Shane Dawson has been an active YouTuber for the past decade. He has evolved from sketch comedy with controversial characters like Shanaynay to a documentarian. But in between that, he has tried his hand in many different genres of videos and many forms of entertainment. All of this had led him to become one of the most important voices of Youtube.
Shane Dawson’s characters on Youtube in 2008 started his career. Some of his most famous characters include Shanaynay, Shane’s Mom and Rod Dawson. All of his characters worked to tell a story in short YouTube videos. This allowed him to become one of the biggest comedy creators on the platform. His videos were emulated by many other creators and his humor was adopted by many.
Dawson used his main channel ShaneDawsonTV as a platform for his characters. And as he slowly stopped his work with characters, he progressed into other platforms. Dawson directed and starred in the movie Not Cool in 2014. He started his podcast, Shane and Friends, in 2013 and it was later picked up by Full Screen in 2016. Shane and Friends was Dawson’s way to connect to his fans in a more intimate setting.
While he started to work in Shane and Friends, Shane’s presence on YouTube shifted. He started to post more on his second channel where he created casual videos. His videos on his second channel went from him eating food to trying out YouTube challenge videos. This was also the platform Shane used for his conspiracy theory videos, the videos that started the spark of a whole genre on YouTube.
Now the second channel houses Shane Dawson’s docuseries. He started out with confronting his dad in a series of videos where he tries to figure out why they didn’t have great relationship. The series then progressed in July while Shane tries to figure out the issues with TanaCon, a YouTube convention that failed. His TanaCon series was the spark in Dawson’s current form of videos.
With the success of his TanaCon series, Shane created The Secret World of Jeffree Star, a docuseries that worked to understand the world of one of the most controversial YouTubers on the platform. The five part series, released in August, has a total of more than 96 million views. His influence can be seen through the series as people’s opinions of Jeffree Star changed after his series. Star gained thousand of new subscribers as people learned more about him throughout the series.
Through growing as a person and YouTuber, Dawson has continued his success and shows no sign of stopping.
Zula Baterdene is a freshman studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Do you agree? Let Zula know by tweeting her at @ZBaterdene
