By: Samantha Steinberg, Susan San, and Gemma Smith

Recently, the famed YouTuber Shane Dawson published an eight-part series in an attempt to uncover the mind of Jake Paul, another well-known, but very controversial YouTuber. Through many of their problematic actions, Paul and his brother Logan have built up a reputation that is, well, not so honorable: Logan videotaped a dead body in Japan’s “suicide forest” last year, Jake has been disrespectful to neighbors by lighting a fire in their swimming pool, and both of them have spread their cringey actions to young viewers (dabbing profusely in their content). In their videos, they both try to prove who is the better brother, who can go above the other, and do the crazier thing; ultimately, this has created an unhealthy competition between the family members.

But first, any non-YouTube watcher would question why Shane Dawson is suited to make a documentary about someone else in the first place. Dawson has been a prominent YouTuber since the network started. He published his first video called “Grandma Part 1” in 2010, and now has over 19 million subscribers on Youtube with over 4.5 billion views on his channel. If you asked many other famous YouTubers, or long time viewer who has inspired them most, it’s likely that the answer would be “Shane.” The reason behind this answer could be the fact that not only is he exceptionally great at setting video idea trends, but keeping up with them.  

Dawson is well known for his conspiracy theory videos that he puts a lot of time, research, and commitment into in order to intrigue viewers while also giving them the information that they want to know. He has also made videos uncovering the lives of other social media influencers, including Tana Mongeau, Bunny Meyer (“Graveyard Girl”), and Jeffree Star. Last month he challenged himself to interview Jake Paul and Paul’s friends and enemies, to finally reveal to the public exactly why Jake Paul acts the way he does and to allow him to explain his past.

Dawson’s videos, released throughout October, brought in an average of about 17.8 million views, while also being charted number one on the Trending list set by Youtube.

Viewers were drawn to Dawson’s videos on Paul because he made the claim in his first video that Paul could be a possible sociopath. Dawson brought therapist Kati Morton on two episodes of his series in order to determine the symptoms, and possibly diagnose Paul with an antisocial personality disorder. There have been lots of controversy surrounding this claim given the fact that publishing videos about diagnosing mental illness is “morally wrong” to many viewers. Although the series started off bumpy with negative feedback about the term “sociopath,” Dawson was able to make a major comeback with the last three videos in the series by averting the focus from a mental illness to Paul’s personal life in general.

Overall, the series was enjoyable to the majority of his viewers, as we recommend watching it; however, at times it seemed overdramatized and scripted. In the first couple videos Dawson included creepy clips of sociopaths, making them seem like evil and scary people, but not all people with personality disorders will be “bad people.”

Dawson was able to give viewers a chance to get inside the life of Jake Paul, while revealing what he’s actually like. Though this series doesn’t completely excuse his past actions, it demonstrates that in the end, not everything you see through YouTube videos is real. From this documentary, viewers were able to sympathize a little more for Paul, while hearing his side of the spectrum with his past actions. Every YouTube viewer interested in watching people like Jake Paul and Shane should check the documentary out because of the fact that it acknowledges an important problem in the YouTube community.

https://www.youtube.com/user/shane/about

https://www.youtube.com/user/JakePaulProductions/about?disable_polymer=1