I...uh...I'm gonna start by saying, I am not a f***ing... And what really dragged him down was a pattern of bizarre and gross behavior that continues to shock people even today as new details come out.

1:11Hi, I'm the internet anarchist, I create weekly YouTube documentaries, and today we are diving into the self-inflicted downfall of Shane Dawson, to talk about the real reason that destroyed his career, the disturbing depth of his degenerate behavior, and as you'll see by the end of this video, how even after all of this, the content he is posting today is still deeply problematic. But if you want to enjoy unproblematic top tier content, all you have to do is subscribe, so hit that subscribe button, and let's take things back to where it all started. Shane Lee-Yo, aka Shane Dawson, was born in Long Beach, California on July 19, 1988. Growing up, his childhood was far from easy. He lived with an abusive father who eventually left Shane, his siblings, and their mother on their own. Take his anger out on my mom and us, pretty much every night, which is probably one of the reasons I still have problems falling asleep to this day. After his father walked out, the family went through years of financial struggle. On top of that, he was bullied in school for being overweight, so to cope with everything happening around him, he turned to humour and making videos.

2:18And this eventually led him to create his first YouTube channel, Shane Dawson TV, at the age of 19 in March 2008. Most of his early content consisted of comedy sketches where Shane played several over the top characters, such as Shanei, Ned the Nerd, S.D.Z., Untilder, and more. These videos mostly relied on shock value and edgy humour. I think what's the bridge toast? Bacon? Scramble instead? What were you doing? I'm just... I'm getting a hurt on my ass! For example, in August 2008, while working at Jenny Craig, Shane uploaded a video of himself pole dancing at his workplace. The video also showed his co-workers reading inappropriate passages from a book. When the company saw it, they fired Shane, his mother, his brother, and six co-workers who appeared in the video. While the incident didn't slow down his content creation journey, it did set the tone for the price it paid a decade later for constantly pushing boundaries.

3:19And because this kind of edgy humour was quite popular during the early days of YouTube... And I think what's the bridge toast? Bacon? Scramble instead? And a pop-pop-pop-pop! And get my hoodie on, bitch! Shane's rise from an unknown kid creating videos to an internet star was incredibly fast. By December 2009, he passed 1 million subscribers, and by April 2010, he was already the third biggest creator on the entire platform. Moving into the 2010s, Shane slowly shifted away from sketches and started posting vlog content on his second channel, Shane. Fans enjoyed seeing a more natural everyday version of one of YouTube's biggest personalities. And soon enough, this channel took off as well, gaining millions of subscribers year after year. During this period, he frequently collaborated with other major YouTubers, like Miranda Singhs, Trisha Paiters, and Rosanna Pensino. But as the hype around the vlog style content started fading by the mid-2010s, Shane moved towards conspiracy theory videos.

4:25And these, once again, were a massive hit. Most videos pulled tens of millions of views, and helped push his channel through 10 million subscribers by July 2017. Then, in 2018, Shane entered what would become the most successful period of his entire career. He switched up his content, yet again, creating multi-episode docuseries about popular creators like TEN EMOSO, Jake Paul, and Jeffree Star. These videos had a very high production value for YouTube at the time, and gave viewers an unusual insider look into the lives of some of the internet's most polarizing creators. As a result, they were shockingly successful, and even caught the attention of mainstream media. To put the scale of his popularity into perspective, Shane gained over 12 million subscribers between 2017 and 2019 alone. And this fame went beyond YouTube. He released two books in 2015 and 2016, both of which were New York Times Best Sellers Plus.

