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Shane Lee Yaw (born July 19, 1988), known professionally as Shane Dawson, is an American YouTuber who's also done work in acting, writing, directing, music and makeup. His channel can be found here; he also has a second channel available here.

Dawson rose to prominence making sketch comedy videos with off-color humor, where he played both fictionalized versions of himself and an assortment of strange characters with some degree of mental instability, many of whom were inspired by people he knew. His content evolved throughout the 2010s, with his following notably increasing along the way, peaking with him being a magnet to YouTube's "Trending" page with new videos regularly gaining tens of millions of views in short times.

Initial phases included trying out Internet tips and hacks as well as discussing scary real-life stories and conspiracy theories. In the late 2010s, his content shifted to making multi-part documentary-style series initially about fun/paranormal experiences with his friends before covering pressing matters of YouTube culture, including Tana Mongeau's failed convention TanaCon and the lives of controversial creators such as Jeffree Star and Jake Paul.

Dawson also starred in the horror movie Smiley with several other YouTube stars, and appeared in numerous episodes of YouTubers React. He also directed and starred in a number of short films alongside a feature film, Not Cool, the making of which was documented on The Chair (2014).

Dawson would end up garnering repeated waves of criticism during the mid-to-late 2010s for the edgy, shock-value humor he built his early content on, with a long history of questionable comments and behavior alongside it, in addition to his involvement in several cases of YouTube drama. This culminated in June 2020, when public backlash from both the content and the drama reached an all-time high, resulting in large subscriber losses, call-outs from celebrities, terminations of brand partnerships, and indefinite suspension of all video monetization in what many considered to be the end of his YouTube career.

After this situation, his Internet presence was relegated to semi-regular social media posts and occasional appearances in the content of his then-fiancé Ryland Adams. He eventually returned to YouTube on October 7, 2021 and married Ryland on January 3, 2023.


