How Did Shane Dawson Become the King of YouTube?
The rise, controversies, and documentaries.
Shane Dawson is the current undisputed king of YouTube. He is beloved and people seem to want him to ‘save’ or ‘redeem’ people with his documentary-style videos on controversial figures.
The Beginning
Shane Dawson is 31 years old and started actively posting on YouTube in 2008, at just 19 with his channel, ShaneDawsonTV. Dawson always wanted to be a movie director, telling Quartz contributor Jeff Slate, “I’d wanted to be a director since I was five, and had been making videos since I was a kid. Then YouTube came around during high school. I was making videos and it was just a place to put them, like storage.”
Dawson’s channel started almost as a cross between a video diary and a sketch comedy series with hilarious and sometimes controversial characters like Shanaynay and Rod Makkenrole. By 2010, he had half a billion views and was one of the first YouTubers to gain that much popularity.
He had a short-lived music career, releasing songs and music videos, and in 2014 Dawson appeared on Starz channel filmmaking…