5:27In 2014, he also directed, produced, and starred in a feature-length movie called Not Cool. But as big as this moment was for Shane, this movie also opened the door to his first real controversy. It was made as part of a reality competition series called The Chair, where two first-time directors adapted the same script into different films. And even though Shane ended up winning this competition, thanks to his massive fanbase voting for him, the film itself flopped. The critics pulled it apart, mainly for the distasteful and downright gross humour displayed in the movie. According to one critic, the humour is almost always a result of the degradation of minorities or oppressed groups. The blind, overweight, slasher beasts, black, Latinx, Indian, homeless, women, and LGBTQ-plus characters. On top of that, the movie included several disgusting jokes involving SA and PDF files. And Zachary Quinter, who is one of the producers of The Chair, found it so offensive that he refused being associated with this project altogether.

6:32I'm angry. The fact that $850,000 got put into making something that was so egregiously offensive. And it's not something in any version or by any stretch of my imagination that I can ever put my name on or be associated with. But this backlash didn't just stop at his movie. Soon enough, people started digging through Shane's old YouTube videos as well. And what they found was horrifying to say the least. Because just like his movie, most of Shane's early content also relied on the exact same kind of offensive and disgusting humour. A lot of his characters were exaggerated versions of racial stereotypes. Are you sure about this girl? Don't be stupid. Girl, you cannot be kind to anyone stupid when you is wearing a feruble basket on your head. And even more controversially, he casually used the N word and blackface in many of these videos. How you doing? Welcome to The Wendy Williams Show. Yo, man, we got a hot one right here. We got a hot one right here. My seven favourite bodily fluid. Oh, no.

7:35Monkey woman. So when these clips started resurfacing online, the internet was understandably outraged. Other YouTubers like Francesca Ramsey publicly called him out as well. Content creators doing blackface on YouTube, using slurs and having characters based on stereotypes about people of colour. Content from a specific creator who has been very much guilty of this throughout their eight years here on YouTube. And that person has a ginormous fanbase of over 10 million subscribers on YouTube. And I think upwards of 2 million on Twitter. And a lot of those fans include really young teenagers, which is a big part of why it's so upsetting that this has become normalized for that audience and a big part of why I wanted to talk about it. As the racist allegations started piling up, Shane uploaded an apology video on September 26th 2014. But instead of genuinely taking responsibility and apologising to the people he hurt, he said he was still learning and claimed he didn't understand the history behind blackface at the time.

8:39I'm gonna be honest. I didn't really know what it was. Up until literally a month ago. I knew the term. I didn't quite know any of the historical background. I'm glad that it happened because now I can learn and move on and hopefully help others who are uneducated and ignorant when it comes to just time to shoot. And the problem with this defense is that it really doesn't hold up when you look at how other people his age feel about it. I'm about Shane's age. I never thought blackface was something you should do. I'm the same age as Shane and definitely said slash did some cringy stuff when I was younger. But blackface wouldn't have once crossed my mind. He acts like people didn't know what blackface was in the early to mid 2000s. But as bad as this apology sounds in hindsight, at the time it actually worked. A lot of viewers accepted his explanation and saw the video as a genuine attempt to change,

9:40as one comment under this video sums it up. It's a sign of maturity and understanding. Shane has made some mistakes. He is acknowledging them, apologizing and trying to move forward. This is a good lesson for all of us. But this controversy barely scratched the surface of what was about to come for him next. Because as gross as his racist jokes were, they were only a small part of a much more disturbing pattern of behaviour. Shane's habit of pushing boundaries for attention didn't stop us mocking people of a different race. In fact, his comedy sketches were full of unsettling creepy jokes about topics like SA. Oh good, she's passed out. Now make me some grandkids. I'll give you some privacy. Uh oh, never leave your cup uncovered onto grassy. That's how losers get date-raved. Ha, loser.

10:40He would constantly try to shock his audience without ragiously inappropriate antics, even if it meant going as far as watching corn videos with his mother. As sickening as that sounds on its own, it becomes even more concerning when you realise that a huge portion of his audience at the time were kids. And even when speaking directly to these young viewers in his fanmail videos, Shane regularly made extremely inappropriate jokes. The thing about shock value content is that it never holds up over time.

