Ah, YouTube. In its simplest form, YouTube is a community of independent creators, where each person can essentially have their own TV show. No producers, studios, networks, or limits. It’s a beautiful thing. But the platform has transformed into a landscape of slime videos, vlogs, ASMR, and other premium content for 9 year olds. This isn’t to criticize YouTube, but this is simply what the platform has become.
Three weeks ago, Shane Dawson finished a monumental 8-part series—one that could change YouTube forever. Dawson has been an internet figure for the past 10 years. Like most YouTubers, he played around with trending challenges, pranks, trying weird products, and the like. Bored in this monotonous routine, he started doing mini-documentary series on other YouTubers. It started out with switching lives with friends but not delving into deeper topics. Things got interesting when he investigated the controversial TanaCon, a poorly planned convention and possible scam where teens went home dehydrated, hungry, badly sunburnt (from waiting outside for 4+ hours), and without seeing their favorite creators. Then, he explored a polarizing figure: Jeffree Star. Dawson took fans through Star’s Calabasas mansion, makeup factory, and through his troubled past. Viewers were shown Star’s vulnerable side—something that many had never seen before.
His last series was the most vexed yet, but is also his biggest accomplishment. At a young age of 21, the YouTuber Jake Paul has had enough controversies to fill a novel: abuse accusations, a mansion filled with other wild creators, daring pranks, a family of fame-obsessed YouTubers, and feuds with other creators. No one is more hated on YouTube—or was.
The series started with the question, “is Jake Paul a sociopath?” Dawson received backlash for dramatizing Antisocial Personality Disorder and using it to gain more views. This, in my opinion, was his only fault. The rest of the series deconstructed the persona of Jake Paul that we had all come to know and hate: daring, loud, child-like, and aggressive. We saw a real person who was kind, considerate, and ultimately none of the things he portrayed himself to be. The psychological abuse accusations from his ex-girlfriend were confirmed, but both had fault, the pranks were planned in advance, and the feuds with other creators had justified backs to them.
Overall, this series has exemplified three things:
YouTube is changing. Due to Dawson’s skills, YouTube has been introduced to meaningful content—not just slime videos.
Every story has another side. Remember that often not all information is publicly known and the most hated figures are human too.
YouTube is a beast of its own. In the publicized world we live in today, people live for likes and work for views, but at the end of the day, a Diamond Play Button award isn’t worth it.
Kate Hefner is a junior in Columbia College.