Carpenter: Does Shane Dawson’s Return Flop?
February 11, 2019
Shane Dawson is a name that everyone seems to know in today’s popular culture. Having been a youtuber since 2008 and gaining over 20.4 million subscribers, Shane Dawson is a hard name to miss in the Youtube world. Over the past year, Dawson has revolutionized Youtube and has challenged how far you can push the boundaries of the typical 10-minute videos of amateur filmmakers. With T.V. show-like content edited and filmed by only two people, he has created a show that fans and other youtubers have shown their admiration of him, especially over the past year.
Along with his millions of fans, I also have shown my admiration of him this past year. I have been an avid Youtube watcher for many years, and I always known who Shane Dawson was, as most people do. I never had a problem with him, but I was never interested in his cringey food eating videos; however, this definitely changed over the past year. I am absolutely in love with Shane Dawson and his friend group consisting of Ryland Adams, Morgan Adams, Garrett Watts and Andrew Siwicki.
I really cannot get enough of him and his friends on video. I think that he is one of the most genuine people on the Youtube platform right now. He is a great person and cares a lot for his fans and the people around him. I have watched all of the series that he has came out with, and he recently posted his first video of a series in 2019: a conspiracy series. Even when I was not subscribed to Shane Dawson, I used to watch his conspiracy videos when they came out because they were so entertaining to watch. They told you about stuff that might be true that you were not supposed to know about, which was exciting.
So when I found out that he was doing this series, I was so excited. Having the charm of his old videos with his new filming style, I could not wait. On January 30th, Dawson posted his video, called “Conspiracy Theories with Shane Dawson,” an hour and forty-five minute video for all of his subscribers to enjoy. As soon as he posted his video, I watched it while I did homework.
With such excitement, you’d think it’d be difficult to be disappointed with this video, but, sadly, I was not impressed. Based on comments and social media, I do not think that many people agree with me, but I am going to explain why I was so unimpressed with his video.
My main problem was the types of conspiracy theories that he used; I felt that a lot of them were not that appealing or interesting, which made the video not enjoyable to watch.
For example, one of his conspiracy theories brought up a common idea that phones and other technological devices record what you say and use that to gather information for the government or some other organization. This segment was about how live photos work on an iPhone. Dawson and his friends were very dramatic and made a huge deal out of what a live video is supposed to do. It records 3 seconds before and after you take a photo: which is what makes it a live photo. I feel that this is common knowledge and for him to make it such a huge deal and say it’s just another way that the government is watching us is silly. It is such a stretch for something that everyone already knows about.
Another problem I had was the originality of the theories. Although there were some that I thought were new and not many people knew about, some of them were just repeated ideas. Dawson talked about the recent California wildfires that devastated a lot of people in 2018. Of course with any big natural disaster there are theories that come with this, so Dawson went over some of them. I feel like he did not backup his theories about the wildfires with much evidence at all, and especially since this is a theory that is done over and over again, it was not enjoyable. If he was going to do a typical theory like this one, I would have liked to see some more evidence to back of the claims. It could be something as simple as talking to someone who is an expert about wildfire patterns, or something similar, it would have been much better.
Overall, I was just bored with the entire video. I was not that interested in any of the theories except for deep face and Walt Disney one. For a video that took so long to make and edit, I wanted some new juicy theories. I wanted to feel the way when I first heard about the Mandela effect and “Berenstein Bears” with my best friend when we did research for hours. Nothing excited me, and I am unsure if this is because conspiracy theories are something of the past and there is not much material anymore, or Shane Dawson did not find the best theories to present to his viewers.
Despite my problems with this video, I still plan on watching his videos in the future. This is a two part series, so I hope that the second video will be more interesting. Dawson plans posting the second video on February 11th, and is planning to focus on more real life investigations which I hope will bring more excitement to the table.
