Shane Dawson’s Conspiracy Series Gets Cheesy
By Stella Martinez
Shane Dawson loses clear storylines and gains a pizza obsession in his newest conspiracy video. The popular YouTuber investigates technology that mimics a user’s voice, Chuck E. Cheese re-serving old slices, and Brittani Louise Taylor’s story of her abusive relationship that almost led her into human trafficking. While the video seems to have interesting content, it loses viewers to jump cuts.
Shane reconstructed his channel from funny, scripted five-minute videos to host more mini “docu-series” that have gained popularity in the past year with in-depth interviews with controversial YouTubers like Jeffree Star, Jake Paul, and Tana Mongeau.
His recent video, “Investigating Conspiracies with Shane Dawson,” entertains for an hour and 34 minutes but is frustrating to watch. Shane stays on-brand and continues to make fun of himself and his outrageous, far-fetched conspiracies but the video takes a dark turn with Brittani Louise Taylor’s story.
Shane explains that Brittani is a YouTuber and an old friend of his. She tells Shane about Milos, a man she met on a dating app that became abusive, and her theory that he got her pregnant to kidnap her and her baby and take them to his home country, Serbia.
Her story was the most interesting of all three segments but diluted by jump cuts by intertwining and alternating the stories with one another. As soon as Brittani would reveal a shocking or dismal part of her story, the video would switch to Shane talking about pizza. It begs the question whether it was a form of “comic relief” from the intensity of Brittani’s story or just a clever way of keeping the viewer hooked.
Shane’s deep-dive into Chuck E. Cheese pizza shows just how obsessed he can become with trying to be original. His cameraman Andrew and boyfriend Ryland scroll through multiple photos of the pies and determine that they believe workers grab slices that are left-over from other customers to form whole pizzas for new customers. Throughout the video, Shane overreacts to the smallest evidence of different sized slices.
To put his theory to the test, Shane, Andrew, and Ryland head to their local Chuck E. Cheese to order their own pie and see what the “real tea” is. Shane also repeats numerous times throughout the video that his words are just opinions and not fact after joking about being sued by Chuck E. Cheese. Although the theory was dramatic and over the top, it got me thinking and scrolling through photos of pizza on Yelp for at least an hour after the video.
The least impressive of the three is the investigation of Lyrebird, an app that records your voice into a Siri-like impersonation. Shane attempts to call and trick people using the technology but really the scenes are just him and his friends joking around and laughing. It was disappointing to see that Shane didn’t do any further research into this product but instead read off the Lyrebird’s website.
Keeping up with Shane’s video became increasingly annoying as it moved along. The editing in the video was confusing and didn’t hold my attention. As soon as you become hooked on to one story, Shane breaks to another resulting in a jumbled-up mess causing you to say, “who was that again? What happened? Which segment is this?”
Shane does not fall short when it comes to poking fun at his outlandish and ridiculous theories and overall, the video does a good job at entertaining if you have nothing else better to do.
If you are patient enough, you can investigate for yourself on his YouTube channel @shane or at your local Chuck E. Cheese.
Rating: 2/5 stars
