Youtube & Shane Dawson: How Internet Culture Shifts

Youtube has been one of the largest platforms for content creation on social media for just over ten years, and the culture of it has changed drastically. The way that content has been curated on Youtube is directly affected by the viewers, and their engagement on said videos and creators are under pressure to fit into that ideal as it grows and changes. Shane Dawson has been uploading videos for about as long as Youtube has existed, and the content that he has put out over those years has reflected the culture shifts that the Youtube community has experienced. Shane has been a part of "canceled culture" many times during this period, where controversies have resulted in lash back from his audience.

In the very early years of Shane Dawson’s career on Youtube, his videos were geared towards a shock value style of comedy. The videos he created often included offensive humor, dark themes, and characters that were typically Shane himself dressed in drag. Shane Dawson had a fanbase of young teens, and his humor reflected that. Many of the jokes and comments that Shane made in his videos during this time have since landed him in a myriad of controversies, most of which didn't occur until the rise of "canceled culture" on Twitter, where controversial instances will be dug up and exposed to the public so that the person that made those comments is written off by their fanbase as "problematic".

Around 2014, Shane Dawson's videos became more about what was going to get the most views within the culture that Youtube had at that point in time. This meant that Shane was uploading videos six days a week that had very little effort put into them, most typically being on the topic of "DIY" or food-related videos that still contained his shock-value comedy that was his rise to fame in earlier years. Over time his content shifted from this style, into much higher production documentary-style series that focus on relevant pop culture issues such as TanaCon and major influencers like Jake Paul and Jeffree Star. These videos tend to be very long and in multiple parts. Shane makes these videos as a way to channel his desire to direct movies in the future.

The controversies Shane has been involved in have mostly stemmed from his past comments that were inappropriate and offensive. Some of the most infamous scandals have been comments he's made about little girls in a sexual manner that led to accusations of him being a pedophile, and comments he made regarding his cat in a sexual nature that caused people to believe he was committing bestiality.

Overall the way Youtube culture functions is that at any moment it could implode due to the sheer nature of the community of its users and creators. The nature of social media, in general, is chaotic and tends to be a matter of herd mentalities that could change at any moment. Overall the phenomenon that is Shane Dawson on Youtube has been wild from the beginning and will likely continue to be so.