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    Tropes Relating to Shane's General Content 
  • Ambiguously Gay: Oh, so much. He frequently lampshades this. There is a very good reason for the ambiguity though.
  • Amicable Exes: He and Garrett Watts are very friendly and supportive of each other. The same thing can be said for him and Lisa Schwartz.
  • And a Diet Coke: Shane can be seen drinking diet soda in nearly all of his tasting videos, no matter how many calories are already in the food he's eating. Shane has since come to lampshade this tendency.
  • Animal Motifs: Shane self-deprecatingly identifies with pigs, and has used them as a symbol of his.
  • Ascended Fanboy: He was a fan of Baby Ariel on Musical.ly for a long time before he was able to collab with her.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Shane's cameraman Andrew, who started working with Shane around his shift to documentary-style videos. While originally silently filming, Shane brought him out from behind the fourth wall, and he joined the group and has often been in front of the camera now as well.
    • Ryland's sister Morgan appeared in some videos while Shane and Ryland went to the latter's family home in Colorado, but she soon moved to L.A. to live with Shane and Ryland and joined the "squad".
  • Beautiful All Along: He used to be enormously fat, then lost all the weight. He suffers from body dysmorphia as a result, however, and does not see himself as attractive.
  • Big "OMG!": Shane is prone to both these and rapid-fire,ones, and he's made a shirt design based on this.
  • Black Comedy: His humor is very dark and this is often lampshaded when Shane's ideas of fun turn out to be surprisingly serial-killerish in nature.
  • Breakout Character:
    • Shane's boyfriend Ryland Adams. He went from appearing in the background for a few seconds reacting to Shane's antics to having entire videos dedicated to their relationships and then began to appear prominently in Shane's other videos and has now become an inseparable part of his content. Ryland's own channel quickly surpassed Garrett's, despite not being a professional YouTuber at the time, and having significantly fewer videos.
    • Antonia Marquee from "Paying Strangers to do Weird Things". The song she wrote for Shane was so popular with fans that he requested songs from her in both subsequent Fiverr videos, and made two of them into music videos with Antonia herself joining in.
  • Camp Gay: His boyfriend Ryland zigzags in and out of this trope constantly. Shane often points this out, but he also encourages the vibe.
  • Camp Straight: Ostensibly so for a while, but he eventually realized he was bisexual, which averts this.
  • Cats Are Mean: Frequently jokes that Cheeto is plotting to kill him.
  • Continuity Cavalcade:
    • "Put Some Ranch On It" - the song that Antonia wrote for Shane, contains numerous references to his previous videos and books.
    • "You Didn't Glow Up", Ryland's diss track against him, took this up to eleven with additional references to Shane's podcast, movie and Running Gag.
  • Covers Always Lie: His style used to be using misleading thumbnails for his videos to generate views, and he made no pretenses of it, doing three faux-dramatic videos about it, leading into thumbnail-filming compilations. While his thumbnails are still staged, they're more subdued and relate accurately to his content.
  • Darker and Edgier: Shane has a few series focusing on darker subjects, such as paranormal experiences/challenges, real-life stories of tragedy and horror, and conspiracy theories. These feature a creepy ambient track in the background, and Shane's tone of voice is much more quiet and subdued than even his more neutral moods.
  • Dude, Not Funny!: Shane's jokes will sometimes surprise him with their darkness, and he'll note it if he thinks he might have gone past comedy.
  • Disappeared Dad: Unfortunately. While he initially vilified his father and expressed his angst through heavy-handed videos, he's since realized that the separation was probably for the best, and when he reached out to reconnect with his father, a good deal of repair was done to their relationship, with Shane seeing a lot in common and understanding that the situation was complicated and just happened to be unfair to him.
  • Erotic Eating: Shane moans a lot while tasting food, though it sometimes occurs even when he's just anticipating it.
  • Formerly Fat: Shane lost a lot of weight from when he was a teenager, but his body and food issues have made it hard for him to maintain the dramatic loss, and his self-image remains damaged because of it.
  • Gag Lips: A ridiculous beauty product he tried out was a mouth stretcher shaped as these, and when he put it in, the resulting look was so striking that he created a bit character, Kirsten, from the image.
  • Good Parents: His mother, despite being very traditional and Christian on the surface, is a genuinely loving and accepting mom, and is surprisingly cool about many of the things she does with Shane, including a sex toy exploration video and Musical.ly filming. His father wasn't, unfortunately, but he did and does love Shane, and the two have found more in common after Shane sought out a chance to reconnect.
  • Hidden Depths: Fans point out that the diss track Ryland made toward Shane did not contain any mention of Shane's weight, probably knowing that it will enter Dude, Not Funny!'s territory pretty fast because of Shane's struggle with his body image.
  • Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Played for Laughs
    If by song, you mean hearing 'Fat piece of shit! fat piece of shit!' then yeah, that was.. that was the most popular tune! *weak laugh*
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All of the episodes of his Jake Paul docuseries are named under the template "The [X] of Jake Paul".
  • Improv: Since the end of his scripted sketch videos, he often includes comedy in other videos by rambling out humorous commentary about topics on his mind, and he frequently surprises himself with the jokes and rants he makes.
  • Incredibly Conspicuous Drag: Ryland's really wouldn't be if he just shaved his chest. Lampshaded in Antonia's song for him, "Beauty by Ryland":
    Hair on your chest while you got a bra on—Model goals!
  • The Jailbait Wait: Shane is uncomfortable with most kids on Musical.ly dancing suggestively or lip-syncing extremely sexual lyrics...though he sometimes says their time will come.
    Shane: (referring to Loren Beech) Wait till you're 18, girl. (whispers) It's coming up.
  • Large Ham: The guy can chew the scenery if he wants to, but he and others have noted that he's a much more subdued person without a camera on him.
  • Limited Wardrobe: This is constantly lampshaded, as Shane very rarely wears clothes that fall outside of a few specific shirts and pants. Part of this is because of his body issues he encounters when trying new clothes, and part of it is just lazy slovenliness.
  • Mean Character, Nice Actor: Shane puts on an over-the-top and abrasive persona as many of his characters. When he's not doing a sketch, he comes across as rather nice- just see him meeting some of the Kids from React.
  • The Missus and the Ex:
    • Shane's ex-girlfriend Lisa has no problem with his current boyfriend Ryland.
    • While never in a serious relationship, Garrett and Shane dated. This has not kept Ryland, Shane's current boyfriend, from getting along with Garrett.
  • Momma's Boy: By virtue of staying with his mother when his parents separated, and he is very close with her. However, he's also very similar to his father, and had they been close before, Shane might not have been the former.
  • Nice Guy: Shane is an incredibly kind and generous person beneath his outlandish jokes, giving lavish gifts and surprises to those he cares about and seeking to understand different people and experiences with his videos.
  • Only Sane Man: When he's hanging out with his group of friends, Shane often takes the role of the normal one, though he sometimes indulges in the craziness too and Andrew, his cameraman, is left the only sane one.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
    • While normally pretty lively and outrageous, he's made some videos with an entirely serious tone, discussing heavy life issues or apologies for poor decisions in his early content, and even defending himself when under attack online.
    • Shane has done enough of these notably subdued serious videos to completely subvert them with videos delivering the shocking news that...he stages his video thumbnails. Cue filming compilation.
    • In the defense against a particularly nasty media attack which claimed his ill-advised jokes about pedophilia were true admissions, Shane makes it very clear he's speaking truthfully with no pretense by declaring himself as Shane Yaw, his real last name.
  • Phrase Catcher: Garrett regularly exclaims "Shane!" disapprovingly whenever the latter does something dumb, to the point that it's basically Garrett's Catchphrase.
  • Pretty Boy: Has been mistaken for a woman numerous times for his soft features, and he's joked about his feminine appearance. The Perma-Stubble he wears now helps to prevent that.
  • Quote Mine: A scandal was started when an attack video quoted some (soon self-confessed to be tasteless and wrong) jokes Shane made years back about pedophilia, while removing all of the parts in the recording where he makes it clear he is joking and that he feels such behavior is truly disgusting. Since Shane had proof and tackled the issue fairly quickly with an apology video, the internet was quickly on his side, but it still caused some damage to his image since some didn't do more research...and reported on it.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Shane is more energetic, while Ryland is more calm and collected.
  • Running Gag:
    • Incessant self-deprecation relating to being trash and his food issues.
    • His clip-in bangs in the beauty videos.
    • Stupid puns (often involving the phrase "lit"), followed by "I'll go home." Capped off fairly early when he muses on the gag, pointing out that he's already home. Then he designed a T-shirt in the style of his usual green tee that features a door and the line.
    • Ryland's uncanny resemblance to a guy named Andrew working at Buzzfeed.
    • His self-assumed inferiority to Dan and Phil. Sometime this extends to Ryland, Lisa and even, apparently, his pets being said to prefer or be more attracted to them.
    • Shane's exasperation with Garrett's Harry Potter obsession, often asking people to not even bring up the series around him because he doesn't want to deal with the fan talk that will start up.
    • Shane being constantly amazed by the amount of money that flies around in the makeup world. From the ludicrous spending and flexing Jeffree Star seems to do entirely by accident, to finding out he could make a flat $10 million if the initial launch off their makeup collaboration sells out.
  • The Scrappy: In-Universe. Shane has a long-running hatred for the Minions. For Ryland, it's Lil Miquela.
  • Self-Deprecation: Most of Shane's humor is centered on negative relations to himself and poking fun at his issues.
  • Stepford Smiler: He's revealed that his post-sketch-comedy period of food videos and lifehack and beauty product reviews was a time of significant creative depression for him, and that he really started to feel the passion for making videos again once he started doing more casual videos and serious videos about his past.
  • Straight Man and Wise Guy:
    • Ryland is the Straight Man to Shane's Wise Guy in most of their appearances. Even when joining in the act, Ryland is usually the one that is asking sensible questions, making astute observations, or reacting to or snarking about Shane's antics. Crosses into Only Sane Man when Shane makes videos with his friends, with commenters noting that when Garrett and Drew are involved, Ryland takes the role of "sensible mom" in the group.
    • Garrett is sometimes the Straight Man to Shane's Wise Guy. He exclaims "Shane!" when the aforementioned does something snarky or rude to the point that it's his Catchphrase. They're both equally insane, though, so they don't qualify as Red Oni, Blue Oni.
    • Andrew is usually left the Straight Man to the Wise Guys in Shane, Ryland, Garrett, and Morgan.
  • Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: This is how Shane sees himself and his boyfriend Ryland, respectively. Ryland thinks the opposite. Subverted in that they're both gorgeous.
  • Verbal Tic: Things he really likes are "everything", and he constantly genders inanimate objects as female. He supposedly uses cool young slang ironically, but it seems to have invaded his natural vocabulary, so "shook", "queen", and "lit" and the like often come up during his excitable/energetic moods.
  • Weight Woe: Shane makes a lot of comments about how he used to be fat and his previous struggle with eating disorders - often while at the same time trying something extremely high-calorie.
  • What Beautiful Eyes!: Ryland has said that Shane has the most beautiful eyelashes on any guy he has ever met.
  • Wholesome Cross Dresser: In most videos when there is a female character. Ryland has also done this on many occasions.
  • Yandere: While doing his parody of Taylor Swift's "Blank Space". He becomes obsessed with Taylor Swift and decides he has to be with her. He bashes in his girlfriend's face in with a set of weights, then stabs Taylor's bodyguard and then kills Taylor herself.