11:42Sooner or later, it stops being funny and just starts making people feel uncomfortable. And in Shane's case, that's exactly what happened. In January 2018, an old clip from his podcast resurfaced online. In this video, Shane made disgustingly inappropriate comments about a young fan. And to make it even worse, he followed that up by defending PDF files. So why is it when somebody looks at a Google's like, this was a step too far for even his most loyal fans, leaving them feeling disgusted.

12:46This is wild. A new Shane made bad comments before, but when I was younger, I would brush it off as dark humour. This is just too far. Wow, this is truly disappointing. Gross. Overnight, Twitter was flooded with people accusing him of being a PDF file. And the backlash grew so quickly that Shane posted a video the very next day, titled, Regarding the Rumors About Me Today. I'm going to start by saying, I am not a f***ing f***ing file. I, Shane YAH, my real name, go on record, saying, I am not a f***ing file. But once again, instead of taking responsibility, he deflected accountability, arguing that he didn't mean those statements literally, and said that he was just playing a character. And surprisingly, this worked for him yet again. The comment section of the video is filled

13:54with people supporting him, which once again shows the height of his fame online at the time. But unfortunately for him, this wouldn't nearly be the last time his old jokes came back to haunt him. Because just a year later, in March 2019, another old podcast clip resurfaced and went viral. In this clip, Shane described a sickening story involving his cat. The internet reacted exactly the way you'd expect, when something this gross comes up. And following the same pattern as before, Shane responded by saying the entire story was a joke to shock the audience. But as you can probably guess by now, nothing disturbing that Shane does is a one-off incident. Just like his previous antics, he had a pattern of doing bizarre and inappropriate

14:57things with his animals on camera, like making his dog drink or eat food straight from his mouth, and some other things that definitely violate YouTube's guidelines. So even if the cat's story itself wasn't true, the behavior he displayed around his animals was too concerning to ignore. But even this was nothing compared to the firestorm that was about to hit him next. In mid-2020, following the death of George Floyd and the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, conversations about racism, discrimination and accountability were reignited everywhere. People across the internet began revisiting old content with a more critical lens than before, and naturally, Shane, with his long disgraceful history of racist comments, found himself under fire

15:57once again. But this time, the backlash wasn't just focused on his jokes about African Americans, viewers found clips where he had made equally insulting jokes about other racial groups too, including entire songs mocking Asian and Mexican people. And to make things even worse, around the same time, another old clip went viral, where Shane and his then girlfriend were speaking to his real cousin about deeply uncomfortable topics. This clip is far too inappropriate to show without violating YouTube's guidelines,

17:01but combined with all the racist jokes being shared online, it pushed public outrage to an entirely new level. I really don't understand how Shane gets a pass on everything he does. He's a 31-year-old man who's treated like a fragile child who knows nothing about the world. No, he is an evil man who is manipulative and a liar. You can't convince me that all his racist, sick statements, jokes and sketches were a mistake. You make a mistake once or twice. When it's repetitive, it's who you are. This pressure forced Shane to upload his third and most infamous apology video titled Taking Accountability. In the video, he apologized for all his past behavior. He also claimed he hated the person he used to be. When I say I hate that person, I mean it in the most intense way possible. I hate that person so much.

18:04That person was filled with sadness, filled with anger about their own issues in the closet, constantly projecting on others. But this was too little too late. Shane had pushed things far beyond what audiences were willing to forgive. People were tired of his cycle of getting called out, making a statement and then repeating the same degenerate behavior. How many apologies is Shane going to film before he takes the steps to be better? Then, just days later, another bombshell dropped. Tati Westbrook uploaded her video Breaking My Silence, accusing Shane and Jeffrey star of manipulating her into canceling James Charles. I made it as a result of all of the poisonous lies that were fed to me by Shane Dawson and Jeffrey Star. Look further into yourself and your own opinions and don't follow the herd. Follow your heart really. Because I thought I was following mine, but I was listening to the wrong people. This sent Shane into a manic episode as he went live on

