A day after apologizing for blackface videos, Shane Dawson was under fire for a resurfaced clip where he sexualized then 11-year-old Willow Smith. Learn more about the famed YouTube star.
Famed YouTuber Shane Dawson has been trending non-stop on social media following his past controversial videos, which Jada Pinkett Smith and her son Jaden Smith also called him out for. The mother-son duo blasted the 31-year-old Youtube star for a resurfaced 2010 video that showed him touching himself inappropriately as he stared at a photo of then 11-year-old Willow Smith as he sang “Whip My Hair.” Jada tweeted, “To Shane Dawson … I’m done with the excuses,” while Jaden expressed his anger in a thread of posts.
“SHANE DAWSON I AM DISGUSTED BY YOU. YOU SEXUALIZING AN 11 YEAR OLD GIRL WHO HAPPENS TO BE MY SISTER!!!!!! IS THE FURTHEST THING FROM FUNNY AND NOT OKAY IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT,” Jaden, 21, wrote on June 27. The video comes just a day after he posed an apology video for racially insensitive videos — including of him in blackface — to his channel. Learn more about the YouTube star who is under fire.
1. He’s one of YouTube’s earliest stars. Shane hit YouTube running with ShaneDawsonTV in 2018, and instantly become majorly popular. His earliest video, “Kermit the Frog and Me”, is still on his channel. But his most famous early video was “Fred is Dead!” which has 25 million views. His star power grew from there with movie parodies, sketches, and later, documentaries.
2. He now hosts Conspiracy Series with Shane Dawson. Currently, Shane is the host of a series that tackles famed conspiracy theories, including the “real” cause of the destructive 2018 Woolsey and Camp Fires in California, that Walt Disney is frozen underneath the castle at Disneyland, and that kids are being brainwashed by dark themes in cartoons. And that’s just the first episode. The second episode got a response from Chuck E. Cheese itself when he investigated the conspiracy that the kids’ restaurant “recycles” its uneaten pizza and sells it again to customers.
3. He tried his hand at television and music. Shane announced in 2010 that he shot a 30-minute pilot called SD High. That eventually fell through, but he revealed in 2011 that he was allegedly working with Adam Sandler‘s production company, Happy Madison. He stated in 2012 that he was working on a comedy-horror film, and later that year, revealed that he was set to direct a film. Again, in March 2012, he released a debut single, “SUPERLUV!’ In June 2012 he released a “breakup song,” called “The Vacation Song”, and later that year, “Wanna Make Love To You” hit charts.
4. He has apologized after making jokes about bestiality. Shane apologized over Twitter on March 17 after audio from a 2015 podcast surfaced in which he joked that he performed sex acts on his pet cat when he was 19. He issued a lengthy apology on Twitter, telling fans that he was absolutely joking, and that it was based on a “dumb awful sketch idea:
“I’ve never done anything weird with my cats, Shane tweeted. “I promised myself i wasn’t going to make apology videos after last years thing so i’m just trying to be as short and honest with this as possible. I’ve apologized many times for all the dumb shit i’ve said in videos and podcasts over the years. I’ve learned my lesson over and over again and Im more confident now in my ability to be entertaining by just being myself and not being so shocking for laughs. That story was fake and was based on a dumb awful sketch idea I had years ago that I never made (THANK GOD) and when the opportunity came up for a funny moment in the podcast I told it as if it was a real story which was DISGUSTING and VERY VERY DUMB.
“My goal with the podcast and with my videos years ago was to tell shocking stories that would make people laugh and scream ‘OMG NO U DIDNT!!’ and think I was ‘soooo crazy.’ Embarrassing and I f**king hate myself for it. Now that I’m making stuff i love and I’m being myself it feels so much better and i finally feel like I’m putting stuff out into the world that means something. I’m not saying I hate everything I’ve made over the years. There’s so many things I’m so proud of. But all of my offensive jokes, over the top stories, and insensitive jokes are something that still haunt me and something I have to be faced with every day on the internet. And it never gets easier.
“So I’m sorry for what i said about my cat, I’m sorry for what I said about anything or anyone that was offensive, and I’m sorry for being someone who thought being super offensive and shocking all the time was funny. I’m sorry for my past. But I’m really to make it right and I feel like without my past I wouldn’t be who I am today and I wouldn’t be able to grow & spend my energy on things that actually mean something. This has been the best 2 years of my life & it’s because I’ve been able to drop the act & be myself. And I’m sorry for not doing it sooner.”
5. He apologized for blackface videos. On June 26, Shane addressed his 23 million subscribers for past controversial videos, including several of him in blackface. “Blackface was something that I did a lot of…there’s literally no excuse,” he explained. “I made a video six years ago talking about it, and I gave excuses and I knew it was wrong and I knew I would never want to do it again, but I didn’t do the work. I didn’t actually look into the history of it and why it’s so wrong and why people were so upset…I’m so sorry,” he said in the lengthy 20 minute clip.
“I’m sorry that I added to the normalization of blackface or the normalization of saying the n-word,” Shane also said, explaining his sense of humor was rooted in the wrong place. “No it’s not okay. And it’s not a funny word especially for a white person to say. Me as a white person wearing a wig and playing a character and doing stereotypes and saying the n-word is probably what I should have probably lost my career for, at the time. And there’s no amount of apologizing that can take it away,” he explained.