    Tropes Relating To Shane's Characters 
  • Ambiguous Gender: Queen Shane might be an exaggerated snobbish version of Shane and mentions having a male body, but also wears a tiara and fluffy coat and has dramatically different mannerisms. Shane's catch-all use of feminine pronouns for things and people doesn't make it easier. It's likely this problem is just due to it being wild improvisation with little tying down the character besides the attitude.
  • Blackface: Some supposedly black characters are actually him using this, which has made him somewhat divisive. Shane has ceased this practice with apologies, but he also does not make character-centric comedy videos anymore.
  • Butt-Monkey: While not actually played by Shane, the maid Guadalupe is often horribly injured or killed in her scenes.
  • Comedic Sociopathy: Played straight with almost everyone. Aunt Hilda keeps the corpse of her dead husband at the dinner table, Shane's Mom abuses him mentally and S-Deezy and Shanaynay are violent murderers.
  • Greedy Jew: Aunt Hilda.
    "This shirt cost three whole dollars! Yeah. Three."
  • It's All About Me: Queen Shane, who never passes an opportunity to brag about her Diamond Play Button, act like a spoiled child, and put down her "assistant" Ryland.

    Tropes Relating To His Show 
  • Slut-Shaming: In his parody of Miley Cyrus' "We can't stop".
    No, I won’t stop reminding you that I’ll all grown up by acting like a total slut
  • Take That!: MANY.
    • He seems to hate Miley Cyrus with a burning passion, as there will always be some joke about her getting stoned or just being generally disgusting in any scene that features her.
    • There was another scene where Paris used an iPad as a tampon
      "My vagina got a high score in Temple Run!"
    • From the episode where Shanaynay drugs & kidnaps Katy Perry for Ned's birthday:
      Shanaynay: I tried to get you Kelly Clarkson, but I couldn't afford a U-Haul.
    • Shane and his boyfriend Ryland made diss tracks about each other.

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