19:09Instagram and crashed out in front of the whole world. I'm losing my mind. This is so f***ing. This is ssssss. Oh my God. I-I... Okay... He denied everything she said. SHH. My God. You are so manipulative. You're f- you're a f- crime. You are f- crime. You're f- crime. You're f- crime. That is not real. Oh my God! But people were fed up with this constant involvement in drama and controversy and this livestream only served to make things worse. This is not the way an innocent person responds to lies. This is not the panic of an innocent man. This is the panic of someone who's realizing how much is about to come out against them and right in the middle of all this chaos, things took another disturbing turn. Yet another old clip of Shane went viral in which he was making some really inappropriate gestures in front of a poster of Willow Smith who was 11 years old at the time. Oh, with your hair back, you boy.

20:11Oh, oh. This clip became the final nail in the coffin of his reputation because this time even major celebrities publicly called him out. Both Jada Smith and Jaden Smith tweeted about the video. To Shane Dawson, I'm done with the excuses. Shane Dawson, I am disgusted by you. You see, is he an old-year-old girl who happens to be my sister? Is the furthest thing from funny and is not okay in the slightest bit? And this was the moment Shane Dawson's entire internet career came crashing down. YouTube immediately demonetized all of his channels. Every sponsor distanced itself, Moff pulled his merchandise from their site and Target removed his book from their stores. And with the backlash reaching an all-time high, Shane had no choice but to disappear from the internet at least for the time being. Because after his 16-month hiatus from YouTube, Shane Dawson eventually returned to the platform, posting content as if nothing had ever happened. We make mistakes?

21:12Uh-huh. Yes we do. I'll get to that. We forgive quickly. How about you get to that? He slowly began uploading again, sticking to the same documentary-style videos and conspiracy theory content. And while many of his loyal fans still showed up, enough of these videos to pull in a few million views, the fall from grace was obvious. It was still only a fraction of the numbers he used to get at his peak. On top of that, many viewers complained that his new content felt sloppy and low effort. For example, in his video, conspiracy theories with Shane Dawson, posted on April 5th, 2023, Shane investigates a theory that many products at Trader Joe's and other grocery stores aren't as healthy as the branding suggests. Everything's alive. But this is why I love conspiracies. I don't even know if these are conspiracies. I just love this shit because everything's alive. Don't believe anything you see. Everything's bullshit. Everything is companies manipulating us, and marketing to us, it's all fucking crazy. It's alive. But most people found the entire premise

22:12painfully basic and pointless. This feels like I'm watching aliens discover grocery stores for the first time. The Trader Joe's conspiracy is literally just Shane discovering how branding and marketing works. And beyond the low-effort content, Shane also faced accusations of stealing from smaller creators. For example, YouTuber Kaelin Conrad recently posted a 30-minute video breaking down how Shane's girls' hunting in a haunted city video was mostly copied from smaller, less-known creators. The way the clips are included seems intentionally edited to appear as though they're from Shane's own investigation, but they aren't because there was never any actual investigation going on here. After another montage where they put six clips from different creators back to back, over the next 10 minutes, the only thing of note that happens are the 10 stolen clips inserted without credit. After his return to YouTube failed to rebuild the momentum he once had and losing hundreds of thousands of subscribers with every upload, Shane eventually abandoned his main channel entirely

23:14and hasn't posted there in over a year. Instead, he's moved to a secondary and less popular channel called Shane too, where he still continues posting videos for a much smaller portion of his old audience who still support him even after the years of controversies tied to his gross and degenerate behavior. But looking at how his new videos struggle to even pass a million views, it's clear the internet has moved on and Shane Dawson has faded into a relevancy. And the truth is he brought this downfall on himself by constantly crossing the line, dodging accountability and wasting every chance he had to genuinely change. At this point, any attempt he makes to redeem himself or stage a comeback is almost guaranteed to fall flat, just like MizKiff, who's unlikely to recover from the latest scandal. Click the video on screen to find out more.